Katherine Legge Crash - Great to see how safe Racing is nowadays
Just in case some of you missed it. I was watching live on Eurosport and after seeing the crash I was really prepared for the worst. Rear wing failure, no run-off, very fast corner. 20 minutes later she's smiling. Here are the clips.
I have to comment on something regarding the whole "Legge vs Patrick" thing.
Legge went on National TV and said something along the lines of "Danica is a woman who is racing; I'm a racer who is a woman."
Danica is twice the driver Legge is, IMHO. Legge may have Danica edged out on Speed, but Danica is smarter behind the wheel. And after the crash, Legge mentioned something about the bruise on her knee from the bulkhead not looking attractive in her dress for the Atlantics Ball or whatever it was. I'd say Legge is the woman who's racing, and Danica is the racer who's a woman.
In either case, IMHO both of them are only where they are because they are females. I Don't think either have the ability, at this point, to be in either ChampCar or IRL.
Yeah I saw the crash, it was dreadful looking, considering the shell she was in tumbled and that was banging her head around.
The top roll bar and helmet+supports probably saved her life, or serious injury. I was amazed that she walked out of it, and felt perfectly fine. She looks a bit scared and teary eyed (awww ), but god, all she has is bruises, and she wants to go back out and race.
EDIT: Maggot, blah they are both woman out there racing in a tough sport, both of them are racers
rofl danica has to be the most over rated driver in the history of motor racing. She has a huge advantage of other drivers in IRL yet i see nothing special from here. Cant comment on Legge as i have not seen her race but i have seen numerous accidents from her.
Just because she's a racer doesn't mean she can't still be a woman when she's not racing...They are both women and they are both racers.
I autocross my car and if my girlfriend also raced with me I would still want her to act like a girl rather than become butch and tough because she's involved in a male dominated activity...
Oh, you mean like Alonso saying he's much better than Schumacher?
An ego is something that you need to have if you want to win races. Besides... She's right about that. Although Legge can be extremely girly off track, which is cute.
They're in different types of racing... Circuit racing versus Oval racing. Each of them is better at their own thing.
She mentioned the bruise in a jest. Just to stress the fact that she was absolutely fine after that horrific crash. Since she's a woman, her looks are an easy way to turn something serious into a joke. I thought that was a sweet and smart comment.
Right... Danica finished 4th in the IRL season in 2005... That shows her ability... She came in 4th in last year's Indy 500, 8th this year...
Katherine Legge won 3 Formula Atlantic races last season (and reached 2 more podiums), becoming the first woman ever to win a major US Open Wheel racing event (and repeated that feat twice). She came in 3rd in the season that year... She's won numerous pole positions and races in the lower classes, both in the US and the UK (and wrote off an F3 in a freak accident at Rockingham Speedway that reminds me of some 'hopping' setups in LFS).
They both have the ability to be where they are, and they didn't only get there because they are female. You just think they're not good enough because they are women.
Those rear wing failure crashes are always so damn scary looking - I'll have to agree that today's safety tech is amazing, few years back she'd be all over that track with parts of her car.
Despite not having seen either of them drive, I also have the feeling that if they weren't were they are someone would attribute it to them being female as well... quite a Catch 22, no?
You have a point there. Although, I think that fact is getting to be a smaller issue as racing becomes more commercial. Women as racers is a great marketing tool, you see. IMHO, that is the only reason Danica is in IRL. Like I said, I don't either of them really have the raw talent to be where they are, girl or no girl.
I understand the ego part, but I Still think Legge was out of line with that comment.
Danica was in Atlantics before moving to IRL. I'll admit Legge accomplished more in terms of wins, but she also made a lot of dumb mistakes. (IIRC, she dive-bombed T1 2 or 3 times, only once coming out of it without a DNF, although a pretty hurt race car).
Ok, you're right. I'll take that back. It must've been my based-on-near-nothing vendetta for Legge that made me make the comment. Honest
Ok, I stand corrected. They have both performed well. My mistake. I know Danica did pretty decent in Atlantics, but I Thought she was much worse off in IRL. I guess my facts were wrong. I thought Legge had only won one race, and I was led to believe it was more fluke than talent/skill/whatever. Again, My mistake.
Wrong. I'd love to see a very competative and successful woman in racing; especially just to shut up the anti-female crowd. They get on my nerves. I don't care if you're male or female (or both), a good racer is a good racer, a bad racer is a bad racer, and a decent racer is a decent racer. I guess I wasn't looking at the whole picture and all the stats; the comment Legge made that I 'quoted' in my post just really irked me at the time (And still does, honestly).
