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Articles by Darren Galpin
| Show first, safety last - Sun 20th Jun 2004 |
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Yet another 1-2 for Ferrari, with Michael Schumacher leading Rubens Barrichello, and Sato with his first podium position. But this was incidental to the entire race. What was the major factor was Ralf Schumacher’s huge accident, and the complete farce that were the safety procedures used during the race.
The first safety car appeared after an accident involving three cars in the first corner. There was carbon fibre across the track, but the race continued. This probably led to the next scare. Fernando Alonso was approaching the braking zone at some 200 mph down the main straight when his right-rear tyre let go. His car speared left into the concrete wall, and his car slid along it, shedding bits as it went.
This left debris in the braking zone, but this time the race continued. However, several laps later, the safety car was needed again.
Coming into Turn 13, the 9 degree banked corner which leads onto the main straight, Ralf Schumacher somehow lost it. The car span around, and at the best part of 150 mph hit the concrete wall going backwards. There was an explosion of debris, and Schumacher’s car span into the middle of the track, shedding more bodywork as it went. Cars speared in all directions in avoidance.
Ralf didn’t move, and the safety car was scrambled. But where were the marshals or the medical staff? The complete lack of attendance to Ralf Schumacher’s accident was reprehensible. He was left for ages with no-one attending him when quite clearly he wasn’t moving. It took almost half a minute before the medical teams arrived and tried to extract him from the car (he was suffering from concussion). The safety car meanwhile had picked up the leaders, and was leading the cars back around. Given the amount of debris, which was almost carpeting the track, what was it going to do? Leading the cars through the pit-lane looked like being the safe option if they wouldn’t use the red flag.
Instead, the safety car led the whole field through the debris on the track. What on earth where they thinking of? There had already been one tyre failure during the race so far, possibly caused by carbon fibre debris puncturing a tyre, so how they expected nothing to possibly happen this time is beyond me. If they had to keep going around the track, then they had to red flag the race, as it was simply too unsafe, and they were risking a repeat accident once the field was let go. However, these days the television rules all, and the need to keep to schedules is king. It seems that the need to keep the show on the road over-rides safety concerns in this most television dependent of sports. Perhaps it will take a driver being maimed or killed before they change their attitude. They need to, because their current utterings of wanting to be safe at all times simply smack of hypocrisy and make me laugh.
Once Ralf had been extracted from his wreck of a car and placed into the ambulance, the farce continued. They needed to get him to the medical centre, and as the accident had occurred past the pit-exit, they proceeded to drive around the entire circuit to get back to the pit-exit and in to the infield. Why? Given the potential urgency of the situation, surely it wouldn’t have hurt for the ambulance to drive down the main straight, turn into the pit exit, and get back to the infield that way? It isn’t as though they would have been putting the rest of the field in danger, given that it was following the safety car, and the pit exit and pit-lane was extremely wide.
The other element of farce was the treatment of Juan Pablo Montoya. As they were getting ready to move away on the green flag lap, Montoya’s car broke down. He jumped out of the car, jumped the pit-wall, and then ran over to his garage, getting into the spare car. He had to start from the pit-lane, but he was ready before the race was started properly.
However, with 15 laps to go (remember, this was a 73 lap race), Montoya was given a black flag and disqualified from the race. The car hadn’t been properly nominated and scrutineered, and didn’t have the proper sticker on it. This was an acceptable reason to disqualify him from the race, but why do it so late into the race, especially when he had already completed almost 80% of it? There is always the risk of collision and accident during the race, and what if Montoya had taken someone out from the race when he shouldn’t have been there? There would be an absolute uproar. If the FIA are going to penalise a driver, they should do it quickly, not that late in the race. There is also usually a rule in place which says that once an investigation has been notified, then the penalty has to be issued within 20 minutes. The FIA were pushing it, to say the least.
Postscript
I was too efficient last week in writing my article, and published it before it was announced that both Williams and Toyota cars were disqualified for illegal brake ducts. It makes my article look just a little silly.....
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