Very saddened by Justin's death. I had a bad feeling and still under Bianchi's aura and remembering the scene of that kid in GP3 or the lower formula with the tire hitting his helmet, but I hoped for a scenario closer to Felipe Massa's case. Great guy, I liked him in F1 and wished he'd have had better results in Champ Car and Indy. Here's an interview of his last win in 2012. Sigh.
Lucky also not to have another tragedy with F2 driver straight into the barrier at Spa over the weekend as well.
I still remember him well from Champ Car. Very good driver, quick, consistent. My condolences to all affected by his loss. RIP
To lose yet another great racer because of a nasty freak accident is just a bit too much. Rest in peace.
Very saddened to hear of Justin Wilson`s passing. I knew it was a really bad injury but, along with everyone else, I hoped he`d make a full recovery... unfortunately this was not to be... RIP JW
Very unfortunate and sadly these will happen every now and then. Again, could have been avoided. There has been discussion of adding similar shield like fighter jets have into open-wheelers. Hopefully people would finally understand it would be very welcome improvement.
We need canopy's for open wheelers however small the probability of death by head-injury in the grand scheme of things. At these speeds, it's a bit mental not to.
Terribly sad time. I emailed Justin only last month about a RF2 project I am working on, he explained he liked the concept but was too busy to get involved at the moment - yet still took the time to reply explaining the challenges he saw ahead for me. (Motorsport.com) On this earth there are great racing drivers. And there are incredibly nice people. But it is rare to find great racing drivers who are incredibly nice people. Justin Wilson was a fine example.
Justin Wilson was one of only two Champcar/Indy racers I have spoken to in real life--here in Toronto at the Champcar race when he was driving the CDW car. I still have a scale model of that car on top of the fridge in the kitchen. Even in a brief conversation, it was apparent what a true gentleman racer he was. His action at Mid-Ohio just a few weeks ago exemplified it. I am glad he was an advocate for greater safety--for race drivers and fans. I am glad he was fighting for the lead at several points in the Pocono race. I cannot help but feel gutted by his fate to get hit in such unusual circumstances. I am someone who would not cry if all open-wheel oval racing was eliminated. At a minimum there should be canopies. Indycar's poor judgement on so many safety-related issues in the past few years makes me furious. But this had nothing to do with any of that, unless you argue that Karam's nose cone wouldn't have come off if it wasn't a high-speed oval-style turn that he crashed into. It just seems like the worse case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time ever imaginable in racing. Wilson had many less severe versions of that plague his career. How does life treat someone who is universally praised as being such a consistently upstanding person like that? View attachment 17707 I will remember the person and try to forget the hand he was dealt and did not deserve.
The FIA are thankfully now looking into two new solutions regarding head protection on open wheelers. Canopies and rollbars obviously won't happen, but it seems Mercedes has come up with some kind of solution... some kind of hoop above and in front of the helmet. Also there is some kind of system with blades of varying heights on the chassis in front of the driver. Let's hope a solution comes up so we won't have to deal with this kind of freak accident again.
An enclosed cockpit mandated for open wheelers on the ovals would be a good start especially the 2.5 mile Indy and Pocono. RIP JW.
I don't think an enclosed cockpit is the answer. What about all other levels of motorsports? I would like to see something done with sensors on every car that send a signal to pitwall and light up a display or light in every drivers' cockpit the moment any part has come loose. The canopy thing has been looked at and roll bars and other possibilities have or are being investigated but this isn't like just raising the cockpit sides. It can't be a stop-gap "solution". It needs proper analyzing and deciding.
I would actually like to take back my use of the phrase "freak accident". Because when you think about it, what is so "freak" about that kind of accident? You have fragile open wheel cars racing around at 370+ kph, with the driver's helmet exposed. You have enormous accidents where the cars are being split into a million pieces. You have drivers from behind driving at near full speed into those fields of flying debris. When you think about it, it's actually amazing that this kind of accident doesn't happen more often. All this is just to say that maybe a driver being hit on the head by debris isn't actually such a "freak" occurrence? Like Max Chilton so beautifully wrote, we use the word "freak" to comfort ourselves in the aftermath of a great tragedy. "Freak" falsely implies that it's highly unlikely that we're going to see something like this again for a very long time. But history has shown that it is not unlikely at all. Surtees. Massa. Hinchcliffe. Wilson. All hit on the head by debris in the span of just 6 years. Two of those guys got lucky. The other two not so much...
+1that i I'd like to add for those who argue against the safety of a canopy which may very well prevent the driver from being able to exit if upside down.....whether the number of times an open design has saved lives exceeds the number of lives that could have been saved if full head protection were available over the last 10 or so years. I can completely understand the argument 20+ years ago but not so much with todays fuel fire safety record, etc.
The beauty of the evolution of technology and safety is how these accidents must occur in a very specific manner vs how easy it was for people to get hurt or fatalities to happen. We moved from accepting death to treating it with shock - as it should be - but there just is no way to completely prevent certain things from happening. We have had some very serious stuff happen in Indycar and given the types of tracks, the only way I see it coming near to a fix would be to have massive 30m run-off areas throughout the ovals. A horror accident could still take place with a canopy or roll-bar where in a 1 in a million occurrence a seat belt may not come unbuckled, or the cockpit sides don't detach and the driver is stuck. Remember Niki Lauda didn't nearly die from the crash he suffered but from inhaling the smoke.
Yes of course but if looking at it purely from an odds ratio of death relating to this safety aspect, i think a full enclosure would save many times more lives than without on average. I only say that i think this because i haven't actually checked/seen the statistics/data, so i could be completely wrong ofc. But for non-fatal injuries like massa's, however rare they are or not....they would clearly become a thing of the past.
