Interesting. With the emphasis on downforce and the way it is so difficult to pass, I've long wondered why someone doesn't develop a car that is designed to perform better when it it directly behind someone. Of course, that would come at the expense of running in clear air, but it looks like Adrian Newey has found the best of both worlds. And if the flexible aero is dependent upon being in the wake of a car in front, I'd say the FIA would be hard-pressed to catch it when the car is stationary.

I agree with all of this except the bold part. According to Button the track was bone-dry. Button also stayed right and Vettel was never going to get through there, so I don't know why he even tried to take a look on the inside.

Hi everyone,
Sorry I posted this on planetf1 as well (please tell me off if you think that this is not okay)

A few people here seem to say that the Vettel first tried to overtake on the inside and then changed direction rapidly to the outside.

Maybe I am getting this wrong, but have another look at the video. It seems to me that he never really tries to go to the inside. Button moves left just before the incident, then pulls right back to the inside line. For a fraction of a second it seems as if there is a gap nearly wide enough for one car, then Button comes back immediately to the inside. To me it seems it is the movement of Buttons car that creates the impression Vettel tried to go inside. As soon as Vettel goes left (after Button came back to the inside) he looses control.

Vettel does take a very brief look at the inside at the same time that Button appears to open that momentary gap. Button re-closes the gap and Vettel jinks left, loses the rear, and we have the end result.

You guys should get a grip on yourself. Im watching the 1998 Montreal GP right now. There were so many crashes and people running into eachother Autosport would have to add a new forum board just to cope with all the threads moaning about racing standards. I find the witchhunt unnecesary.

Vettel crashed into Button. No further analysis needed. On to the next race.

http://forum.planet-f1.com/index.php?t=msg...mp;#msg_2546127

As much as I'd like to sse something there it is just mpeg artifact IMO

^ +1

certainly looks like a video glitch, very linear.

That race was epic. Especially Schumacher´s pranks, as always.

Nonetheless, taking out Button was unnecessary. I wonder how the Hamilton mob would be howling if Sebastian took Lewis out in this way...

And mind you, Lewis could be next, Sebastian did it already with Webber and Button and tried it with Alonso at the start in Hockenheim....

The most indicative views were the slo-mo's of the cars clipping the inside kerb at the final chicane. The wings on the Red Bulls were wobbling like a nervous jellyfish. You could see the vertical mountings shaking laterally as the wings flapped up and down. The wings also exhibited an amazing amount of torsional flexibility, in fact, the wings were behaving very much like shaken leaf-springs - This was not at all apparent on McLaren or Renault wings. Those are the videos that need posting.

That's indeed an artefact - but generally artefacts only appear when the software can not render an ultra fast moving object (basically any object appearing for a split second and the framerate is not enough to adequately display the object)


Super Slow Mos may give us a better idea .. probably in the race edit.

Yep, the race edit will settle this.

If you find this movie, you will see that another artifact shows up covering the nose, right between the humps. That's not a flying piece, since no part of a failing wing would fly to that position.

On the other side search for FM's lucky spring, you can identify it's shape and it does not create a big square chunk on the screen.

Ted Kravitz:

"After the race, analysis started to focus on the behaviour of Vettel's front wing, on how much it flexed as it moved out of Button's slipstream and whether, when both ends of the wing caught the air, the forces upset the car's stability enough to swing the nose to the right and into the McLaren's sidepod.

The car was clearly uncontrollable at that moment, and reminded me of Vettel's first response after he hit team-mate Mark Webber in Turkey, when he went over a bump on the run down to Turn 12 and, in his words, "lost the car".

Indeed, Vettel said the same thing in his Spa post-race quote in Red Bull's media release: "I lost the car going over the bump as I was braking and unfortunately hit Jenson." We'll follow up the story in Monza. "


http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8962121.stm


Now it's out in the mainstream media I wonder if the FIA will "expand" their tests for the "twisting" phenomenon on safety grounds?

As someone posted in the red bull Flexi-wing thread - the FIA banned Toyota from the Melbourne Grand Prix after seeing the rear wing flex in '09. They lost all points. I don't understand how the FIA can not look at this video and see that the wing is flexing in a way that is outlawed by the regulations and take appropriate action. I'm not saying they should take all Red bull's points away but it's so blindingly obvious, surely some action has to be taken. I fully expect the BBC at least to do a whole segment analysing this incident at the next GP weekend and it's going to be more and more difficult for the FIA to ignore it.

