[LM24] Le Mans Track Safety

[Matra-simca]

I'm a frequent visitor but seldom post, so I just want to say it's frustrating to watch the 24 Hours and see that all the changes the ACO has made over the past 25 years - in the name of safety - has only made matters worse. I can speak about the many elements why that is - it's a long list , so I'll just touch on one. I find it incomprehensible how the club has zero tolerance for a malfunctioning head or taillight, yet continue using gravel traps and a type of aggregate rock that's particularily abrasive and causes an untold number of punctures. There's nothing like the sight of a competitor crawling along on his way back to the pits after sustaining a puncture from debris left by a fellow racer's run thru gravel, leaving a path of destruction in his wake. Meanwhile cars are whizzing by at three times his normal speed. How is that safe?

[dxk1]

Originally Posted by Matra-simca

I find it incomprehensible how the club has zero tolerance for a malfunctioning head or taillight, yet continue using gravel traps and a type of aggregate rock that's particularily abrasive and causes an untold number of punctures.

This has also been one of my pet peeves about Le Mans as well. Every year the commentators talk about the gravel being very sharp and that it can cut down a tire in no time. Why cant they change this to sand or something similar that is less sharp? Seems an easy fix.

DK

[Beetle]

Originally Posted by dxk1

This has also been one of my pet peeves about Le Mans as well. Every year the commentators talk about the gravel being very sharp and that it can cut down a tire in no time. Why cant they change this to sand or something similar that is less sharp? Seems an easy fix.

DK

Well Allan Simonsen's incident, which I am sure this thread is stemming from, was essentially a freak accident. He lost control of the car out of Tertre Rouge and overcorrected into the barrier. However, his life could have been saved if there was a substantial tire bundle there, I think. Just tragic...

But the gravel thing is a pet peeve of mine as well. It seems as though the Le Mans organizers are simply too lazy to fix simple problems like that. I dunno...

[wewantourdarbyback]

Where any of the major accidents this year caused by a tyre going down/ (I admit the cause of Allan's crash has yet to be established).

There does need to be an look into better safety, but I would say the main thing would be a new solution for the trackside barriers.

In no way should we be looking at pulling them back from the track, firstly I don't see how you'd do it and secondly they are a part of the challenge.

Edit: Oh and the white lines on the Mulsanne need changing, they may well have caused three big smashes this weekend, they have to be there, it's a road, but a different paint needs to be found.

However other options than the three layer armco barrier need to be assessed, be it TechPro or SAFER barriers.

Not only because of Allan's tragic death, but also because of the amount of time that was lost from the race, sat behind the safety car because they needed to weld a new bit of barrier in.

[Matra-simca]

Originally Posted by Beetle

Well Allan Simonsen's incident, which I am sure this thread is stemming from, was essentially a freak accident. He lost control of the car out of Tertre Rouge and overcorrected into the barrier. However, his life could have been saved if there was a substantial tire bundle there, I think. Just tragic...

But the gravel thing is a pet peeve of mine as well. It seems as though the Le Mans organizers are simply too lazy to fix simple problems like that. I dunno...

My original thread had nothing to do with Allan's dreadful accident. But after watching in-car footage from the Corvette immediately behind, I noticed Allan's car skidded on the blue paint put down by the ACO, as he was trying to avoid a spinning car. A few year ago the ACO reprofiled Tetre Rouge as to provide more run-off area. The guardrail he hit was once a spectator viewing area. I've still got footage I shot in 1990 from that very spot. I'ts as if poor Allan made an immediate 90 turn away from the racing line. Terrible.

Todd

[werner]

Originally Posted by wewantourdarbyback

In no way should we be looking at pulling them back from the track, firstly I don't see how you'd do it and secondly they are a part of the challenge.

Edit: Oh and the white lines on the Mulsanne need changing, they may well have caused three big smashes this weekend, they have to be there, it's a road, but a different paint needs to be found.

I don't understand how anyone could say this! It is a strange world where things that are located at least a couple of meters of the track and therefore have no influence whatsoever on the way a car has to be driven around the track as quikly as possible, are considered challenging, and therefore should stay, but where things put on the track, that are actually influential on the cars are a nuisance that should get rid of. Crazy, especially since the barriers can hurt drivers when hit, and stripes can not. (Exept when the resulting spin makes the car...... hit the barrier!)

[kdr]

Originally Posted by Matra-simca

My original thread had nothing to do with Allan's dreadful accident. But after watching in-car footage from the Corvette immediately behind, I noticed Allan's car skidded on the blue paint put down by the ACO, as he was trying to avoid a spinning car. A few year ago the ACO reprofiled Tetre Rouge as to provide more run-off area. The guardrail he hit was once a spectator viewing area. I've still got footage I shot in 1990 from that very spot. I'ts as if poor Allan made an immediate 90 turn away from the racing line. Terrible.

