WTCC "Safety" Car crash at Pau

  • Thread starter daan
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Nasty accident. Was everyone ok?
Is it just me or is it slightly suspicious that a BMW was knocked out by a Chevrolet safety car? :sly:
 
Windfire1010
The yellow should be out before the pace car is.
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It was. Did you not see them in the video? They were all over the place.

GT4 genius
Nasty accident. Was everyone ok?
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Yep, everyone was fine.

I think the Safety car driver may be looking for a new job, or have a big hole in his wallet at the very least. He came straight out and came right across the track. Franz Engstler had just come round a blind corner and had no chance to miss it.
 
Methinks you just lost the Captaincy, daan. :sly:
 
Should the safety car not have followed the white line continuation of the pit lane? (if you see what I mean)
 
Aldo001
Should the safety car not have followed the white line continuation of the pit lane? (if you see what I mean)
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It looks to me like the driver panicked when he realised the cars were already going through turn 1 and so rather stupidly decided to throw his car in the middle of the road.
Out of interest, who tells the safety car when to deploy? Does it wait at the end of the pitlane until the best point to catch the leaders or when its deployed do they just go straight out?
If its the former, then I'd partially blame whoever was in charge of sending them out at the right moment. If its the latter then I blame those in charge a little bit more.

Though the accident still could have been avoided even if the safety car came out a bit late.
 
Who was driving the SC? Taki Inoue? :D

Also, it's on Youtube now:

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Yeah, the safety car driver was most at fault there, seriously, you would think they would know better than to drive into the middle of the track after the exit of a blind bend?!?!!
I can only assume he was getting into position to be most visible to the drivers in order to pick them up, but I'm not familiar with the procedures for safety cars. From what I've seen in other races series, safety cars usually pull out and don't stop, they rarely just stop in the middle of the track to wait for the leaders.
So either the procedures need to be changed or this driver was a complete moron. Probably both.
 
I reckon he might have thought the lead car was not as far round the track as it actually was so the SC driver was just going to pick up the pack as Ardius said, because the cars would have been going slower than that on the yeellow flag surelY?
 
I was watching this race also, I was shocked when it cut to the BMW crashing into the "Safety car", I thought what just happened. :eek: The thing is the commentators didn't seem to know the "Safety" car was about to be deployed and there was nothing on the screen to indicate it, so maybe the teams didn't know it was coming out. :odd: I think whoever was incharge of the "Safety" car just panicked as the leaders were about to start the next lap, so they rushed it out. Though the driver of the "Safety" car is to blame aswell as he definitely cut accross the track to try and stop anyone going past him, which was 🤬 stupid as there was no way Franz Engstler was going to be able to stop in time, he was still traveling at race pace.

I had a feeling carnage was about to happen, I just didn't think the "Safety" car would be the cause of it. :ouch: You see while all the cars involved in the accidents ( that eventually brought out the "Safety" car ) were still running, some were going very slow and the leaders were surely going to catch them up, which would have caused an accident no doubt. The people in charge probably realised this at the last minute and tried to get the safety car out quickly and you can see the results of that. :banghead: The "Safety" car should have been deployed much sooner, there wouldn't have been this mess then. Although I am not to bothered, I support Menu, have done since his BTCC days, thanks go to the "Safety" car for helping him win, :cheers: although he may have anyway, I guess we'll never know. :sly:

Does anyone know who the "Safety" car driver was?:bowdown:
 
daan
Was watching the WTCC races from Pau today on Eurosport. On the first lap of the 2nd race, there were a few incidents, so they deployed the "safety" car.

http://www.davidanderson.org.uk/files/WTCC_Pau.wmv

Deployed seems to be an apt term here...
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Deployed... like a depth charge?

If I were Franz, I would have gotten out of my car, checked to see that the Safety Car driver was all right... and if he wasn't in traction already... put him there... :grumpy: ...
 
I think it was probably a case of neither driver seeing the other until afterwards. But the safety car driver would be at fault; surely they'd have a spotter in the pits to say "Look out, he's right behind you!" sort of thing to prevent accidents? Maybe the safety car driver figured the car he was warned about was further behind him that the case proved to be and thought he could make it before impact.
 
