Is Eau Rouge Too Dangerous?

[CobraCat]

Man up or take up knitting instead if you can't handle it.

Knitting while racing! Taking the danger of high speed motorsports and textile manipulation to a new level!!

 

[millen]

It's a corner.
Sometimes you need to slow down for corners if you can't make them at the speed you are going.

Can't go into Saint Devote flat out, so people brake before it.

 

[Diogo Goetz Brand]

Stop giving the FIA ideas of things to ruin based on safety. The halo is bad enough, if they decide to ruin Eau Rouge as well it will be the end of motorsport.

 

[NASCRAP]

I would rather slam into the barrier at Eau Rouge 100 times in a modern race car than be in one accident on the highway in a street car.

 

[Dr. Death]

If you'll notice, at no point did I say the corner needs to be changed. It's just the state of the runoff I'm talking about.

Oh. I read wrong.


The runoff is safe enough already. In fact, i liked the early 2000's version of the track more. Almost no accident in the Eau Rouge anymore makes drivers require a visit to the hospital.

 

[Diogo Goetz Brand]

If anything, they should change the white strips at the inside of Raidillon, that's what caused the flip at the WEC 6 hours.
But I'd be curious to know what Eau Rouge would be like if it was a bit tighter. AFAIK it used to be tighter in the past, and if it was just tight enough that it wasn't flat, even on F1 and LMP1 I think it would be more of a challenge. Even on GT3 it's easy flat in some cases as it is right now (On simulators, I don't think I've ever seen someone go flat there IRL).

 

[bm91]

Rally drivers don't have runoffs or tyre walls, they take more risks than circuit drivers and they don't complain about it.
Stop bitching, racing is dangerous and should remain.

 

[Enzo Fazzi]

The Ford and the dragonspeed incidents were not related to eau rouge, just unfortunate they happened there.
The SMP one was caused by the white anti cut strips, the bumps caused the "vacuum" to lift. Let's hope we won't see an incident similar to Webber's at the mulsanne straight this year.

An idea would be to get rid of those white strips and place electronic cut warnings at eau rouge. Perhaps similar ones to Paul Ricard uses, with the flaps sticking out of the track.

 

[Inivictus Deus]

I am sorry, what? A track (or part of it) is too dangerous? Seriously? Let me tell you something, tracks are tracks but, it's up to a driver to decide how to approach a track and drive through it. If he fails, you can't blame the track for it. Like what the heck? I am not a race car driver but have driven various cars on normal roads especially on the autobahn which can get crazy when going over 200km/h with all the bumps and elevations. But, if i fail and crash i am not gonna blame the government for failing to build a straight line road, am i? Even in iRacing, i've never crashed there, ever. I've gone off the track, yes, but never crashed into the wall.
The Spa is a legendary track and we shouldn't let anybody to alter it because some drivers underestimate their skills or manufacturers fail to build proper cars. Yeah, let's go ahead and remove the whole Nordschleife track because it's too dangerous... .Ridiculous...

Do people have nothing else to talk about these days?

 

[Durge Driven]

Statistically more dangerous driving to work isn't it ? p

What I mean to say if you going to make Eau Rouge " safer " then do away with all oval tracks, Lemans ,Nords, IOM and WRC to begin with

In big scheme Motor Racing ranks low on list of dangerous occupations most of which are carried out daily for far less money

 

[Gabyzen64]

Ogni volta che sento delle curve pericolose, è sempre la stessa storia, alla fine cambiano tutto e fanno rivivere il layout della pista con una merda come è già successo con Hockenheimring. Non toccarmi Eau Rouge! Sii il pilota e sai che la curva è magnifica come pericolosa, se non sei in grado di affrontarla per prendersi cura dei cavalli o cucinare. E per chiarire, le uniche curve pericolose che conosco sono quelle femminili...

 

[acidburn82uk]

And if the electronics on that car hadn't failed, we wouldn't be discussing this...

 

[RobertGracie]

I have seen the corner itself in person when I was on a European tour in 2016, it dips down and then goes straight up it takes plenty of balls to take it flat out and if its done correctly its safe but if not well you end up crashing badly, every driver is different and how they tackle it is different

 

[RasmusP]

I wonder why people constantly rant about modifying "a legendary track" when the anti-cut-strips aka flip-all-the-aero-cars-strips are definitely not "legendary". Also since when is a tyre-wall legendary and modifying armco is ruining anything historical?

Replace the tyre-walls with SAFER or tecpro, get rid of the bouncy stripes and put some abrasive surface on it instead. A few cut sensors as an addition and then enforce the track limits for every race there for 12 months. No one will cut, no car will fly away and the corner itself will be the exact same than before.
And for all the crash fans: I think the cars will still get shredded into a thousand pieces like they used to be when they hit SAFER or tecpro with 300 kp/h. It will remain spectacular and scary. Just less injuries for the drivers.

But as some people said after car crashes: "The broken arm wasn't a problem really, but the crash itself got me scared so deeply that I couldn't drive for some time."
Or in other words: it's not only the injury that gets you scared/traumatized. It's the experience and situation on it's own.
I don't think the thrill about Eau Rouge will be less. It's still not fun to head into a barrier with 300+ kp/h. No matter what surface that barrier has!

 

[Jimlaad43]

Who are "some people", the people i talk to and even some of the nut jobs that religiously follow the iRacing forums and twitter don't say it's too dangerous.

With safety at the level it is now and cars getting more and more downforce, it's is safe as it ever has been (apart from when they added a chicane to it). Run off is fine to me, as you say, the barriers we have at the moment are working quite well, adding curbs however, i don't think is clever. The guys that run the track either have to pick between occasional corner cutting or a much higher risk of accident due to silly sausage curbs.

In the case of Fittipaldi's crash, There seems to be quite a hill behind the track there, and a building behind it, so changing the runoff might be quite tricky, although the fact that his car had issues probably has a bigger part to play in that crash, as in Tincknell's crash he got away fine.

There was quite a big debate about this exact issue in the Premium forums, and I have seen it elsewhere. Bear in mind you just need 2 people to class something as "some".

 

[M D Gourley]

I don't think the corner itself needs to be touched at all. Just fix what is around it.

Yes I would agree with this...after all the professional drivers should realize during practice that this corner has issues and adjust their driving technique accordingly....but having said that, the competitive nature of racing among the drivers must be intense and squeezing every last once of speed from your car to gain a few 10th's over your competitor is fundamentally what racing is all about...and who has possibly the largest balls to pull it off.

 

[Chris]

I see no problems here...he landed cleanly. Should've Romain Grojean'd the car so he would've maintained speed. Explains why that driver is a "sim" racer and not real like Grojean.

Ahhh yes, but could it have been blamed on Ericsson?

 

[Peter Stokman]

I saw that incident with the speed bumps, they must be changed so this can't happen again.

I don't think Eau Rouge is too dangerous, it is racing, it is and always was dangerous and every high speed crash can cause that kinda damage.
There is enough of tirewall there in my opinion.

Indeed in past cars where slower (still very fast) but due to the cars from that era lacking any safety construction compared to now it was way and way more dangerous to go through EauRouge in that time, imo

 

[formidable]

Is not dangerous nowadays.

And if you are a driver and you find that is dangerous, change your job.

 

[RobertGracie]

I wish they would leave Radillion as it is, its more than enough of a challenge, all they need to remember is that there is a headwind coming up over the brow of the hill that causes the cars to go extremely light at the front, yes that happens!