Grand Prix Rejects

So, Jean Todt has come out and basically said that drivers ending up in hospital due to being underweight is their own problem:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/113342

Wow. In my opinion, this is almost on par with the FIA saying in the 70s "If you think the cars are too dangerous, slow down a little,"

Does anyone know of anything in the regulations about drivers having to carry a drink bottle? It sounds like JEV didn't have one in Australia and of course Sutil was saying he was doing without it in Bahrain.

Let's hope the drivers and teams stand up to the FIA before someone passes out at 300km/h.

AustralianStig wrote:Does anyone know of anything in the regulations about drivers having to carry a drink bottle? It sounds like JEV didn't have one in Australia and of course Sutil was saying he was doing without it in Bahrain.

I think Coulthard quoted a conversation he'd had with Alonso where Fernando stated the drinks bottles werent really essential at the moment. The cars are mentally challenging to drive but less physically so. Whether thats right or wrong...

Eurosport are reporting that Vergne was weakened after Australia and thus was hospitalised. Still no problem Jean? So, let me get this straight, Formula 1 must seem green but the drivers don't need to send an healthy image? Right...

DanielPT wrote:Eurosport are reporting that Vergne was weakened after Australia and thus was hospitalised. Still no problem Jean? So, let me get this straight, Formula 1 must seem green but the drivers don't need to send an healthy image? Right...

I find it a bit of a problem that it's taken 3 weeks for this news to come through. Clearly the drivers are under a lot of pressure from their teams and in turn clearly the teams are under a lot of pressure from the FIA. The point of a minimum weight is to stop teams using ridiculously light materials which would give a significant advantage as well as potentially being dangerous. It should actually be achievable to get close to it otherwise it actually fails to serve its purpose of levelling the playing field.

It's come to the point now where teams are basically having to make their drivers diet like supermodels in order to 'be competitive.'

These new regulations on weight are punishing drivers at the moment. Sure, the min. weight is getting a raise in 2015, but that's another 16 races. There is no way this is safe. What happens if during a race, a guy like Adrian Sutil loses consciousness due to being dehydrated or low on x thing and T-bones another car? A: It can end up like Esteban Gutierrez, or B: Someone's going to get killed. What if another Gutierrez incident happens and another car hits him? I'm pretty sure no one of the 22 drivers and hundreds and thousands of pit crews and team members want to go identifying bodies at a morgue.

This is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with.

CoopsII wrote:

AustralianStig wrote:Does anyone know of anything in the regulations about drivers having to carry a drink bottle? It sounds like JEV didn't have one in Australia and of course Sutil was saying he was doing without it in Bahrain.

I think Coulthard quoted a conversation he'd had with Alonso where Fernando stated the drinks bottles werent really essential at the moment. The cars are mentally challenging to drive but less physically so. Whether thats right or wrong...

McNish also made a similar comment in the practise sessions too - he chatted to Alonso about the drinks bottle issue and Alonso informed him that, since the late start meant that the race would probably be much cooler than normal, that he was also planning on not using a drinks bottle either.

watka wrote:

DanielPT wrote:Eurosport are reporting that Vergne was weakened after Australia and thus was hospitalised. Still no problem Jean? So, let me get this straight, Formula 1 must seem green but the drivers don't need to send an healthy image? Right...

I find it a bit of a problem that it's taken 3 weeks for this news to come through. Clearly the drivers are under a lot of pressure from their teams and in turn clearly the teams are under a lot of pressure from the FIA. The point of a minimum weight is to stop teams using ridiculously light materials which would give a significant advantage as well as potentially being dangerous. It should actually be achievable to get close to it otherwise it actually fails to serve its purpose of levelling the playing field.

And it would seem that a number of teams have indeed managed to get below the minimum weight limit fairly comfortably - Force India, for example, were rumoured to be at least 10kg under the weight limit, and it is worth bearing in mind that Hulkenberg is at more of a disadvantage in terms of weight than Sutil is (they weight about the same but, as Hulkenberg is a taller driver, that creates even more packaging and weight distribution issues for the team).

It seems to be the Ferrari powered teams that are struggling the most with weight issues (although Vergne's reported issues indicate that perhaps some of the Renault powered teams may be in trouble too). There are rumours that the Ferrari powertrain is heavier than its rivals and the indication is that it would require a very substantial increase in the minimum weight limit to solve that issue (Kravitz was bandying about figures suggesting Ferrari were 18kg overweight).