I forgot how unsuited the lovely Pau circuit has become for anything wider than a go-kart.

Enrique Bernoldi no longer has to hang his head in shame.
 
When the safety car is sent out, race control notifies the the teams, and the teams then radio to the drivers. It appears that process broke down.

The safety car driver did exactly what he's supposed to do, because his assumption is that when he's sent, the teams have been notified and the drivers know he's on track.

The fault is either in race control for not notifying the teams, or in a breakdown of communications from race control to teams.

Edit: Just thought to add: Yellow flags does not mean stop racing, it just means no passing in the area covered by the flag, watch for incidents. The corner stations have a sign they display for safety car on track, and I don't see that sign anywhere. It's possible the safety car driver thought he heard something on his radio that wasn't actually there and went when he shouldn't have, but his track entry was correct: he doesn't merge into traffic like the racers do, he expects them to already be more or less at his pace when he comes out.

Edit II: Actually, in the vid in post#1, the first yellow seen does have the safety car sign out, and the yellow after the incident appears to be just putting it out, but you can see a sceond earlier he pulled it in so his arm would remain attached to his body as the cars came toward his station. Safety car sign was out, that makes it the racers' fault.
 
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I like how you can see how fast the driver's reactions are when he sees the safety car! Also, what happened to the black car (Seat of some sort I believe) halfway through the Youtube video?

EDIT: This is why I don't watch Formula 1 ;)
 
Moglet
I like how you can see how fast the driver's reactions are when he sees the safety car! Also, what happened to the black car (Seat of some sort I believe) halfway through the Youtube video?
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Broken rear suspension, most likely from contact
 
Moglet
I like how you can see how fast the driver's reactions are when he sees the safety car! Also, what happened to the black car (Seat of some sort I believe) halfway through the Youtube video?

EDIT: This is why I don't watch Formula 1 ;)
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He was spinning out already and it looks like the back end was juuuust about to smack the armco when it cut to the next shot of carnage.

If this was V8 Supercars, you would've seen about 1/2 the field feel a pinch in their wallets from that first lap, punting eachother into everything solid on the track.

But as for the safety car, I think it's a case of communication breakdown from what we can see in that first lap. And it looks like the flag is covering the SC sign when they come up to the blind first bend. Spectacular impact though. :eek:
 
Ouch and wow.:eek: I bet the whole situation need to rethought.... Wait a minute... The safety car should of been out sooner.....💡
 
Apparently the correct orders had gone out for the yellow flags and SC boards, but the driver of the SC drove out of the pits without orders. He then clearly cuts across the track when he is supposed to use the acceleration lane, behind the white line.

Link
 
wfooshee
Edit II: Actually, in the vid in post#1, the first yellow seen does have the safety car sign out, and the yellow after the incident appears to be just putting it out, but you can see a sceond earlier he pulled it in so his arm would remain attached to his body as the cars came toward his station. Safety car sign was out, that makes it the racers' fault.
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Actually... despite the fact that stewards have already decided that it was the safety car's fault... I'd say in any case that the safety car driver was to blame.

Whether on track or off it... there is such a thing as proper lane change and merging... :dopey:
 
It's a strange scenario indeed, hope everyone was OK. Thing is, the safety car driver doesn't want to accidentally let the lead drivers through or they could get a whole lap up on the field. If he was only just told to deploy, and being a blind corner as it was, while the field should have been going slowly under SC conditions, he veered out to make sure (probably unaware they were going so fast or already so close) the lead drivers saw him and pulled up.

Surely there were post race interviews?:confused:

If what somebody has posted is correct, the SC driver is completely at fault though.
 
Moglet
Anyone else think it's a bit ironic that it happened at 'Pau'? :lol:
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I can just see the Photoshop users going at it now... ^^;;;;

Chances are they'll put in some comic book styled text going "ka-PAU!!!". Agreed?:dopey:
 
It gets better. As noted on MidWeek Motorsports last night, the driver of the safety car was, and you can't make this up, the cheif of Police of Pau.
 

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