Track Limits & Safety Concerns

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Thought it deserves a separate topic. The debate of gravel vs tarmac run offs has been reignited recently due to accidents and track limits abuse. Your stance? 

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Drivers from various series have been reacting to it as well.

 

[RandoEFC+]

That kerb is the bigger issue here than the tarmac run off. I'm no expert but I dont know how having gravel or grass would have made much difference to Hubert's accident last weekend either.

From a safety point of view, both have their positives and negatives. Gravel can be dangerous because it can help cars flip over if they skid into it sideways at speed. Grass can also be dangerous as damp grass after a wet race can accelerate the car on it's way into the barriers. See Kubica in Canada 2007 for an example of leaving the grassy run off making a crash worse.

Experts know better than me which is the best one from a safety perspective. In terms of good racing, I'd much rather see grass or gravel run offs to better hold drivers to account if they run wide. It's truly depressing seeing modern drivers take the piss out of classic race tracks like Silverstone, Monza and Spa by running wide on what used to be wicked corners like Copse, Stavelot and Parabolica without losing any time.

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1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

That kerb is the bigger issue here than the tarmac run off. I'm no expert but I dont know how having gravel or grass would have made much difference to Hubert's accident last weekend either.

From a safety point of view, both have their positives and negatives. Gravel can be dangerous because it can help cars flip over if they skid into it sideways at speed. Grass can also be dangerous as damp grass after a wet race can accelerate the car on it's way into the barriers. See Kubica in Canada 2007 for an example of leaving the grassy run off making a crash worse.

Experts know better than me which is the best one from a safety perspective. In terms of good racing, I'd much rather see grass or gravel run offs to better hold drivers to account if they run wide. It's truly depressing seeing modern drivers take the piss out of classic race tracks like Silverstone, Monza and Spa by running wide on what used to be wicked corners like Copse, Stavelot and Parabolica without losing any time.

Yeah I agree that there is no solution that fits all; different mix of gravel and tarmac run offs should probably be used based on each track's/corner's profile. I do think that they went overboard with the tarmac runoffs in general though and that resulted in drivers failing to respect track limits which is a safety issue in itself.

Hubert's accident was a freak one to be fair; you can't put gravel there anyway because it's the exit of the other pit lane used in endurance racing. Maybe moving the barriers a bit would be a good idea though in order for the cars not to be bounced back to the track when they hit those tyres; it has been happening for years in other racing series running at Spa as well. On the other hand, having gravel elsewhere in the run off area would probably lead to drivers actually thinking twice and slowing down when coming into blind corners like that.

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https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/how-f1-track-limits-became-the-talk-of-the-bahrain-gp/

What a complete mess.