So looking at the videos in detail, both Vettel crashing into Webber in Turkey and Vettel crashing into Button in Spa are IDENTICAL in these respects:

1. Vettel moved out of the wake of the car infront and at that point the front wing wobbled wildly.
2. Vettel veered sharply to the right and into the car he was overtaking.

Conclusion: Vettel is an idiot!

They are different in as much as in Turkey he was still in control of the car and turned into Webber causing the accident, in Spa he was simply out of control.

Webber fans would go into meltdown if he lost points because Seb's incident showed up the car - and Seb did nt even score any points to lose ..

Utter tosh.

enlighten us then ...

Artifacts come from the lack of bandwidth specified for compression to hold the needed data or a failure during data transmission - leaving blanks or adding garbage to the picture.

The square looks to the artifacts come fro the cell/bucket approach used for the compression.

A very minor checkerboard (no that's not carbon fibre weave) artifact caused by either an error in the bitstream as it was recording or by a poor encoder used to compress the video.
The only "artifacting" you see with fast moving objects is usually on the edges of objects when the video is interlaced.

I can replicate the artifact seen here with my helmet-camera setup by wiggling the connectors on the digital link between the camera and the recorder unit, as this can cause an error in the bitstream being encoded and saved. You see the same thing, taken to an extreme level if you severely twat a digital video recorder too. You get the same kinds of glitches if you're downloading a film and it has been slightly corrupted in the download.

Oh ffs, can't people accept that finger boy screwed up again without looking for increasingly crazy reasons such as:

* Button braked too soon
* The front wing was too bendy
* A UFO flew past and damaged Vettel's wing just before he lost control, but did it so quickly no-one noticed, not even Vettel, and all that appeared on the video was an artefact.



Vettel can't race. Maybe one day he will learn. Until then, he's the F1 equivalent of a proximity mine.

It could be a combination of a few things, but it wasn't something breaking before impact. It likely WAS a combination of a few things, with any one of them being enough to break the camels traction at the rear.

I don't see the similarity. The time between moving out from the wake in Turkey and the movement to the right was so long that they weren't (IMO) connected; whereas in Belgium it was almost instant.

So Belgium:
1. Vettel moved out of the wake of the car infront and at that point the front wing wobbled wildly.
2. Vettel veered sharply to the right and into the car he was overtaking.

Turkey:
1. Vettel moved out of the wake of the car infront and at that point the front wing wobbled wildly.
2. Vettel travelled alongside the car infront completely stable for some time
3. Vettel veered sharply to the right and into the car he was overtaking.

Belgium was the movement behind causing a loss of control resulting in the collision. Turkey was a movement to the right causing the collision.

Sorry, you use the word 'IDENTICAL' (yes, in caps even) and then you list two examples completely different flow of events? Did I miss your sarcasm?

turkey accident was caused by vettel turning the wheel while car was fully controlable...

Yup, it was supposed to be sarcastic - which would have been obvious if I hadn't missed off the punchline which I have now added!

Thanks !

Contrary to popular opinion - You do actually learn something on the forums.

Seconded.


Besides, in Belgium Vettel shaked his car once towards his right, then sharply moved towards his left, perhaps this triggered the tail of Vettel's car moving/sliding towards it's left. I donno if this was caused by the dropping left side front wing and its air flow towards the rear. It could be that as the fornt wings bend down wards less air flow was realized suddenly towards over the left side half of the car, ending up in higher grip of the right rear. ...

Still it could very wel be a simpel driver error, tho.

Vettel hit Webber at Fji while he was looking at Hamilton's accident.

It is 100% a driver error. Racing incident. He tried hard, was on the limit, made a small misjudgement, was a bit unlucky (if there was a bump) and there it was: The Accident.

OK, can you provide me more about your ground??? I kinda interested. If this is driver's error, Vettel should be losing his race seat 2011?

Yes. Only drivers that has never made an error should have a seat 2011. I've heard this will be FOTA's official stance as well.

That will be an strange criteria. No Senna, No Alonso but who?

I think that he was being sarcastic, as ALL drivers make arrors from time to time. Vettel, Webber, Alonso and Massa certainly have cost themselves quite a few points this season with unforced errors. I'm sure that Rosberg, Lewis, Button WSC, Kubica all have as well.