I'll admit my comment may have been out of line as well. I'm sorry for that.
...but at the same time people are whining about that racing has become too safe and has lost its shine and all. I don't think anyone needs to get killed in racing, like the F1s were over two decades ago.
But there is a fine line in making the cars safe enough to avoid accidents, and being so safe the drivers don't mind CAUSING accidents... I think if Senna/Schumi/Alonso/Montoya/"Insert name of any racing driver from the last 20 years here" knew that pulling a move could hurt them then they'd think twice about it. This would be good for the sportsmanship of the thing, and stop people like Sato getting into F1.
But no, drivers shouldn't be needlessly hurt, but I'm not convinced absolute safety is neccessary either. And then Mark "I'm a big wimp really" Webber starts moaning that Monza is a big too dangerous because they have to go a bit faster... I say bring back the old Hockenheim, Reims et al, and let them loose on more low downforce tracks. Just no dumbed down ovals
And the fact that if you cause an accident = your car breaks hasn't changed. It is all about that the driver stays in one piece. I think that the comment that the F1 drivers (for example) base their reactions on will they survive from it or not is a moot comment. There are plenty of examples of extremely stupid moves in F1 history which have caused lost lives and bad injuries, simply because people did then the same things they do now. Blocking, brake testing and dirty moves.
I don't think that racing needs to be dangerous to be fun. While it always is dangerous to some degree, you don't need to be paralyzed from neck down or die in a burning wreck to make a point.
But to go there, the ovals are the most dangerous places to race. And if they could move some walls further away from the track, why shouldn't they do that? After all, some of the worst accidents are caused by technical failures, which usually happen on high speeds. The lazyness or carelessness of the track owners kill "innocent" drivers, if one would look into it too literally. Or the team engineers who desinged the old lotus racing cars which were all about saving weight, at the expense of drivers' health. After all, racing is all about speed while making the cars enough safe to fill the rules, not enough safe for the designers to drive them by themsleves
Yes it does... It's the constant threat of lives being lost that attracts so many people to racing. It also is the only reason why online racing will never ever be a huge spectator sport. It's just not dangerous. What fun is it to watch drivers battle it out on the track when there's no danger involved? The only thing it does is cause more extremely stupid moves and dirty driving.
The fact that most accidents caused by technical failures happen at high speed is because at high speeds stuff breaks easier... Simple rules of physics tell us that the higher the speed, the more force is applied to the car, the sooner stuff simply stops working, the harder the impact is, the more bits and pieces fall off the car to take away energy from the driver, the worse an accident looks.
And ovals are most definitely NOT the most dangerous place to race... Putting the wall back 20 yards from the track would in fact cause for worse wrecks because the angle at which cars impact will be higher causing more abrupt deceleration (which is what causes most major injuries in racing).
The dutch commentator (actually belgian) for the Champcar race last sunday was wondering why there weren't any tirestacks at that part of the guardrail... The reason is equally simple as effective and is the reason why there's a concrete wall around ovals... If there had been tires there, the car would've impacted and stopped so suddenly that the amount of G's would've instantly killed Katherine (in the range of 250+g's)... By NOT having these tires there, the car was allowed to change direction but keep a lot of momentum, massively reducing the amount of G's her body had to endure. Yes, it caused her crash to look much worse but it also saved her life. (in sharp contrast to the FIA's 'tire' happy safety measures, which eventually will kill a driver)
In F1, it has come to a point where indeed the safety rules are so mindbogglingly strict that designers are indeed very much capable of driving (and winning) races if they took a standard racing class. Just how safe it has become is proven by the amount of completely rubbish drivers that are granted a super license these days... Every other idiot can obtain one if they have enough money to buy themselves a 309km test in a recent F1 car. The main question is: "How long will it take the FIA to recognise their mistake and take it away again?"...
And before you bring up Ralf Schumi's crash at Indy as proof ovals are not safe... No, it proofs F1 cars are unsafe to back into a concrete wall. Most major accidents in Formula cars happen because cars back into something, which is the one place that does not properly absorb energy. Strangely enough, most high speed spins cause formula cars to back into something (they never keep on turning around). That would be a good place to improve safety further.
For me the point where safety begins to be a problem is when drivers no longer have to pay any price at all when making mistakes. I don't mean they should get hurt more often, I mean that if they get it wrong in a corner they should have to face the fact that their race is probably over or they at least lose a lot of time.
This is not the case with tarmac run-offs. Anyone who has ever watched a qualifying session live, for example at the first corner at Hockenheim, will have seen that many drivers just throw their car at the corner and see if they make it, if not, they just use the run-off as a normal piece of track and then try a bit slower next time round. I don't think this is what racing should be like, it just makes it too easy.
