Hi Joe,
What do you think about my comment regarding all the danger notices at the entrances to racing circuits?
Why do you suppose they are there if there is no danger?
We are talking about one incident - not every incident.
As am I. I would imagine that the signs i referred to are in place at the entrances to the Valencia circuit, so i do include this incident amongst my generalised comment.
In this particular incident he was never at risk as he never hit anything.
yet again, ill politely ask you to consider the 'paused video' scenario. Would you make a such a claim about the lack of danger 2 seconds after the initial impact?
Just because it was spectacular doesn't make it dangerous does it?
nope, not exclusively, but i don't see why thats relevant to this situation? (i think you mustn't have been reading all the posts in this thread, so i'll mention it again) Massa's initial impact with Barrichello's spring wasn't particularly spectacular, in fact, you had to watch the rplay in slow motion to see what happened - but it came close to killing him. (I believe it put him into a coma for a few days)
A few months ago Massa was hit on the head by a lump of metal - it almost killed him yet no-one who was at the track would've even noticed what had happened.
is there an echo in here?
nope, incorrect. I rarely watch joe public (or 90) making a complete Rs of themselves ( thinking big bro et al), if you mean reality prog, like a talented driver in mortal peril, then yes, i saw that.
Maybe you would like to look at the transcript from the post race drivers interview-
http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/pressreleases/f1releases/2010/Pages/f1_conf_eur4.aspx
but ill cut/paste a section for you to consider aswell-
Q: (Ivan Martin – La Gaceta) For all three of you, you just saw Webber’s crash for the first time, how do you personally feel when you see something like that?
SV: As we said, motor sport is dangerous. It’s what is written on every ticket, even on yours. There’s always a bit of a risk. Obviously when we go out there we go hard, we go racing, so we try our best and try to overtake the car that we are racing in front, try to pass. Sometimes it’s close and if things go wrong, I think it shows how high the speeds are and what can happen, so you should never lose respect. From the public point of view, as I said, many times it’s been criticised that Formula One is boring compared to the past and so on. I think that as a racing driver today, you seem to need the same qualities as thirty or fifty years ago. You need to deliver, you need to be fast, you need to be brave and get everything together.
LH: It really shows just how safe and how much of a good job the FIA and Formula One has done all together, also with the circuits in terms of improving safety. It’s something that we need to continue to push but it wouldn’t be the same without the danger factor, so it’s good to have it there. It’s sometimes good to be reminded of it but it’s nice to be able to see from a big crash like that fellow drivers walking away uninjured. I think that’s the key.
JB: The same. The great thing is that it really shows how far we’ve come with safety. That was a massive accident, the height that he got, it was the same in the GP2 race also today. There was a big, big accident. I think the guy was a little bit more hurt than what Mark was. I think it shows how big an accident we can have and we can walk away. Obviously there can be slightly different circumstances and it would be a lot more serious, but we’re doing all we can to try to make it as safe as it possibly can be. We’re racing at 200+ miles an hour, cornering at very high speed, pulling high G, so it’s never going to be a safe sport, we all know that and you have to respect the car that you’re driving. As Sebastian said, it’s an 800 horsepower beast that doesn’t want to be tamed. It’s something that we understand when we step into it but I think we are also pretty happy with the improvements that we have made over the last few years.
I particularly like the first three sentences of Vettel's answer, pretty much says it all, don't you think?
So-
Sebastian Vettel clearly thinks there is/was danger present
Lewis Hamilton thinks that safety issues should still be pushed further. (We can infer from that that there is danger present)
Jenson Button says that it is never going to be a safe sport.
Mark Webber ( not in this interview, but..) says he is a very lucky chap.
Every poster here who saw the crash says Webber was in danger, there isn't a single post in support of your point of view.
So it looks like you stand in a majority of 1 thinking that there was no danger.