Finally we get a sensible man to put everything right.
While Jean Todt provides cold, insensitive and clueless remarks on the driver weight issue,
here comes Our Max groomed, eloquent and as always well-spoken, to explain what the
devil is going on here;


Max Chilton to Sky Sports TV, during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend;

I'm six foot but I'm only 65 kilos, and I manage to keep my weight down.
I don't know any sport, any top end sport in this day and age where the athletes don't
have to do every last bit they can to kind of shed the weight.
People have go on being unhealthy because they are being so light, I don't really believe
in to all of that, because you know, I have blood tests and I can see that I'm healthy.
You can still be healthy and lean at the same time, you just got to do it the right way.

Top man, Our Max.
He's really got a good head on his shoulders. More and more he's starting to look like the 2014
recipient of the most-improved-driver award, driver-of-the-year award (he's single-handedly
keeping Marussia going in the WCC), and most-intelligent-driver-off-the-track award.

Sutil and Vergne should perhaps knock on Max's motorhome door and ask if they can train
and eat alongside him, for Max seem to have found the perfect formula.

If drinking bottles are too heavy, how about they develop technology inside the helmet that filters water out of the air?

mario wrote:It seems to be the Ferrari powered teams that are struggling the most with weight issues (although Vergne's reported issues indicate that perhaps some of the Renault powered teams may be in trouble too). There are rumours that the Ferrari powertrain is heavier than its rivals and the indication is that it would require a very substantial increase in the minimum weight limit to solve that issue (Kravitz was bandying about figures suggesting Ferrari were 18kg overweight).

Incidentally I got my hands on the latest Ferrari V6 engine technical drawing:





My apologies mario...

I think the FIA should, for now, just add a rule making a minimum supply of water for the Driver neccessary. If that means that teams will have to sack a driver that's still too heavy: tough luck.
I'll have sympy when F1 becomes accessible for guys at 6'8''.

Just add a hundred kilos to the weight minimum and be done with it. It'll probably make the racing better.

DanielPT wrote:
Incidentally I got my hands on the latest Ferrari V6 engine technical drawing:

LOL! Perhaps Ferrari can drop their "engine" on the Mercedes drivers' heads (ala Wile E. Coyote) to move themselves up the order a bit.

Klon wrote:I think the FIA should, for now, just add a rule making a minimum supply of water for the Driver neccessary. If that means that teams will have to sack a driver that's still too heavy: tough luck.
I'll have sympy when F1 becomes accessible for guys at 6'8''.

Why? No one is forcing drivers to get into the car without water. No one is holding a gun to their heads. Driving a race car, any race car, is a privilege, not a right. There's 10-20 kids ready to take your place, if you can't handle it.

Besides, do you really think the drivers are that uncomfortable with it? Any car, at any level of racing, is set up for driver comfort, to the umpeth level. My car, I went through about a dozen shifter knobs until I found one I liked. Hell, last year, Mercedes made Hammy and Nico their own steering wheels, which were so different, F1.com did a video about it. No one is forcing these drivers to go without, trust me.

Wallio wrote:

Klon wrote:I think the FIA should, for now, just add a rule making a minimum supply of water for the Driver neccessary. If that means that teams will have to sack a driver that's still too heavy: tough luck.
I'll have sympy when F1 becomes accessible for guys at 6'8''.

Why? No one is forcing drivers to get into the car without water. No one is holding a gun to their heads. Driving a race car, any race car, is a privilege, not a right. There's 10-20 kids ready to take your place, if you can't handle it.

Besides, do you really think the drivers are that uncomfortable with it? Any car, at any level of racing, is set up for driver comfort, to the umpeth level. My car, I went through about a dozen shifter knobs until I found one I liked. Hell, last year, Mercedes made Hammy and Nico their own steering wheels, which were so different, F1.com did a video about it. No one is forcing these drivers to go without, trust me.

Uh, did you miss the part where Vergne wound up in hospital because of exhaustion? And you think things are fine as they are? Man, am I glad you don't decide any rules for any racing series ever.

Salamander wrote:

Wallio wrote:

Klon wrote:I think the FIA should, for now, just add a rule making a minimum supply of water for the Driver neccessary. If that means that teams will have to sack a driver that's still too heavy: tough luck.
I'll have sympy when F1 becomes accessible for guys at 6'8''.

Why? No one is forcing drivers to get into the car without water. No one is holding a gun to their heads. Driving a race car, any race car, is a privilege, not a right. There's 10-20 kids ready to take your place, if you can't handle it.

Besides, do you really think the drivers are that uncomfortable with it? Any car, at any level of racing, is set up for driver comfort, to the umpeth level. My car, I went through about a dozen shifter knobs until I found one I liked. Hell, last year, Mercedes made Hammy and Nico their own steering wheels, which were so different, F1.com did a video about it. No one is forcing these drivers to go without, trust me.