Yeah, maybe, but she had a point Seriously though, if I disliked a race driver because he/she made a bad comment on something I'd be rooting for Robert Doornbos... Oh wait... I AM rooting for him
Luckily she isn't the only one who does that in the USA formula series... I present to you: Paul Tracy... Now there's a guy that has NO talent, a mouth the size of mount st Helens, and an attitude that would make Schumacher cower.
Yes, she made some dumb moves. But she's shown that she learned from that as well. Remember that even though she's been racing for a while, that was her first year as a professional race driver. Sometimes she still looks like a complete rookie, but that's part of her charm, and her determined spirit. I like her for that, just like I like Montoya for his "no guts no glory" attitude.
hehe... No problem... She's a woman, and she never denied that fact (rather the opposite). She would just like to be seen as a racer on the track, like most LFS women do.
Danica is where she should be... Oval racing is her thing. She wasn't half bad on road courses, but ovals just fit her better.
Legge is better at road courses, and she's doing just fine there. She's still improving as well. I think if we give her another year, maybe two, and nothing bad happens to her we'll see her fighting for the championship and/or in F1. She's the only woman I can see having a fighting chance there. Much better chance than I would give either Sarah Fisher or Danica Patrick (maybe tinyk has a bit better chance ).
Then recognizing both Patrick's and Legge's talent would be a good start...
Let's forget the whole incident, and cheer for both ladies (and hope someone will show them the way to Live For Speed heaven).
So basically it's ok that people get killed if it is a good race? Must be some great entertainment to see people getting burned in the flames while fellow racers stand by without being able to anything to help. Makes a good show! And there are always morons who use all the dirty moves, and sometimes they end up killing someone else. I bet Sato would have killed few people if he had been in F1 a decade earlier. He would have been a Sato anyway.
True, people want to see accidents and wrecks but do they want to see people getting killed? There is a fine line between accident and death
And it must be some kind of "advanced engineering" when you can design cars that maybe break an ankle or break finger when the drivers crashes... or maybe the FIA could install baseball bats into the cars that whack the driver everytime he spins? But only slightly, so he wouldn't get killed
[indent] Champ car: Jeff Krosnoff, Toronto, July 1996 Gonzalo Rodriguez, Laguna Seca, September 1999 (in practice) Greg Moore, Fontana, October 1999 = 1 oval 2 track ------------------------- F1: none ------------------------- IRL (ovals only?) Scott Brayton, Indianapolis, May 1996 (in practice) Tony Renna, Indianapolis, October 2003 (in testing) Paul Dana, Homestead-Miami, March 2006 (in practice) = 3 oval 0 normal track 0 city track ------------------------- Grand-Am: Jeff Clinton, Homestead-Miami, March 2002 = 1 oval 0 normal track 0 city track ------------------------- Nascar Busch series: Clifford Allison, Michigan, 1992 (in practice) Adam Petty, Loudon, 2000 (in practice) = 3 oval 0 normal track 0 city track ------------------------- NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series John Nemechek, Homestead-Miami, February 1997 Tony Roper, Texas, October 2000 = 2 oval 0 normal track 0 city track ------------------------- Autoracing club of America
Chad Coleman, Atlanta, November 1998 Scott Baker, Toledo, June 2000 Blaise Alexander, Charlotte, October 2001 Eric Martin, Charlotte, October 2002 (in practice) = 4 oval 0 normal track 0 city track ------------------------- FIA WRC
Michael Park ,Wales, September 2005 Jorg Bastuck, Spain, March 2006 = 2 rally ------------------------- Sports Car Club of America
Roger Freeman, July 2003 Mark Lovell, July 2003 = 2 rally ------------------------- Other rally races:
Peter Brock, Targa West, September 8, 2006 (probably rally does no describe this best, but is the closest) = 1 rally ------------------------- Drag racing
Deaths in IHRA Wayne Bailey, October 2000
Deaths in NHRA Darrell Russell, June 2004 Blaine Johnson, August 1996 = 5 drag racing ------------------------- Le Mans: Sebastien Enjolras, 1997 (during practice session) = 1 normal track ------------------------- Other endurance:
Michele Alboreto, EuroSpeedway Lausitz, April 2001 (in testing run)
Probably 0 normal track, as they prolly weren't testing the Audi R8 at oval. ------------------------- Peter 'Possum' Bourne, April 2003
1 rally ------------------------- Sprint cars:
Joe Rebman, August 11, 2006, during race
1 offroad track racing? ------------------------- Deaths in National Sprint Tour Fred Brownfield, June 18, 2006, while chalking start line
Don't twist my words around...
