LMS Round 2: Monza, April 25-27, 2008

[Tom87]

Hi all, as a long long time lurker on this site I've decided to pitch in with a few of my opinions on the weekends action.

I would have to disagree that Monza and in particular the first turn could be improved by either additional gravel traps or tarmac run off. The Oreca shunt was a freak accident which may never be replicated at that corner, far more often, crashes at that turn involve several cars losing it under braking and collecting each other. In this case tarmac in place of grass on the left and right of the track would provide almost no retardation to a car missing its wheels and therefore increase the chance of a car collecting another further around the corner. As others have already mentioned, gravel would be impractical and probably would have done little to reduce the severity of Ortelli's accident.

In my opinion the fact that the track doubles back on itself before continuing in the same direction as the s/f straight reduces the chance of injury in a single car accident as the effective run off area is very large, had the failure occured at for example Silverstone's stowe corner, the car would most likely have reached the barriers at a much higher speed and closer to perpendicular. Frankly given the initial speed of the car its a miracle that the accident wasn't dramatically worse - Kovalinnen's crash was only an estimated impact speed of 80mph but he suffered head injury due to the dramatic deceleration. Ortelli was lucky in that the deceleration took place over a much larger distance as there were no solid objects for him to collide with until the catch fence on the far side of the chicane.

As for the aerodynamics of the cars, I was concerned that in all three accidents the cars tended to produce lift when travelling sideways, but although I agree further study is required, a quick look at YouTube video's of crashes from either the Group C or GT1 era's shows the progress made in terms of aerodynamic design.