Uh, did you miss the part where Vergne wound up in hospital because of exhaustion? And you think things are fine as they are? Man, am I glad you don't decide any rules for any racing series ever.

Perhaps it is more the fact that the teams have always tended to push their drivers pretty aggressively to lose weight even when the minimum weight wasn't an issue - I can recall Button complaining about the minimum weight being an issue ahead of the 2013 season, and that was a year in which all of the teams were comfortably hitting the minimum weight limit (quite a few cars had tens of kilos of ballast to spare). You can bet that, if the minim weight was raised, that some teams would still be pushing their drivers to lose weight in order to maximise their ballast allocation...

Salamander wrote:

Wallio wrote:

Klon wrote:I think the FIA should, for now, just add a rule making a minimum supply of water for the Driver neccessary. If that means that teams will have to sack a driver that's still too heavy: tough luck.
I'll have sympy when F1 becomes accessible for guys at 6'8''.

Why? No one is forcing drivers to get into the car without water. No one is holding a gun to their heads. Driving a race car, any race car, is a privilege, not a right. There's 10-20 kids ready to take your place, if you can't handle it.

Besides, do you really think the drivers are that uncomfortable with it? Any car, at any level of racing, is set up for driver comfort, to the umpeth level. My car, I went through about a dozen shifter knobs until I found one I liked. Hell, last year, Mercedes made Hammy and Nico their own steering wheels, which were so different, F1.com did a video about it. No one is forcing these drivers to go without, trust me.

Uh, did you miss the part where Vergne wound up in hospital because of exhaustion? And you think things are fine as they are? Man, am I glad you don't decide any rules for any racing series ever.

I never said things were fine, I said Vergne chose to race. It was 100% his decision, he could have said no. He has no one to blame but himself. Like I said, teams go to great lengths to make drivers comfortable. If he was uncomfortable, they would have fixed it.

Drivers have been hospitalized from exhaustion before, at Las Vegas, Dallas, South Africa and Sau Paolo just off the top of my head. No rules were changed because no rules needed to change, just like now. F1 is far too overregulated as it is.

Wallio wrote:I never said things were fine, I said Vergne chose to race. It was 100% his decision, he could have said no. He has no one to blame but himself. Like I said, teams go to great lengths to make drivers comfortable. If he was uncomfortable, they would have fixed it.

Drivers have been hospitalized from exhaustion before, at Las Vegas, Dallas, South Africa and Sau Paolo just off the top of my head. No rules were changed because no rules needed to change, just like now. F1 is far too overregulated as it is.

So what you are saying is that a racing driver, an immensely competitive person by nature, that gave it all since childhood just to have racing career and follow his dream of driving in F1, which he achieved despite being an incredibly difficult task only available to a few chosen ones, should just say he won't drive when he is felling a bit 'uncomfortable' probably knowing that he risks losing his job to an up and coming young gun who will say yes to everything only to drive in F1?

DanielPT wrote:

Wallio wrote:I never said things were fine, I said Vergne chose to race. It was 100% his decision, he could have said no. He has no one to blame but himself. Like I said, teams go to great lengths to make drivers comfortable. If he was uncomfortable, they would have fixed it.

Drivers have been hospitalized from exhaustion before, at Las Vegas, Dallas, South Africa and Sau Paolo just off the top of my head. No rules were changed because no rules needed to change, just like now. F1 is far too overregulated as it is.

So what you are saying is that a racing driver, an immensely competitive person by nature, that gave it all since childhood just to have racing career and follow his dream of driving in F1, which he achieved despite being an incredibly difficult task only available to a few chosen ones, should just say he won't drive when he is felling a bit 'uncomfortable' probably knowing that he risks losing his job to an up and coming young gun who will say yes to everything only to drive in F1?

Should is not the point. The point is he could.

Wallio wrote:

DanielPT wrote:

Wallio wrote:I never said things were fine, I said Vergne chose to race. It was 100% his decision, he could have said no. He has no one to blame but himself. Like I said, teams go to great lengths to make drivers comfortable. If he was uncomfortable, they would have fixed it.

Drivers have been hospitalized from exhaustion before, at Las Vegas, Dallas, South Africa and Sau Paolo just off the top of my head. No rules were changed because no rules needed to change, just like now. F1 is far too overregulated as it is.

So what you are saying is that a racing driver, an immensely competitive person by nature, that gave it all since childhood just to have racing career and follow his dream of driving in F1, which he achieved despite being an incredibly difficult task only available to a few chosen ones, should just say he won't drive when he is felling a bit 'uncomfortable' probably knowing that he risks losing his job to an up and coming young gun who will say yes to everything only to drive in F1?

Should is not the point. The point is he could.

The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened. Unless you're of the opinion that drivers winding up in hospital is a natural occurrence, in which case I'll just take my coat and leave.