I never said drivers SHOULD get killed... But the danger that a driver COULD get killed should never be completely taken away. If there's no danger, there's no excitement. Sato would never have been in F1 a decade earlier because Sato never would've gotten his super license.
No, but they want to see drivers being in danger of getting killed... There's a fine line between being as safe as possible and boring.
Riiiight... They can design cars to be safe when crashing... That's what they're doing right now, nothing wrong with that. But you can go overboard and design racing so that it is not dangerous at all, which is what the FIA seems to be doing.
Right... So Chinese are the least healthy people on the planet? Of all the people dying the majority are chinese.
You're telling me these numbers are not biased? Only counting either fatalities in major series, or well known drivers... Would you mind adding all the national and amateur series and doing a recount? Or better yet... Add the number of races in the list above and calculate the MTBF (mean time between fatalities), and you'll see a different number.
By the way, that list has 13 oval fatalities and 5 normal track fatalities... Grand-am races the infield track at Homestead Miami, and he wrecked in turn 1 which is not the oval part.
Oh wow... They installed a high speed barrier a week ago...
Well, that puts an end to literally miles of 'unsafe' tire barriers at tracks like Spa (at raidillon and stavelot), yes... One right doesn't undo millions of wrongs... They're still lucky nobody got killed in a few years.
Ah... Under exceptional circumstances Appendix L also allows the FIA to award a Super Licence to a driver who does not meet the normal criteria if a vote reveals unanimous agreement by the members, and provided that the driver has completed 300 kilometres of testing at racing speeds in a current car.
In other words... Yes, EVERYONE can get a super license. There are plenty of examples. As long as you have the money, you can buy a license.
Half the F1 field was admitted using these 'exceptional circumstances', including Kimi Raikkonen.
Actually they haven't... Nor are they going to... They're just going to make sure stuff like that can't happen by adding crazy slow chicanes to any dangerous turns, like on Imola, Nurburgring, Hockenheim, Spa (new busstop), etc, etc. In other words, they're replacing exciting and cool tracks with dumbed down mickey mouse tracks to make the sport safer... Unfortunately also a lot more boring.
So you are saying that there should be "just a little danger" of getting killed? How do you do that
How? It is not that they (FIA) aren't trying to (for example) make new rules to help passing in F1. They (FIA) just aren't capable of doing that and instead they come up with stupid ideas like that double rear wing. Which obviously was useless since they are not going to use it.
Let's look at what makes modern F1 racing "boring". Do you agree when I say stuff like almost fully automated gearboxes with automated computer controlled shifts and clutches (not trying to be 100% technically correct here), electronics, electronics and electronics. These are not safety equipment but they certainly makes the races more car than driver dependant and as such make the drivers look better than some of them are. And in the meanwhile make the races more boring, if the technical side of interest is left out.
So which way you want it? Deaths per kilometre? Deaths per event? Deaths per race driver? Oval racing is much bigger in USA than it is in Europe (obviously ). Still majority of racing is done on normal tracks, but still most of the deaths happen on ovals. That is a fact.
I couldn't be bothered. For me the "stats" that I presented give a good look what is dangerous and what is not. Remember, we are talking about racing incidents, not track day incidents or list of all people died in motorsports. Otherwise we need to count in people dying in overuse of jaffa cakes while watching kart racing.
My error.
So there you have your "little chance of getting killed" factor
I guess the teams don't usually hire people who are slow and stupid, even if they bring a lot of money. Of course there are exceptions to this. And I guess most of the F1 drivers are doing ok. And wasn't the ex-super aguri driver Yuji Ide enough experienced and still he evetually lost his license due to being a driving time bomb? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuji_Ide
I have never said that I agree with the raping of historical race tracks. The FIA has indeed ruined many tracks. Making the races more "safer" but probably just more boring.
There's a video in the OP in this thread... That's how. :P
They (as in formula series and chassis builders in general, not just FIA) are making the cars safer. FIA just takes the most effective methods and mandates those. Which is fine... I have no problem with the FIA trying to create as safe a car as possible. I do however have a problem with the FIA banning things which make the cars go faster and when that fails start mandating track changes to stop serious shunts from ever happening.
Most of the electronics that directly influence the handling characteristics of the car are allowed because they make driving safer. The semi-auto boxes are a bad example by the way, because A1 has them, and that is cool and exciting racing. There are many more reasons why F1 is boring, safety isn't the only issue (in fact, it is one of the minor issues). My point was that if F1 is going to continue it's current course of overboard safety measures, the masses won't watch it even if there is massive amounts of overtaking.
