F1 Disaster

look at the wheels go flying!

its the malysian grand prix start of the race first corner was a hair pin and some lost traction and span all the cars got takin with them they had to restart the race but only 7 cars restarted

its too old to be malasia and its obvious its spa

You my good sir are completely and utterly WRONG!
This race was in Spa at Belgium in 1998 just after the La Source hairpin.

What happened was the silver Mclaren of David Coulthard hit the concrete wall at the top of the picture and ends in the middle of the track. The rest of the drivers had nowhere to go.

After the restart 30 mins later Michael Schumacher taps Mika Hakinnens other Silver Mclaren and takes out 4 more cars at the same place.

What a race that was.

Spectators got their money's worth. You can go home now.

david coultard got on gas 2 early and spun into wall starting the mayhem.la source hairpin down to eau rouge[belgium gp]

Havent any of you seen Days of thunder?
The next race they did great...i swear

In F1 they come out of the start packed. this is the most dangerous part of the race. One car clipped anothers tire which sent it into the wall and that car hit others. F1 is kinda boring except for moments like these.

"F1 is kinda boring except for moments like these".. have you never seen NASCAR?!

Yeah it was a crash on spa

but in america it wasn`t a thing with the track safety but a problem with the michelin tyres.
and unfortunaly 80% of the field runs on michelin at that time and due to contract regulation the teams are forbidded to run other brand`s

so michelin made a suggestion to build in a chicane to slow the cars down at a speed so the tyres dont blow but the fia at the time said that if bridgestone had no problems with blown tyres then michelin should had done their homework better and so michelin decided to withdraw them selves from the race and if the teams will race they then it was at there own risk,
meanwhile the teams where affraid off the amercan justice departmend and the legal claims that iff they race knowing there`s a problem with the tyres that who is responsible so they let the driver decide (keep the senna accident in mind and that the lawsuit and investigation is still going on), and the drivers said no way we will risk our live for michelin and so it happend

in other words michelin is the blaim for that period.
that the drivers didn`t race? yeah i agree that it was a lame race but i think it was the right choice from the driver`s

forgive me my english

A lot (/some?) of the drivers were willing to go out and race anyway to make a show of it. I guess it wasn't known 100% certain that the tyres would fail. However the teams could no way let the drivers race with with Michelin saying it was unsafe.

I was at Indianapolis for that 2005 Grand Prix race...it was really bad. I drove 12 hours (each way) and spent a lot on hotels etc. to see the race. But I heard that it was Toyota that ran with the tires at lower pressure to try to get better grip that caused Ralf Shumacher's Friday crash in turn 13. I also heard that Toyota was warned by Michelin not to run on the tires that way and that they did it anyway. So who's really to blame Michelin or Toyota? I can't see blaming the tire manufacturer if the team misused their product.

and i wa not happy at all when he won that wast the gayest race ever. It really shows the class those few fans who threw stuff on the track had though that was extrremly dangerous,any little thing could cuase these things to crash....

To save the sport that is formula 1 even more negative press they should have been forced to race on Bridgestone tyres for 4 reasons

1. It would have completely humiliated michelin who were relatively inexperienced tyre manufacturers in formula one.

2. It would have demonstrated that the "bosses at formula 1 actually had any power when they have none"

3. There were countless millions of people watching the race.

4. It was in the US where there is the Indy500, Nascar and other races where race fans were pissing their sides with laughter at "formula 1"

have occured over the years, such as last year when only six cars started in a dry race in one of the american tracks (cant remember which). It turned out that Michelin had recalled its entire batch for the race without issuing replacement tyres so the only teams capable of racing were the bridgestone supplied teams (ferrari, minardi, and Jordan).
Apparently their production line had not been informed that there was a 13 degree incline because the the american track was an indie racing circuit on the open season. Unfortunately this meant that the tyre walls could not support the lateral G-force exerted on them going round turn 16 (which was the inclined section of track) as a result there was a six car race in which ferrari finish almost two minutes before their competitors. As i recall two of the cars (one jordan and one minardi) also broke down during the race. American racing fans were treated to a four car fiasco which needless to say angered them imensely.
As far as this race is concerned i vaguely remember hearing something about the chicane proposal which i think was rejected because the risk/cost ratio was in favour of not building the chicane.
I remember the actual crash being something like this:
David Culthard is over taken by a another car and tries to brake, when he touches the pedal his rear wheels lock and he swerves, normally in dry conditions he would have spun out and hit the wall at much less speed causing less chaos, however due to the wet conditions he aqua-planes across the track crashing head on into the concrete barrier, his totalled car then swings out into the path of oncoming cars who cannot see it because of the spray coming off the drivers in front. hence the pile up towards the end of the clip.

Michelin have been the cause of many F1 troubles and inter-season talks between the FIA and the Drivers Association argued whether F1 as a motor-sport would benefit from being supplied by a sole manufacturer but obviously these talks were forced to a stop by lawyers representing both michelin and bridgestone who both argued that any attempt to remove either producer from the F1 supply list would result in legal action.
After the american incident talks between ernie ecclestone (the director of F1's governing bodies) and other american race holders immediately got put on hold as a direct result of michelins mistake.