Wow, that is a significant amount of wing movement and would have caused the car to oversteer dramatically, so instead of a great pass we have a totally preventable crash. Red Bull need to fix this asap to make the car safe to drive especially for the next race at Monza where the speeds are the highest.

ps. Looks like Vettel wasn't at fault after all. I certainly hope that Button, Whitmarsh, and Ron Dennis man-up and quickly apologize to Vettel for their negative and untrue comments about his driving abilities.

Look... you are wrong. Just wrong. Let's assume that the front wing did indeed play a part - you'd still be wrong! The decisions and actions Vettel did is always going to end up in an accident or almost an accident. When you change direction and brake at the same time, the car will be very, very unstable.

I think you are missing the point here (or at least what I think is the point): Allright, the accident derives from SV's over optimistic move, I'm not discussing that.

But the questions subsides: Did that wing fail (or severelly misbehaved) due to it's flexing carachteristics? I think so.

Especially when the wing is flopping around like that. This, as I am sure you realize, is how aircraft are turned. By moving surfaces along their wings they are able to use the density of the air and changes in air pressure to change direction. Except in this case Vettel had no idea that his supposed fixed wing was going to steer him off the track.

Vetel can be prone to accidents but this one is not on him imo.

The McLaren gang of three should realize this and apologize.

Apologise to Crash Kid for calling him "Crash Kid"? Or apologise to the other drivers for not being quicker to bring the unsafe and illegal flexi/twisting wing/floor combo to the attention of the FIA?

I was really surprised to see all three of them to attack Vettel in this way, personal attacks on his driving abilities and such. Especially when they trotted out Ron Dennis of all people to have a swipe at him and call him names. It was a designed attack to try and permanently break Vettels spirit when they thought he was down. It really does show how low team McLaren is willing to go. Now that the truth is out the egg is on their face, apologizing quickly might at least wash some of the stink off.

And yes Redbull needs to fix that car before someone gets hurt. Perhaps if not for Vettels excellent driving skills quickly reacting to the car driving itself off the track there could have been serous injuries.

You must really live in a strange world!

If it is indeed the case that the wing had any part to play should Horner and Newey apologise for designing a wing that not only has caused the FIA to have to re-write its regulations but is also one which its drivers are unable to control in close racing situations?

In all seriousness. Vettel would be aware of the potential of instability when pulling out of another car's wake which from my point of view makes his erratic steering on the lead up to the incident even less excusable.

Exactly. Webber ****ed up at Valencia, Vettel ****ed up at Spa. Plain and simple.

What I find strange is team McLaren sending out their three top team leaders including a 63 year old senior citizen to berate, name call and personally insult a 22 year old kid. Bullies if you ask me. Now with the facts on the table that was actually a car issue this gang of three should be trying to make amends with Vettel and retract their ridiculous statements. If Lauda can do it then so can these guys.

It wasn't a car issue.

Watch his left hand in http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xem3t3_f1...on-vettel_sport

He stays on the F-duct too long, right until he starts manoeuvring. The rear wing hasn't had time for the airflow to reattach before he makes the big steering input, especially in the turbulent air behind JB.

So it's an error with a relatively new part of the car, at least. Not quite as moronic as it seemed.

F-duct is unsafe?! BAN IT!! (Oh, they are going to...)

Oh, and in this case it would be Red Bull's F-duct is unsafe. Probably in combination with their illegal bendy/twisty stuff.

If it's that unsafe there is a case that it should be banned immediately as they did with x-wings.

It's my belief that, ironically, it's McLaren's wonderful invention of the device that purposely takes away downforce in the rear of F1 cars -- the F-duct -- that caused this accident.

A device that completely upsets the front-rear balance of downforce during precisely the time a driver is most likely to be attempting an overtake, I believe, has always been a very dangerous prospect. The car oversteered severely almost like the rear of the car flew up into the air. I bet this would not have happened if the rear had had standard downforce. Instead, considering that it was a high-speed straight, both drivers were certainly using their f-ducts, so their cars had the worst downforce (and particularly front-rear balance of downforce) possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if McL's real reason for going ballistic on Vettel was to divert attention from what I believe is the real cause of this accident -- the f-duct.