Salamander wrote:
The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened.

You act like tis has never happened before. It has happened in F1 many times as I have listed. It has happened in Indycar many times. It happens in NASCAR quite a bit, even with water bottles. Racing is dangerous. Perhaps croquet is more your speed?

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote:The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened.

You act like tis has never happened before. It has happened in F1 many times as I have listed. It has happened in Indycar many times. It happens in NASCAR quite a bit, even with water bottles. Racing is dangerous. Perhaps croquet is more your speed?

Oh, I'm perfectly aware that it's happened before. I just like to think that in today's world, we hold a higher opinion of drivers' health. If a driver winds up in hospital, I'd like to think that we take the time to consider why this has happened and look into ways to preventing it if at all possible, rather than just throwing our arms up in the air and going, "WELP THATS JUST THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES I GUESS". Because I'm not sure if I have to explain this to you, but hospital is not a place you really want to visit. Because being there means that there's something wrong with your body that needs to be attended to. And regardless of how many millions you're being paid, or how awesome your job is and how many people would love to have it, if in the normal course of doing it you wind up in hospital, then there is a clear problem here, regardless of whether or not you personally have a problem with it.

Salamander wrote:

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote:The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened.

You act like tis has never happened before. It has happened in F1 many times as I have listed. It has happened in Indycar many times. It happens in NASCAR quite a bit, even with water bottles. Racing is dangerous. Perhaps croquet is more your speed?

Oh, I'm perfectly aware that it's happened before. I just like to think that in today's world, we hold a higher opinion of drivers' health. If a driver winds up in hospital, I'd like to think that we take the time to consider why this has happened and look into ways to preventing it if at all possible, rather than just throwing our arms up in the air and going, "WELP THATS JUST THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES I GUESS". Because I'm not sure if I have to explain this to you, but hospital is not a place you really want to visit. Because being there means that there's something wrong with your body that needs to be attended to. And regardless of how many millions you're being paid, or how awesome your job is and how many people would love to have it, if in the normal course of doing it you wind up in hospital, then there is a clear problem here, regardless of whether or not you personally have a problem with it.

There is no need to add even more rules because of it. Especially when the driver can just say "Hey guys, you know, I'd really like a water bottle". And they'd get one. The team will do anything, ANYTHING to make a driver happy. Don't believe me? Look at NASCAR, which is a spec series. But look at the cockpits in the cars. No two are alike. Hell, none are even close. Because every driver has his own thing.

So no, I'm sorry, if you choose, by your owning doing to not run a bottle, when you can easily get one, and you end up in the hospital, no I don't feel sorry for you. I just don't. Now if JEV asked for one and was denied, that's a whole 'nother story. But I can guarantee that wasn't the case.

I thank God that it has been 20 years since a driver has died at the wheel of a Formula 1 car at a race weekend. RIP Maria di Villota and the three marshalls who have died as a result of the sport since then. Safety is important and nobody should have to suffer in the name of entertainment (which is what all sport is).

Wallio wrote:There is no need to add even more rules because of it. Especially when the driver can just say "Hey guys, you know, I'd really like a water bottle". And they'd get one. The team will do anything, ANYTHING to make a driver happy. Don't believe me? Look at NASCAR, which is a spec series. But look at the cockpits in the cars. No two are alike. Hell, none are even close. Because every driver has his own thing.

So no, I'm sorry, if you choose, by your owning doing to not run a bottle, when you can easily get one, and you end up in the hospital, no I don't feel sorry for you. I just don't.

And once again, I don't give a shite which way you cut it. A driver wound up in hospital. Whether or not it was their own fault is irrelevant. This is an unacceptable situation. End of story.

Now if JEV asked for one and was denied, that's a whole 'nother story. But I can guarantee that wasn't the case.

Oh, you can, can you? 100%, categorically, absolutely, positively so? It's completely irrelevant to my actual point, but alright then. I'll bite. How can you guarantee it?

Salamander wrote:
Oh, you can, can you? 100%, categorically, absolutely, positively so? It's completely irrelevant to my actual point, but alright then. I'll bite. How can you guarantee it?

Experience. I crewed on a late model stock car for awhile. We changed the gas pedal for the driver, then changed it back when it felt "worse". We never questioned the driver. On my own car I've through dozens of shift handles, steer wheels, and even brands of harnesses until I was comfortable. No one on my crew ever questioned me, teased me yes, but they still did it.

Courtney Force recently switched to a "push-brake" why? She's more comfortable with it. Look at any series, all the drivers have their seats custom made. As I said before Mercedes made two radically different wheels last year, all for driver comfort. A comfortable driver is a happy driver, and a happy driver is a quick one. Again, no one had a gun to JEV's head. He made his decision. Who are we to question it?

