Are huge runoffs making racing dull?

“Of Course, Nobody should get killed….” – Laurens Vanthoor

Motorsport is dangerous, in fact, probably one of the most dangerous forms of sport in the world. Drivers at one with their car, pushing it to the extreme boundaries of grip and speed to make every gain possible on their competitors. Balancing on a knife edge of accomplishment, and tragedy. It’s what captivates the millions of fans across the world, but unfortunately it’s also this, that makes the sport so dangerous. When pushing to the limits of a cars capabilities, it doesn’t take much to push that tiny bit too far, losing control, with sometimes devastating consequences.

Safety in Motorsport began to place in the late 60’s, when Jackie Stewart started his campaign for safer racing and better conditions. Since then we have seen circuits become safer, but at what cost? To me, there is a certain excitement I get, seeing a driver pull off a faultless lap. Pushing as hard as they can, using every centimeter of track available and getting the absolute most they can from the car. I feel it must be rewarding as a driver, to psych themselves up for a tough turn and to pull it off, knowing they didn’t cut, they didn’t run wide, they just nailed it. In the more recent times, modern circuits that have been built have massive run offs, taking a lot of the potential risk out of an otherwise tricky turn, yes the driver still needs to keep the car within the track limits, but knowing that if they push that little bit too hard or run that bit wider than usual, that there is the safety net of a big asphalt run-off to catch them, lessens the difficulty of a turn. Seeing a myriad of tarmac with some white lines drawn in to outline a circuit doesn’t make for a challenging track in my opinion. It may allow for harder, safer racing, but at the expense of a tough circuit to race at? Having said this I am in no way advocating that tracks should be built without safety in mind, safety is a huge measure in this sport and always should be.

Modern cars, although much faster than there previous counterparts, are by far the safest we have seen. As proven recently in numerous heavy crashes generally met with the driver walking away relatively unhurt, considering the incident they were involved in. A huge part of what draws crowds to Motorsport is the spectacle of the ‘big crash’, it’s almost guaranteed to make the headlines and highlight reels, but that’s not what the true supporter wants to see. We are here for racing. Good, Hard, Fast and Close racing. As they say, “Rubbing’s Racing”, which I fully believe in, so long as it’s competitive.

I asked a few drivers on the international stage for their opinion on this matter, this is what they had to say.

– Richard Muscat 

“Track evolution and track safety around circuits in the world are the hot topics teams, drivers and officials are always talking about. It is true that some corners don’t have the risk for reward commitment about them that they did 20 years ago, but at the end of the day I don’t think anybody wants to see a driver get hurt in a car and there is no reason for it to happen either. As tracks and corners become safer, racing is still very dangerous, for example I raced at the Total 24 Hours of Spa a few weeks ago and there were some massive crashes, one at Blanchimont where a car was ripped to pieces after contact with the wall. At that corner there’s is a tarmac runoff for 200m before the wall so if there was a gravel trap, the car is more likely to roll and hit the wall at a faster pace. Bare in mind at that corner, GT cars are flat at 260km/h. Another corner is Eau Rouge, it is a lot safer than 20 years ago as they have moved the wall back at Raidillon to give the drivers some runoff but the corner is still in my view the hardest, most dangerous corner in the world. The risk is huge as the car gets light mid corner at 250km/h, as we saw at the 24 hour there were two massive crashes where cars were just obliterated. So my opinion tracks are becoming safer and corners aren’t as crazily dangerous as the once were, they are still hazardous as cars are going faster these days and more runoff and safety measures must be put in place as motor sport is still and always will be the most dangerous sport in the world.”

– Maro Engel 

“Obviously the safety improvements in motorsport that have been achieved over the last few decades are fantastic, creating tarmac runoff areas has certainly improved safety in certain places. However, from a drivers point of view I would like to see these tarmac runoff areas to be used only where it is absolutely necessary. Personally I like a track to be limited by gravel and or grass, the “old school” way as it is a clear cut track limit where you will pay with significant loss of lap time if you run into it. Danger is part of the fascination of motorsports and it is why we drivers love the thrill of it and why the fans find motorsports so thrilling, if we remove all aspects of danger and make it too safe we run the danger of losing this thrill both from a drivers as well as a fan perspective. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying we need to go back to the danger levels of the 70s, but a corner like Parabolica was sufficiently safe in my opinion and the challenge was huge to time it right and get the best possible exit without dropping a wheel in the gravel on the exit, this challenge is now unfortunately gone.”

– Laurens Vanthoor 

“Motorsport will always be dangerous, of course it’s getting safer by time. But drivers must accept this. Nobody should get hurt, but driving a car on the limit is dangerous. The reason why most of the drivers do or like motorsport is the risk and the adrenalin. It should be safe but they should not take the adrenalin factor out. Tracks like Paul Ricard are awful, Monza is almost the same now. Whilst tracks like Brands Hatch, Zandvoort and Nordschleife, they might be dangerous, but putting a qualifying lap there is the most exciting thing there is. It’s complicated but I personally prefer the risk and get the adrenalin. But of course, nobody should get killed….”