At the Indy USGP 2005, it was the Ferrari team that protested against the use of a chicane to eliminate the high-speed turn leading the the straight away where the Michelins were having problems. Their argument was that everybody had already qualified w/o the chicane and it was therefore unfair to modify the track to accomodate the tire manufacturer. Michelin did ship other tires that were at the ready before the race started. They were stacked in the pit lane in plain view of erveryone. Again, Ferrari protested a tire change on the grounds that qualifying had already been done etc....Remember that was the year when F1 had that stupid rule that didn't allow tire changes after qualifying. Ferrari had a point, but they should have allowed the chicane for the sake of the sport, the fans etc. They have way too much clout with the FIA and they are arrogant as well; something Flavio Briattore rails about all of the time.

your english is fine,

thx`s

a bit risky? entertain you? i do not know one driver who races for show. Every single driver is out there for success and for the thrill of racing. Unfortunetely Americans take their Motor Racing as a show and go just to watch some guys get put in hospital and possibly die like Paul Dana did in the US a few weeks ago. And it was more than a bit risky! if the Michilen tyres blew you have a car in the wall by the 5th lap and 16 drivers on the injured list and would have been like Ralf Schumacher the year before when he hit the wall and damaged his back. and back to the clip. You saw the silver car (David Coulthard) swerve and skid on the water, he hits the wall, bounces off into the path of the others who all skid on the very wet track trying to avoid him and the other cars. Luckily nobody was hurt. just the teams bank accounts!

It's a pity we don't hear Murray Walker shouting "OH MY GOD I CANNNOT BELLIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING WHEN MIKA HAKKINEN AMD MICHAEL SCHUMACHER GOT AWAY SOOO CLEANLY - OH MY WORD"

The car manufacturers!!

Spa, Belgium 1998. Or '97. They restarted and Damon Hill won... I hated that guy. Also in response to the guy further down who wrote about tires being for dry weather... F1 is the most expensive sport in the world... Hence why they arent dumb enough to put dry weather tires on a £2 Million race car when it's raining... It was human error.

just like in regular cars (we all know F1 are more like airplanes rather than cars) there are tires designed for both dry roads and wet road conditions

Regular tires are not good in water at high speeds because the car will hydroplane, why?

because 2 objects cannot be in the same space at the same time... what does this have to do with the subject? Well, when you are driving over wet roads, you are not actually driving over the water, the water has to move away from the concact between the wheel and the road itself, wich takes time (the tire presses the water away from the road)

Regular (dry) road tires are not designed for this, they are designed to have a lot of grip with the ground, but wet road tires´ drawing is a series of channels that give the water a more chanse to get away from under the tire, this tires have a triangular design, begining in the center of the wheel and going towards the sides, water itself has the same reaction speed, but the tire has contact with the floor while water is still coming out.

so..... I guess it would be pretty lame to put F1 cars with dry road tires into a race (even if it starts raining at the middle of the race they will most likely take out a yellow flag and send the cars to the pits to change tires)

finally, I guess it had to do with the reduced visibility caused by the huge amout of mist cause by the cars throwing water away at over a hunrded miles per hour. F1 cars are very vulnerable to even slight contact between cars because the wheels are very exposed, so a simple bump in one of the front wheels will most likely take both cars into a spin, now, in the video we all can see several cars al involved, so it could be a chain reaction due to a simple contact over two cars that had no visibility.

Fast car
Wet road
Sharp turn
Wall at turn
------------
CRASH!
Cars making turn even sharper
Sharp Turn
High Speeds
Wet Roads
------------
More crashes

Great explanation :)

Thank you my litle pygmy goat! *Gives you a banana* have an extrodinary day as I will be going to a concert. If anything happens call 911, if you can't find the 11 button call the operator.

Thank you professor ;-)

HAHAHAHA. Nicely said. My mom has been driving for 20 years and she still reverses up the motorway. :p

you find all da pieces?

And after the race all the drivers went to their 5 star hotels with their model girlfriends and had a good laugh about it all. That is Formula 1 in a nutshell

hardest track in the world.
the ardennes are very rainy too.
you know the rest of the year the track is used for regular traffic?

this is a racetrack, specially for races. of course there are other car races on this track but regular trafic doesn't come by this!
check your google earth at these coordinates!
50°25'57.32"N
5°58'20.89"E

sorry to disappoint ya but a substantial part of the track is indeed used for regular traffic!! However not the part where this accident occured. This was right in front of the pitlane (regular pitlane though, the F1 pitlane is situated on the other side of these buildings)... In order to give the invited guests (loges right above the teams boxes) the best view :D.

Simple reason, the rain. Spray --> visibility 0

your wife lol

funny

Damon wins in the Jordan and ralf in the 2nd Jordan 2nd. Lots of cars failed to make the restart after obvious reasons

1998

And Murray Walker's Commentary was much more legible and entertaining

The smoke you see is no smoke! it's just SPRAY.
F1 cars have no mudflaps ... the water is sprayed up!
Just wet and slippery. and no visibility for the hind cars.
That's why Spa - Francorchamps is the best circuit :D

remember watchin that was the best f1 race ever