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote:Oh, you can, can you? 100%, categorically, absolutely, positively so? It's completely irrelevant to my actual point, but alright then. I'll bite. How can you guarantee it?

Experience. I crewed on a late model stock car for awhile. We changed the gas pedal for the driver, then changed it back when it felt "worse". We never questioned the driver. On my own car I've through dozens of shift handles, steer wheels, and even brands of harnesses until I was comfortable. No one on my crew ever questioned me, teased me yes, but they still did it.

Courtney Force recently switched to a "push-brake" why? She's more comfortable with it. Look at any series, all the drivers have their seats custom made. As I said before Mercedes made two radically different wheels last year, all for driver comfort. A comfortable driver is a happy driver, and a happy driver is a quick one. Again, no one had a gun to JEV's head. He made his decision. Who are we to question it?

People who don't like having hospital's times and efforts wasted on someone who could've easily not wound up there if there was a simple rule change that made what he did completely pointless? Again, assuming this was Vergne's decision, which I still personally am not sold on - Toro Rosso's driver management is pretty notoriously mercurial, I doubt they give a shite how comfortable Vergne is.

[quote="Salamander"]

Toro Rosso's driver management is pretty notoriously mercurial[quote]


Well that's certainly true, but keep in mind, its the mechanics, not the management who services the cars. Mechanics are usually much more realistic, and often (but not always) are quite friendly with their drivers.

To be honest, why team managers are letting their drivers race without water is pretty stupid. You can win a race with an overweight car. You can't with a driver in a hospital bed hooked up to a cannula.

Before this thread might get locked, I'd like to once again post the quote by Chilton:

Max Chilton to Sky Sports TV, during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend;

I'm six foot but I'm only 65 kilos, and I manage to keep my weight down.
I don't know any sport, any top end sport in this day and age where the athletes don't
have to do every last bit they can to kind of shed the weight.
People have go on being unhealthy because they are being so light, I don't really believe
in to all of that, because you know, I have blood tests and I can see that I'm healthy.
You can still be healthy and lean at the same time, you just got to do it the right way.

Wallio wrote:There is no need to add even more rules because of it. Especially when the driver can just say "Hey guys, you know, I'd really like a water bottle". And they'd get one. The team will do anything, ANYTHING to make a driver happy. Don't believe me? Look at NASCAR, which is a spec series. But look at the cockpits in the cars. No two are alike. Hell, none are even close. Because every driver has his own thing.

So no, I'm sorry, if you choose, by your owning doing to not run a bottle, when you can easily get one, and you end up in the hospital, no I don't feel sorry for you. I just don't. Now if JEV asked for one and was denied, that's a whole 'nother story. But I can guarantee that wasn't the case.

On the other hand, in NASCAR the teams have considerably greater flexibility on packaging that makes it more straightforward to accommodate the drivers.

On the topic of driver comfort, I have a recollection of Coulthard mentioning that Newey has on multiple occasions tried to eliminate the water bottles on his cars - as it is, at the time Coulthard left Red Bull the water bottles had been cut to about 500ml (if I recall correctly) when the regulations permit the teams to run with a 1.5 litre water bottle, even though both Webber and Coulthard would have preferred to have had a larger drinks bottle. I believe that, after he left, the water bottles might have been cut in capacity even further.

Similarly, there have been other drivers who have experienced issues only to be overruled by the teams - for example, we had Hulkenberg having to cut part of his boots off because Sauber refused to modify the pedal box and Hulkenberg's boots were catching on the edges of the cockpit. We also had reports that Ricciardo was struggling to even fit into the RB10 because his hips are quite wide and Newey was refusing to make the driver cell any wider, so there are instances where a designer will definitely insist that performance considerations outweighs driver comfort.

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote: Toro Rosso's driver management is pretty notoriously mercurial

Well that's certainly true, but keep in mind, its the mechanics, not the management who services the cars. Mechanics are usually much more realistic, and often (but not always) are quite friendly with their drivers.

And you're assuming that the management didn't interfere in this particular instance... why, exactly?

Also, I'd appreciate it if you addressed my other point - you know, the one that I'm actually here to argue for? About how, regardless of whether or not this was down to Vergne, the fact that he was in hospital at all is unacceptable, as it was something that was easily preventable. All you'd have to do is raise the minimum weight. No extra rules. Just one tiny tweak of an existing rule, and this would never have happened, there would be no reason to run without a drinks bottle in the car, no reason for drivers to go to hospital because of exhaustion.

mario wrote:

Wallio wrote:There is no need to add even more rules because of it. Especially when the driver can just say "Hey guys, you know, I'd really like a water bottle". And they'd get one. The team will do anything, ANYTHING to make a driver happy. Don't believe me? Look at NASCAR, which is a spec series. But look at the cockpits in the cars. No two are alike. Hell, none are even close. Because every driver has his own thing.