– Jeroen Bleekemolen

“Safety is very important but we are definitely taking away some of the challenges of some of the best race tracks and its corners. I have raced all over the world and can’t deny I get less pleasure out of driving on all the new F1 type tracks. So much run off and all we speak about in drivers meetings is track limits. I definitely like the more old style tracks, although a bit more dangerous.”

Have your say in the comments below.

– Ryan

Calling last drinks for the V8 Supercars

It’s something that has been in the pipe works for some time now, the fall of the almighty V8SC Championship. With the recent changing of hands after Car of the Future (COTF) was introduced, along with TV rights moving to Foxtel in 2015, even the teams are not fielding cars to a smaller field then recently experienced. The future of V8 Supercars is in doubt. Combine all this with the fact that Ford and Holden are moving manufacturing out of the country, and with today’s economy, the gong of the 5L V8 is definitely ringing.

Having Volvo and Nissan field cars, both borrowing engines from their much larger 4WD counterparts in the XC90 and the Patrol respectively, it certainly begs the question as to why Australian motorsport is so hell bent on this format of a big loud powerful V8. I mean, to look at it this way, V8SC is by no means similar to any other motorsport category in the world. Some drivers actually put driving a V8SC on their to-do list as they are known for being such different animals too tame. With the engine configuration, built into a spec chassis, with panels adapted to whichever car manufacturer comes along and drops a couple of dollars on the table it certainly creates a unique form of racing, which in its purest form, is spectacular! Often the qualifying is covered by a mere second and long distance races finishing as close as two tenths of a second from first to second. The Bathurst 1000 is the best example of this, from the green flag to the chequered, there is one speed, Flat out! Its not like old days where you would try and conserve the car to make the distance, because once you slow down, someone will beat you.

I have followed the V8SC’s since I was born, I have many memories of them from a very young age, up at the mountain, camping at Reid Park, taking it all in. But a time is drawing near where things will change and I think some of the blame could go back to the planning for the COTF. The idea was to create a cheaper car to build and maintain which was also safer and to entice more manufacturers into the sport. Looking abroad and seeing what the world was doing is where we should have started, instead of taking our already unique V8SC and making a brand new, arguably irrelevant car just for the sake of change, we should have gone to other categories. This is what DTM (German Touring car masters) did, they got together with the Super GT/GT500 category in Japan and created a chassis which could be built and used for either category, as well as bringing the American’s in for their Grand-Am Class. If V8SC was to adopt this system, we could have still built our own bodies for that chassis to look like they do now, but it would have made it a lot easier and enticing for big manufacturers to get involved, as someone like Mercedes-Benz could run in the DTM, V8SC and GT500, using the same chassis, but unfortunately, we didn’t. Instead we made the COTF, which admittedly has turned out quite well, even if early reports were that it wasn’t saving teams any money as expected prior to the launch.

Looking ahead to the future, there are already rumours getting around that the V8SC will probably drop the “V8SC” name, moving to different models and potentially even body styles. This all just screams costs, something COTF was introduced to reduce. Perhaps the best thing for Australian motorsport would be to drop the category altogether? Replacing it with a tried, tested and proven international formula, the FIA GT3’s. It’s hard to argue that the rise of this category internationally in recent times has been significant, instantly you have a range of GT3 Cars that are already designed and built under the FIA balance of power system to be as similar as possible. Not only that, they are fast! I’m not going to throw a heap of numbers up saying this has that and those do this, but simply make some key points. The 2014 Bathurst 12 hour was completed this year, with a winning margin of a mere four tenths of a second. From an Australian team in Maranello Motorsport, to the world renowned SLS AMG of HTP Motorsport. Recently the Total 24-hours of Spa was won by only 7 seconds after an epic battle lasting over half of the race between the #1 WRT Audi and the #77 Marc VDS BMW Z4.

Having GT3 cars run at all the races that the V8SC currently compete at, would no doubt be a fantastic spectacle! You would still have the Bathurst 12 Hour, which would potentially entice the World Championship teams to compete, making it a great event to test, and fight for a win against the worlds best. But you could even open up the Endurance races to wildcards, having teams from across the world competing. Even switching to a GT4 class as the development series would doubtlessly make this series more relevant. To top it off, when it does come to enduro drives, look at the pool of available talent you could choose from. The worlds finest, waiting and willing to take on Sandown, The Mountain or Gold Coast. It would also open up the opportunity for Australian teams to participate in international races competitively. The best example is something Craig Lowndes recently said in an interview on Radio LeMans during the Total 24-hours of Spa, that everything he has done here in V8SC basically counts for nothing over there. This is Craig Lowndes, one of the best drivers to ever come out of Australia. More race wins in this category then any other driver and potentially the only person to come close to Brock’s magic 9 at the Mountain whilst still kicking harder then ever!

-Ryan