Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Well it says they might switch to purpose built race cars, hopefully keeping the same look of the cars, but with more safety. Suprised it has taken this long considering how dangerous some of the tracks they race on are, thrilling tracks to watch racing on though but nobody wants to see people die when it could be avoided.

I really hope they don't change the entire essence of the series due to one accident, they've had a very large number of massive impacts with the V8 Supercars, almost all started by car to car contact and they've stood up easily as well as purpose built silhouette racers. I really don't see how that impact could have been made better in terms of car design, he had the best in terms of high seat side protection and HANS but given the angle half way between a frontal/side impact the protection systems probably didn't work as well as they should.

Quote from chanoman315 :

They need to, really that crash was nasty, but in series like Nascar, a hit like that wouldnt happen anything.
They seriously need to improve safety in those cars

Why would a NASCAR not have potentially produced fatal
injuries in a crash like that, saying it wouldn't is just in denial of the fundamental dangers of motor racing.

The answer is not just improved safty, it's as much about the driver's aggression and the risks he takes.

Peter Brock was clinical in his racing and rarely had crashes but even he died because he took a risk he shouldn't have It wasn't the tracks fault or the cars. If a track is dangerous the driver makes a judgment call. When tracks or cars are seriously dangerous you would hear alot of drivers viocing their opinions. In this case at Adelaide you don't hear drivers saying that corner is too dangerous.

- Glen67 -
I agree with every word you say. If that corner, or any corner was that dangerous, then the drivers would complain in an instant. There has been many crashes in that corner, only one fatal. All the other crashes in that corner, the driver walked away clean. There even was a crash later on the Sunday in that very corner in the V8's.

Better to do something about the somewhat vague rules regarding overtaking, nudging and bumping each other on track.

Quote from Glenn67 :

The answer is not just improved safty, it's as much about the driver's aggression and the risks he takes.

Peter Brock was clinical in his racing and rarely had crashes but even he died because he took a risk he shouldn't have It wasn't the tracks fault or the cars. If a track is dangerous the driver makes a judgment call. When tracks or cars are seriously dangerous you would hear alot of drivers viocing their opinions. In this case at Adelaide you don't hear drivers saying that corner is too dangerous.

Are you kidding targa tazmania is one of the most dangerous rallyies on the planet, usually every year a driver dies from hitting a tree.

Quote from Mustafur :

Are you kidding targa tazmania is one of the most dangerous rallyies on the planet, usually every year a driver dies from hitting a tree.

And your point is?

My point still stands, if the drivers aren't protesting about safty who are we too. All I was suggesting is that the drivers have some part to do with their own safty as much as track design and car design.

Quote from FlyeThemoon :

RIP Cooper, all Motorsports are dangerous.

PS We miss this guys today.
Artyon Senna
ColinMcrea
Paul Dana
Dale Earnhardt
Janusz Kulig
and Richard Burns

PS2 if you know others Motorsports stars who dies send me list.

You forgot Peter Brock for shame.

I just reckon they should just open up that corner its a dangerous...ish corner but nothing serious.
Like Skaife last year he almost the exact same impact and wrecked his neck and or leg because of it but he walked away it was just a really unlucky event.

Quote from Mustafur :

Are you kidding targa tazmania is one of the most dangerous rallyies on the planet, usually every year a driver dies from hitting a tree.

Rally cars race through forests all the time and still very rarely have serious accidents, if every rally driver pushed like those in a nice cosy racing environment they'd all be dead. Whilst there may have been danger on the Targa Tazmania the fact still remains that it was a single car unforced accident due to pushing too hard.

Turn 8 on Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?f= ... k&z=16&iwloc=addr

It's not a place with much run-off area. The most they could do while keeping the corner intact is to place NASCAR-style SAFER barriers along the exit portion of the wall.

They could also put the barriers right near the track so that a car hit the barrier at smaller angle.

Just found this video with so many crashes in that series. Are crashes really so frequent there?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw2c2NWxs1w

There does always seem to be a lot of incidents in the V8s one of the reasons its the best series in the world

At 3:06 in that video you see a crash which much the same as Ashley Coopers.

Quote from detail :

Just found this video with so many crashes in that series. Are crashes really so frequent there?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw2c2NWxs1w

Like many top-level touring car championships, there are plenty of crashes. The cars are very powerful with a primitive drivetrain and chassis, and don't handle as well as more sophisticated touring cars. This combined with a very large field consisting of drivers with widely varying qualities, leads to a lot of incidents.

Although the feeder series tends to buffer the driver quality a little bit, there is still a lot of bad driving the V8SC. A large chunk of the field got into the series after graduating from Formula Ford or Formula Vee, with little experience in more powerful cars.

Having said that, it is the top level touring car championship in Australia. Just about every racer in this country wants to have a go at it at some stage. There is a lot of competition, and touring cars are traditionally a very aggressive series in terms of on-track driver behaviour.

Quote from sil3ntwar :

There does always seem to be a lot of incidents in the V8s one of the reasons its the best series in the world

Quote from samjh :

Like many top-level touring car championships, there are plenty of crashes. The cars are very powerful with a primitive drivetrain and chassis, and don't handle as well as more sophisticated touring cars. This combined with a very large field consisting of drivers with widely varying qualities, leads to a lot of incidents.