So no, I'm sorry, if you choose, by your owning doing to not run a bottle, when you can easily get one, and you end up in the hospital, no I don't feel sorry for you. I just don't. Now if JEV asked for one and was denied, that's a whole 'nother story. But I can guarantee that wasn't the case.

On the other hand, in NASCAR the teams have considerably greater flexibility on packaging that makes it more straightforward to accommodate the drivers.

On the topic of driver comfort, I have a recollection of Coulthard mentioning that Newey has on multiple occasions tried to eliminate the water bottles on his cars - as it is, at the time Coulthard left Red Bull the water bottles had been cut to about 500ml (if I recall correctly) when the regulations permit the teams to run with a 1.5 litre water bottle, even though both Webber and Coulthard would have preferred to have had a larger drinks bottle. I believe that, after he left, the water bottles might have been cut in capacity even further.

Similarly, there have been other drivers who have experienced issues only to be overruled by the teams - for example, we had Hulkenberg having to cut part of his boots off because Sauber refused to modify the pedal box and Hulkenberg's boots were catching on the edges of the cockpit. We also had reports that Ricciardo was struggling to even fit into the RB10 because his hips are quite wide and Newey was refusing to make the driver cell any wider, so there are instances where a designer will definitely insist that performance considerations outweighs driver comfort.

Newey certainly is the exception. That being said, note he "tried" to eliminate the bottles. But didn't succeed. As for the hips/RB10 issue, there's no real excuse for that, but playing devils advocate, I'd dare say going by his results, Danny isn't that uncomfortable.

Salamander wrote:

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote: Toro Rosso's driver management is pretty notoriously mercurial

Well that's certainly true, but keep in mind, its the mechanics, not the management who services the cars. Mechanics are usually much more realistic, and often (but not always) are quite friendly with their drivers.

And you're assuming that the management didn't interfere in this particular instance... why, exactly?

Also, I'd appreciate it if you addressed my other point - you know, the one that I'm actually here to argue for? About how, regardless of whether or not this was down to Vergne, the fact that he was in hospital at all is unacceptable, as it was something that was easily preventable. All you'd have to do is raise the minimum weight. No extra rules. Just one tiny tweak of an existing rule, and this would never have happened, there would be no reason to run without a drinks bottle in the car, no reason for drivers to go to hospital because of exhaustion.

Because JEV would just come out and say "I wanted one and they said no." And before you say he wouldn't remember in the few cases drivers have been overruled in situations like this, they called out the team, I can think of several in regards to Colin Chapman, in fact. At the very least he'd go quietly to the FIA. Plus as I said, in my experience, it never happens.

As for your other point, I simply disagree, there is no need. Again it was his decision. It was like "Crashgate". (Apples to oranges I understand) Was Renault wrong for ordering Junior to wreck? Of course, no question. But he did it, so he can't blame them. If he had been hurt, through his own actions, I'd feel no sympathy. Sorry, that's just the way I feel on it. Why hurt everyone over the dumb actions of a few?

And as was brought up earlier, why would the teams allow this? It is stupidity. But stupidity by choice.

Forgive the Double Post.

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote:
The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened.

You act like tis has never happened before. It has happened in F1 many times as I have listed. It has happened in Indycar many times. It happens in NASCAR quite a bit, even with water bottles. Racing is dangerous. Perhaps croquet is more your speed?

"Racing is dangerous."

What a powerful, versatile, argument. Depending on the context in which it is employed, it nearly always suggests cowardice on the part of the party raising safety concerns, concomitantly weakening their position substantially. It's been used to great effect by drivers, organizers and the various governing bodies to stave off the insidious encroachment of social responsibility upon their sacrosanct realm of raw, pure, and dangerous motorsport.

Said mindset is also indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of drivers over the years.

Herein lies the crux of the issue; racing drivers aren't cowards. If compromised safety entailed an advantage in relative performance, they'd accept the risk, and their respective teams were, and arguably still are all too willing to accommodate their cavalier attitude towards their own health. Thus they strapped themselves into cars that were effectively mobile deathtraps, with monocoques hammered out of thin sheet metal, fuel tanks that transformed to petrol bombs at the slightest contact, and flimsy wings that snapped off without a moment's notice, hurtling the car and its unfortunate occupant into hopelessly inadequate Armco barriers.