MTBF... Oval Racing is much bigger in the US, and road racing is much bigger in Europe... Then how come there's only 1 european road course series on there? The others are american series, oval series, or completely different types of racing.
The numbers here, no matter how you look at them, are biased.
If you want to have good numbers you'd have to look at each fatality seperately, and wonder if they could've happened at other tracks than the one they happened on. And take all fatalities into account. Not just the ones in bigger series. I can give you an example that could show that ovals are safer... Jeff Krosnoff died in a freak accident when his car was lifted into the air and hit a lamppost next to the track in Toronto. Kenny Brack had a very similar accident at an oval traveling much much faster, and lived. I can't remember who or where it was, but it was a very similar crash to Jeff's and the driver suffered only minor injuries.
Greg Moore's fatal accident was a freak incident where he jumped up on the grass and flipped his car right with the rollbar into a concrete wall...
Paul Dana's fatality would've happened had he driven on Spa and encountered a spinner at the top of eau rouge because he was just being insanely (and suicidally) stupid.
That's fine. But if your stats are not 'complete', they shouldn't be presented as fact. They are not a fact (well, the stats themselves are a fact, but they prove nothing).
No problem
EDIT: By the way, can we count someone being killed while painting the start line as a racing fatality? Because if we count that, we can add some fatalities to F1 (marshals in Monza 2000 and Melbourne 2001).
Yes, and instead of trying to move from "little" to "no" chance of getting killed, they should leave it at that. Basically it all comes down to the risk factor... Take the risk away and you lose viewers. What are the most exciting tracks to watch? The ones that are somewhat dangerous because of their layout.
Well, the poor F1 teams haven't been exactly going out of their way to deny the fact they hired someone with almost no experience because he could bring $5 million more to the team. Nor has the FIA gone out of their way to maintain a certain amount of profesional driving in their top series.
Which is exactly my point. Tracks like Road America, or even the old Hockenheim layout aren't really 'unsafe' in essence. However, there's a higher risk factor involved, which makes them just that bit more exciting to watch. No, people don't need to be killed, but a good wreck every now and then keeps people interested, how deranged that may sound.
(and F1 still is plenty dangerous enough, and there is the occasional big wreck, but they're reaching the break even point)
If the cars went twice as fast as they do now would it make the races more exciting? And as to my understanding the FIA has a truhful interest to cut down the costs in F1. And that's why some things are the way they are. Active suspensions and stuff are forbidden because only the top teams could invest a lot of money into such systems. Still FIA makes its decision with the money income on top of its priorities and as such we can't expect charity from it
Why wouldn't it? People are after short term fun and a F1 race with passing all the time is every F1 race broadcaster's wet dream. High tech + fast cars + instant fun = lots of bulk people interested about F1.
Agreed, though I can't even find any "stats" from european only view, but imho the point was that the oval racing is quite small portion of all racing done on earth and still it manages to come up with such high death counts.
When is it a freak accident and when it is not? Is it a freak accident if you drive into a mine in safari rally when you have taken a risky shortcut or your cars bursts into flames after leaving the pits, or if you hit a deer running across the track?
It is not that the pure racing incidents count only, it's that the likeliness of such incident may be lower or higher in some sport. In oval racing the speeds are always high, the cars have little wing and drive very close to each other. Always when you hit the wall, you hit it hard. Sometimes the whole car gets ripped into small pieces and the driver walks away healthy, or the crash doesn't look too bad but the driver gets killed instantly.
Well, stats can lie as much they can tell truth. But I trust the wiki stats and so far I have not found or seen better list. The reason why I set the tieline to 10 years was because major advance has been done during this period.
Of course. But only if it is the driver
Again, imho racing should be made as safe as possible because no one needs to die because someone wants to get higher ratings. Was it your father, you brother or your girlfriend's husband - you don't want to see him in wheelchair/coffin because the FIA allowed NOS in F1 but didn't set any safety margins or rules to prevent the driver from inhaling the stuff. I just try to look it outside from the "racing scene". One does not need to die to be a legend.
They are all professionals, they just happen to have good sponsors. It is a cruel world, the who has the money has the chance.
A good wreck is ok by me, though enough wrecks means something will happen evetually. And can you say for certain that Hockenheim was, for example. more interesting than a modern Shanghai because it was more dangerous? It isn't that straightforward
Break point?
If you could find some statistics about oval vs. track racing deaths I'd be happy to see them. And these posts are getting quite long for an average viewer
), but god, all she has is bruises, and she wants to go back out and race.
