The Motorsport Thread (was the F1 thread)

sleeper wrote: Three races, three winners, I think were in for a hell of a season. I said Massa was rubbish last week but he drove very well today, and Coulthard had a stunning race , 21st -> 7th in 30 laps before the engine failed. JJ, thats DC in the your avy, not JPM.

Edited by JJLehto - April 15 2007 at 20:09

^^

Edited by Man With Hat - April 15 2007 at 23:34

I've seen this photo before, that car is an old Ferrari, if I remember correctly it's Irvine's car from the year Schumacher broke his legs, and this incident shows why he got injured ,the front of the monocoque is weak and in an accident there is a high possibility of the front end breaking off.

Edited by N Ellingworth - April 16 2007 at 03:29

No that is not any F1 driver that car belongs to some one with more money than sense. I beleive after that incident Ferrari took all cars of that model back for serious testing.

JJLehto wrote: Found this picture. Is this a REAL picture? And if so, who is this guy?

sleeper wrote: ^That looks like one of the 98/9 Ferraris, and miraculus isnt the word. It seems almost inconceivable to me that someone could have a crash of such magnitude that it rips the monoqoce in half and leave the driver apparantly uninjured. Could this be a poorly built replica? JJ, theres a 5 week gap to Spain because at the time the calander was put together, Suzuka was trying for a Pacific GP to be held in that gap (Fuji has the Japanese GP now) but it didnt come off.

All single seaters above Formula Ford level have carbon fibre monocoques to the best of my knowledge. In recent years I can only think of two example of a monocoque being split in half, Alex Zanardis crash at Eurospeedway Lausitze and Memo Gidleys crash at Road America, both in Champ Cars in 2001and both in the Lola. Zanardis was a 200mph smash with Tagliani's car T-boneing him between front wheels and sidepods, with the monocoque splitting, but not cleanly like the one the pic above, and not a complete brake, the front was still hanging on to the back by a chunk of CF threads. Zanardi lost his legs in thataccident from the knees down. Gidley's was slower but he hit the concrete bridge parapit before the last corner and the splitwas similar, with the front holding on by a few threads on the one side, Gidley was fine BTW.

As far as I know the F1 cars of the late 90's were still stronger than the Champ Cars of a couple of years latter. If that is an F1 car (and I'm sceptical) then it mjust have had a very serious fualt in the monocoques construction that allowed for such a clean brake.   

Alex Zanardi...man what a tragedy. He was an awesome driver. Imagine what else could have been.

JJLehto wrote: Zappa88 wrote: Alex Zanardi...man what a tragedy. He was an awesome driver. Imagine what else could have been.   And of course Memo Gildley was fine, I had the pleasure of meeting him a karting event down in N. Carolina. It was kind of a who's who of motorsports kart race, but sadly I didn't get to stay and watch him race because I failed to make my race, so we packed up and left.   Zappa are you a NASCAR AND F1 fan?? If I wasn't myself, I'd say that's impossible. After all, it was NASCAR that got me into F1...

I race karts, Jr. Champ to be specific.