And what gruesome deaths they died. Blunt trauma, massive burns, smoke inhalation, asphyxiation, fat embolism, basilar skull fracture, the list goes on. All whilst the governing body callously absolved itself of any responsibility and stated "If you think the cars are too dangerous, slow down."

Do we really want to return to that "live and let die" era of motorsport? Do we really want to assume the risk that a driver, on a starvation diet and severely dehydrated, suffers a blackout right before the Parabolica and smashes into a wall at over three hundred and thirty kilometers an hour? Do we really want to assume the risk, that a driver, a member of the track personnel, or a spectator could potentially be severely or fatally injured as a result of the present astigmatic and obdurate attitude of the FIA?

Racing is dangerous. Racing will always be dangerous.

That in no way should suggest complacency with regard to reducing and preemptively forestalling risks is in any way acceptable.

kevinbotz wrote:

Wallio wrote:

Salamander wrote:
The point is a person has wound up in hospital over this. I don't give a shite which way you cut it - that should NEVER EVER EVER have happened.

You act like tis has never happened before. It has happened in F1 many times as I have listed. It has happened in Indycar many times. It happens in NASCAR quite a bit, even with water bottles. Racing is dangerous. Perhaps croquet is more your speed?

"Racing is dangerous."

What a powerful, versatile, argument. Depending on the context in which it is employed, it nearly always suggests cowardice on the part of the party raising safety concerns, concomitantly weakening their position substantially. It's been used to great effect by drivers, organizers and the various governing bodies to stave off the insidious encroachment of social responsibility upon their sacrosanct realm of raw, pure, and dangerous motorsport.

Said mindset is also indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of drivers over the years.

Herein lies the crux of the issue; racing drivers aren't cowards. If compromised safety entailed an advantage in relative performance, they'd accept the risk, and their respective teams were, and arguably still are all too willing to accommodate their cavalier attitude towards their own health. Thus they strapped themselves into cars that were effectively mobile deathtraps, with monocoques hammered out of thin sheet metal, fuel tanks that transformed to petrol bombs at the slightest contact, and flimsy wings that snapped off without a moment's notice, hurtling the car and its unfortunate occupant into hopelessly inadequate Armco barriers.

And what gruesome deaths they died. Blunt trauma, massive burns, smoke inhalation, asphyxiation, fat embolism, basilar skull fracture, the list goes on. All whilst the governing body callously absolved itself of any responsibility and stated "If you think the cars are too dangerous, slow down."

Do we really want to return to that "live and let die" era of motorsport? Do we really want to assume the risk that a driver, on a starvation diet and severely dehydrated, suffers a blackout right before the Parabolica and smashes into a wall at over three hundred and thirty kilometers an hour? Do we really want to assume the risk, that a driver, a member of the track personnel, or a spectator could potentially be severely or fatally injured as a result of the present astigmatic and obdurate attitude of the FIA?

Racing is dangerous. Racing will always be dangerous.

That in no way should suggest complacency with regard to reducing and preemptively forestalling risks is in any way acceptable.

Come on Kevin, you know full well the point I was making. As you said, drivers accept the risks. JEV accept the risk of no bottle. Who are we to make a rule against it? Why must everything be legislated into a nanny state? If he is comfortable with the risk, oh well. Just because it annoys a bunch of you, is no reason for a rule change. Obviously the FIA agrees.

As designers more and more have to reduce car weight overall,
and lately seem to focus on the 'water bottles' in the cars, by reducing them
in size and volume or simply removing them altogether, I started to ponder.

This might seem like a silly suggestion to some. But there are on average two
pit stops per car each grand prix, so why not use that to the drivers advantage?



Even though it is a crowded area and time is of the essence, there is easily room for one more person that could put a straw in
the drivers mouth and the driver would be able to take 2-3 sips in the 2-3 seconds timeframe he would have.
If the driver even wants water in the first place.

There is usually a mechanic anyway who wipes the drivers visor clean (a pretty useless chore I've always
felt), he can instead be assigned this new task of providing the drivers with fluids.

With those additional sips of water the driver takes in at each pit stop, he might be good with only a tiny bottle onboard
the rest of the way. Say 200ml or so.

As for your other point, I simply disagree, there is no need. Again it was his decision. It was like "Crashgate". (Apples to oranges I understand) Was Renault wrong for ordering Junior to wreck? Of course, no question. But he did it, so he can't blame them. If he had been hurt, through his own actions, I'd feel no sympathy. Sorry, that's just the way I feel on it. Why hurt everyone over the dumb actions of a few?

Okay, no. Let me write this in big capital letters so you can understand my point exactly.