It's got nothing to do with the cars, they're perfectly predictable, relatively easy to drive fast modern production racing cars with very few accidents caused by mechanical failures. Almost all of the big crashes are caused by car to car contact that could be avoided by not taking silly risks and massive single car accidents caused by drivers pushing far too hard in dry conditions, which is very different than just being caught out pushing slightly too far in a tricky car in bad conditions. Unfortunatley like the current European touring car championships an illusion of safety has come down upon this series and the racing has got messier and it only becomes a matter of when, not if, the next big accident will happen.

There are three ways to deal with this, the first is to positively encourage the bumper cars nonsense and make the cars much slower and more boring to please the general public (BTCC + WTCC). The second is to allow high speed risk taking to become acceptable by designing the cars and tracks primarily for safety (DTM), the result is boring but fast cars that bare no resemblance to the road cars they're based on at boring but safe tracks still with too much contact for proper clean racing. The third option is to try and make some safety improvements where possible but not loose sight of the fact that high speed crashes at a street circuit in production cars must not happen. In order for good racing to happen drivers have to respect each other and not take such silly risks then we'll see better racing and less time and money wasted with accidents.

Yeah, it's not the cars as much as the vague rules about what is allowed. Aussie V8's have about the same rules regarding overtaking, blocking, nudging, scratching and bumping and general behavior as the S2000 Touring cars. Problem is that in a V8 the consequences of any contact is much more severe.

Quote from ajp71 :

It's got nothing to do with the cars, they're perfectly predictable, relatively easy to drive fast modern production racing cars with very few accidents caused by mechanical failures. Almost all of the big crashes are caused by car to car contact that could be avoided by not taking silly risks and massive single car accidents caused by drivers pushing far too hard in dry conditions, [snip]

The third option is to try and make some safety improvements where possible but not loose sight of the fact that high speed crashes at a street circuit in production cars must not happen. In order for good racing to happen drivers have to respect each other and not take such silly risks then we'll see better racing and less time and money wasted with accidents.

That is exactly my opinion and prefered outcome.

Generally what I have seen since the 80's through to now is that improved safty doesn't really reduce serrious accidents in racing as much as we might expect.

I believe this is because each time there are great steps taken in safty, the next generation of drivers that come through just push the cars harder than the previous (because its "safe") until such point enough serrious accidents spark the next push for major changes in the name of safty, which then sparks a whole new cycle.


I'm not a big fan of how quickely they will go to full course yellows and call out the safty car either, they should only do that only in the most serious cases imo. I can't count how many times I've seen major acciedents within 2 laps of a restart all in the name of spectaor amusment I guess

this would never happend if they make the super cars safer!!! like move the seat to the middle or make it like a nascar stock car (the new one COT)



RIP

Quote from mutt107 :

this would never happend if they make the super cars safer!!! like move the seat to the middle or make it like a nascar stock cer (the new one COT)



RIP

Position of the driver's seat had nothing to do with this fatality. Australian cars have the driver's seat on the right. The impact in this crash was from the left.

Quote from mutt107 :

this would never happend if they make the super cars safer!!! like move the seat to the middle or make it like a nascar stock car (the new one COT)



RIP

I think ur missing the point.

It was unfortunent that it happened had it happened a second time chances are the other driver would have walked away it was just unlucky.

Quote from Lateralus :

Exactly. There shouldn't be any bare concrete or steel barriers facing the circuit at an angle like that in any high-level racing series in the world.

agree with those car approaching the wall at 200kph+ bare concrete wall is simply not acceptable

btw, RIP Ashley.

Quote from ajp71 :

Rally cars race through forests all the time and still very rarely have serious accidents, if every rally driver pushed like those in a nice cosy racing environment they'd all be dead. Whilst there may have been danger on the Targa Tazmania the fact still remains that it was a single car unforced accident due to pushing too hard.

This is tarmac rally but anyway thats not the point, if a concrete wall is too dangerous then no wall into a tree must be worse?

Quote from Mustafur :

This is tarmac rally but anyway thats not the point, if a concrete wall is too dangerous then no wall into a tree must be worse?

The point is though how dangerous is too dangerous. There have been a lot of big hits there before, which is only testament to how it is relatively safe if cars aren't frequently going off there (which they shouldn't). They still have very safe cars, well protected drivers and excellent emergency services which cope with an enormous amount. Years ago they raced at longer, faster tracks without walls, seat belts and nominal emergency services. Obviously Spa in the 1960s would be totally unacceptable by todays standards but put those driving standards into modern cars and these fatal accidents would be dramatically cut down. Motorsport is not safe and any illusion it is is far worse than a dangerous corner.

After watching a segment on Channel 9 or 7 earlier this week.
Apparantly for the next time around they will be adopting the nascar type walls so nothing like this can happen again.

Quote from FlyeThemoon :

PS2 if you know others Motorsports stars who dies send me list.

Here is some of them, but not everybody..

http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/index.php?db=ct