outerlimits Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 felipe massa, ferrari's #1 driver, is in serious but stable condition. he was hit in the helmet by a spring that fell off another car. he was ko'd and went stright into a tire wall. very ugly to watch from the on board camera. prayers go out to him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cheely Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 I wondered what it was that hit him, I saw the video on youtube. Pretty big impact to the helmet. He gets knocked silly and then drives straight into a wall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cheely Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 YouTube Link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nashvillebill Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 ach der lieber! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandro Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 it was some sort of spring/debris, he is in stable condition now. sucks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gameplayer Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 Prayers to Felipe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jman Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 Unreal. Someone was watching out for Felipe today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boz1911 Posted July 25, 2009 Share Posted July 25, 2009 I wondered what it was that hit him, I saw the video on youtube. Pretty big impact to the helmet. He gets knocked silly and then drives straight into a wall. It was a spring from the rear of one of the Brahn cars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J-Ho Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 Hit by a spring. I hope he bounces back soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSmileyX Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 Hit by a spring. I hope he bounces back soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrawandDuck Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 (edited) I was watching the qualifying when it happened.....skull fracture....and from the photo he is LUCKY to still be here!! Hope he has a speedy recovery...Kinda spooky that this occured just a week after another driver (18 yr old) was killed when he was hit in the head by a wheel.......I am sure this will bring on some safety changes... Edited July 26, 2009 by DrawandDuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Gundry Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 Oh man - that is terrible. In the on board shot, they had the throttle/brake graphic up - full throttle and brake after impact all the way to the wall. Get well soon Massa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
el pres Posted July 26, 2009 Share Posted July 26, 2009 New link, old one is blocked ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYYKjZrZHos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3GunF1Guy Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 If you go on to the speedtv f1 forums they have a picture of him with his helmet on and where the spring hit his helmet and face mask. It looks scary. An inch lower and it might have killed him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
almostold Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 .......I am sure this will bring on some safety changes... F1 powerboat added canopies several years ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smokshwn Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 The idea of completely encapsulated drivers cells has been bantered for a while in a few different sanctioning bodies. It does pose some interesting technical and engineering challenges to get the "feel" of the cars control points to the driver through the encapsulation interface. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jman Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 Encapsulating the driver is a really bad idea. You loose the sense of proximity of another cars. Not to mention smoke/fire. I could go on but you get my drift. I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. What a terrible, freak thing to happen. According to the news reports he's asking WTF happened. Glad he doesn't remember. Hope he gets back soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Gundry Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-ManBart Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 Encapsulating the driver is a really bad idea. You loose the sense of proximity of another cars. Not to mention smoke/fire. I could go on but you get my drift. I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. What a terrible, freak thing to happen. According to the news reports he's asking WTF happened. Glad he doesn't remember. Hope he gets back soon. The problem with tethers is that you can't tether everything that's big/heavy enough to cause a problem if it hits the driver's helmet. The current cockpits are about as high as possible, and cover about as much as possible, but we've still seen one driver killed and another nearly killed in the last couple of weeks after they were hit in the head with debris from another car. I can't imagine that it would take something very heavy to knock the heck out of a driver and cause him to lose control, even if the debris impact doesn't cause an injury. I keep thinking there has to be some sort of middle ground, from a technical standpoint, that would deflect debris away from the driver's helmet, but not cause them to lose their perspective and sense of the other cars. The whole situation is terribly sad, but it will be worse if they don't learn from it and come up with some sort of improvement. It took Senna's death to cause real changes, for the better, and I hope this is a wakeup call that it's time to get back after it. R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-ManBart Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? Yes, but they weren't implemented until 1999 (Senna was killed in 1994) after several other incidents with loose wheels causing injuries to track workers and spectators. R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
outerlimits Posted July 28, 2009 Author Share Posted July 28, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? senna did not die from a wheel. if you saw the videos and the amount of blood loss, you would be sick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-ManBart Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? senna did not die from a wheel. if you saw the videos and the amount of blood loss, you would be sick. So what are you suggesting killed him? I've never seen anything that stated, definitively, which injury was fatal. The investigation claimed he had three primary head injuries. One of which was a severing of a major artery in the brain caused by one of the suspension parts attached to the wheel....and that caused all the blood that was visible, which makes sesnse. Another was caused by the tire that crushed a decent sized portion of his helmet and I think they said the third was caused by a second suspension part. Everyone seems to agree that any of the three would have been likely fatal and there were no significant injuries to the rest of his body...no puncture wounds etc. Pretty good pic of his helmet here...you can see the dented part and a hole that could have been from the suspension part that penetrated his skull: http://www.benchapman.com/project/senna1.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3GunF1Guy Posted July 29, 2009 Share Posted July 29, 2009 Here is the pict. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
outerlimits Posted July 29, 2009 Author Share Posted July 29, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? senna did not die from a wheel. if you saw the videos and the amount of blood loss, you would be sick. So what are you suggesting killed him? I've never seen anything that stated, definitively, which injury was fatal. The investigation claimed he had three primary head injuries. One of which was a severing of a major artery in the brain caused by one of the suspension parts attached to the wheel....and that caused all the blood that was visible, which makes sesnse. Another was caused by the tire that crushed a decent sized portion of his helmet and I think they said the third was caused by a second suspension part. Everyone seems to agree that any of the three would have been likely fatal and there were no significant injuries to the rest of his body...no puncture wounds etc. Pretty good pic of his helmet here...you can see the dented part and a hole that could have been from the suspension part that penetrated his skull: http://www.benchapman.com/project/senna1.html gman-it was a suspension part that caused the fatality. fia did a complete investigation...i read it a long time ago-not a good read. there was definitely a major loss of blood from the severed artery to the brain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G-ManBart Posted July 29, 2009 Share Posted July 29, 2009 I'd prefer they look at ways of tethering some of the steel suspension elements including wheels. Didn't they implement wheel tethers after Ayrton Senna's accident? senna did not die from a wheel. if you saw the videos and the amount of blood loss, you would be sick. So what are you suggesting killed him? I've never seen anything that stated, definitively, which injury was fatal. The investigation claimed he had three primary head injuries. One of which was a severing of a major artery in the brain caused by one of the suspension parts attached to the wheel....and that caused all the blood that was visible, which makes sesnse. Another was caused by the tire that crushed a decent sized portion of his helmet and I think they said the third was caused by a second suspension part. Everyone seems to agree that any of the three would have been likely fatal and there were no significant injuries to the rest of his body...no puncture wounds etc. Pretty good pic of his helmet here...you can see the dented part and a hole that could have been from the suspension part that penetrated his skull: http://www.benchapman.com/project/senna1.html gman-it was a suspension part that caused the fatality. fia did a complete investigation...i read it a long time ago-not a good read. there was definitely a major loss of blood from the severed artery to the brain. Gotcha. I re-read their findings and they said any of the three injuries would have been fatal, but the pentration injury had to have been the worst. I'm pretty sure they said both suspension parts that caused injuries were still attached to the wheel/tire. There was a lot of coverup, it seems, as the last second and a half of video seems to have disappeared and there was a lot of speculation that the steering wheel shaft broke at a weld from a recent shortening effort and that led to the impact. I don't think we'll ever know, but even if they'd had a wheel/suspension tether it wouldn't have likely made any difference as all of that was ripped off the chassis. The more I think about it, the more I realize how tragic that whole event was. Seeing that closeup of Felipe with one eye wide open in shock/horror with the other closed instantly got me thinking really bad things. Sounds like he's going to survive, but God only knows what the outcome will be for his left eye. I'm not too confident he'll ever wheel an F1 car again, which is awful. R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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