IF SOMEONE IS IN HOSPITAL FOR A PREVENTABLE REASON, ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PREVENT IT. PEOPLE IN HOSPITAL TAKE UP TIME AND RESOURCES. IF YOU CAN STOP SOMEONE BEING IN HOSPITAL BY TWEAKING ONE RULE, REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT IS, IT SHOULD BE DONE IN THE INTEREST OF EVERYONE.

Regardless of ANYTHING ELSE EVER, if you can stop someone going to hospital YOU SHOULD BLOODY DO IT.

I'm done here.

Wallio wrote:

mario wrote:

Wallio wrote:There is no need to add even more rules because of it. Especially when the driver can just say "Hey guys, you know, I'd really like a water bottle". And they'd get one. The team will do anything, ANYTHING to make a driver happy. Don't believe me? Look at NASCAR, which is a spec series. But look at the cockpits in the cars. No two are alike. Hell, none are even close. Because every driver has his own thing.

So no, I'm sorry, if you choose, by your owning doing to not run a bottle, when you can easily get one, and you end up in the hospital, no I don't feel sorry for you. I just don't. Now if JEV asked for one and was denied, that's a whole 'nother story. But I can guarantee that wasn't the case.

On the other hand, in NASCAR the teams have considerably greater flexibility on packaging that makes it more straightforward to accommodate the drivers.

On the topic of driver comfort, I have a recollection of Coulthard mentioning that Newey has on multiple occasions tried to eliminate the water bottles on his cars - as it is, at the time Coulthard left Red Bull the water bottles had been cut to about 500ml (if I recall correctly) when the regulations permit the teams to run with a 1.5 litre water bottle, even though both Webber and Coulthard would have preferred to have had a larger drinks bottle. I believe that, after he left, the water bottles might have been cut in capacity even further.

Similarly, there have been other drivers who have experienced issues only to be overruled by the teams - for example, we had Hulkenberg having to cut part of his boots off because Sauber refused to modify the pedal box and Hulkenberg's boots were catching on the edges of the cockpit. We also had reports that Ricciardo was struggling to even fit into the RB10 because his hips are quite wide and Newey was refusing to make the driver cell any wider, so there are instances where a designer will definitely insist that performance considerations outweighs driver comfort.

Newey certainly is the exception. That being said, note he "tried" to eliminate the bottles. But didn't succeed. As for the hips/RB10 issue, there's no real excuse for that, but playing devils advocate, I'd dare say going by his results, Danny isn't that uncomfortable.

Newey is perhaps the most extreme case, but he is not the only one to do so (after all, Sauber were also pushing the cockpit space down in a way that had a negative impact on driver comfort).

Renault were also prone to creating some uncomfortable cockpits too - I believe Alonso had problems with the R29 as the cockpit was so narrow that his wrists were striking the edges of the cockpit in certain turns. That, to a certain extent, raised a few questions about possible car control issues as it did restrict his ability to make rapid changes in steering - even so, in that instance it was the team and not the driver who won out (with Alonso forced to make changes in the way he steered the car to reduce the issue).

They do this is NASCAR, a crew guy, who isn't even over the wall, extends a pole with a Gatorade cup into the car. The driver chugs it than throws it out the window as he leaves. Now admittedly, NASCAR pit-stops take about 10x as long, but with everything else teams do in the 2-4 seconds a car is stopped, they could easily do something like you suggest.

Salamander wrote:

As for your other point, I simply disagree, there is no need. Again it was his decision. It was like "Crashgate". (Apples to oranges I understand) Was Renault wrong for ordering Junior to wreck? Of course, no question. But he did it, so he can't blame them. If he had been hurt, through his own actions, I'd feel no sympathy. Sorry, that's just the way I feel on it. Why hurt everyone over the dumb actions of a few?

Okay, no. Let me write this in big capital letters so you can understand my point exactly.

IF SOMEONE IS IN HOSPITAL FOR A PREVENTABLE REASON, ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PREVENT IT. PEOPLE IN HOSPITAL TAKE UP TIME AND RESOURCES. IF YOU CAN STOP SOMEONE BEING IN HOSPITAL BY TWEAKING ONE RULE, REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT IS, IT SHOULD BE DONE IN THE INTEREST OF EVERYONE.

Regardless of ANYTHING ELSE EVER, if you can stop someone going to hospital YOU SHOULD BLOODY DO IT.

I'm done here.

Ok let me understand (because clearly I don't). I am an adult. If I choose to run around with a machete and my shoes untied, people should go out of their way to stop me, because I could in theory, end up in the hospital? Surely not.

JEV is an adult. He made his bed, let him lie in it. Alonso did the same thing in Bahrain and was fine.

Its like the NFL concussion lawsuit. The players were grown men who knew the risks, many of them have said on the record they would do everything over again, but they should be entitled to millions of dollars because of it?