Todd

I agree.

The thing is with Tertre Rouge is they made it wider to give it more run off but the consequence is rather than being a corner its now a sweep...and a lot more faster than it ever used to be. Its certainly impressive to watch but the speed that some of the prototypes can take thru there is scary at times.

The run down from the Dunlop Bridge to the Esses, perhaps older visitors could tell us if there were many incidents there, but certainly in the last few years we've had Audi, Lister, Krohn...all having major moments. The fact that its no longer such a sharp corner at the bottom means the cars have more chance to speed up thru the Esses, hence the 30 yard zone rouge on the outside and probably even more speed being carried into an already faster Tertre Rouge...all done as i recall to make it safer for motorbikes on the Bugatti Circuit.

[Dunlop Corner]

I dont think there is anything inherently dangerous about the new Esses or Tertre Rouge. The fact that there are a number of incidents in that area is because it is a technical section. Lets face it, Le Mans is mainly straights and the drivers are more likely to make a mistake in a fast corner. Which is why most incidents are in the Porsche Curves or the Esses.

I do not for a moment beleive that the layout of Tertre Rouge is dangerous. What happened was that Allans lost the car in a peculiar way and left the track in an odd angle.
But the hit should not have been fatal. The problem was the angle of the hit and the fact that the armco did not do its job. It seems that a tree was involved which really does not look good for the safety of the track. If anything the barrier should be moved closer to the track, which would have decrease the angle.

Most of all i beleive that rather than discussing the layout of the track, the big talking point should be the barriers. Why did the barriers keep being destroyed and at how naby spots are trees located right behind the barriers?

[wewantourdarbyback]

Originally Posted by werner

I don't understand how anyone could say this! It is a strange world where things that are located at least a couple of meters of the track and therefore have no influence whatsoever on the way a car has to be driven around the track as quikly as possible, are considered challenging, and therefore should stay, but where things put on the track, that are actually influential on the cars are a nuisance that should get rid of. Crazy, especially since the barriers can hurt drivers when hit, and stripes can not. (Exept when the resulting spin makes the car...... hit the barrier!)

Pardon? If you read what I have written you'll see I said the barriers need to be investigated to see if we can make them safer at the same distance.

If you drive too close to a barrier you hit it, it causes damage but is avoidable, however if you can avoid crossing the white lines on the Mulsanne while coming out of the chicanes then you have somehow invented a levitating car.

If there is no way to avoid something on a track, then it shouldn't be able to create a situation where the car is suddenly out of control.

The barriers should remain the same distance, but should be made safer.

[wewantourdarbyback]

Also, it looks like the impact may well have hit one of those trees behind the barriers http://instagram.com/p/a8VljRp5eI/

[Purist]

Werner, having barriers right there DOES have a psychological impact on the drivers, and so, yes, it does impact the "challenge" of the circuit, if you will. It also has a direct influence in some areas, because it won't be race control having to make an arbitrary, subjective call, but rather, the laws of physics providing an unyielding answer to whatever you've done, and those laws do NOT play favorites. (True equality can be a real ***** sometimes.)

BTW, a guy could spin after catching some of that paint, not hit the barriers, but still result in injury as another car comes along and nails him in the middle of the track

ANY paint on the road is going to have a different grip level than the bare pavement. So long as those are public roads, that aspect of the circuit is inevitable.

Someone said in the race thread that there were new rails up with a more angular design, rather than having as much curvature to them as many of us are familiar with. This, intuitively, seems like a bad idea. Someone referenced the cars seemingly taking more damage from some of the impacts with the rail, and if you're scraping along more corners in the metal, that would make sense. Also, the stresses concentrate at corners, so rails that look more corrogated, rather than being an arc, would certainly seem to be more vulnerable to fracturing, and allowing a vehicle to penetrate them.

Somebody else has mentioned that the water table was high, which would lead to the posts being less secure and more apt to move. This would have a diminishing effect on the energy absorption of the rail, if the whole structure is just being pushed backward when a vehicle initially encounters it.

No corner shape is inherently dangerous, but the faster Tertre Rouge has two issues to contend with. It is no longer a single corner, as you have the first, main part, and then a secondary kink as you actually enter the Le Mans-Tours road. Secondly, this latter portion does not have run-off, and there isn't a practical way to really change that. Therefore, given its surroundings, Tertre Rouge WAS safer as a slower corner. Heck, with the corner as it was up through at least most of the 1970s, if not into the '80s, Simonsen's crash would have been physically impossible.

As for the gravel, they're probably sourcing what is readily available in the area. It could be substantially more expensive to source those other sorts of materials. Also, if significant amounts of trap material need to be replenished on-the-fly, again, you're going to use what you have most readily on-hand, which is, apparently, those sharp pebbles. The type of stone that would underlie the Le Mans area was decided on LONG before the ACO, or even the town of Le Mans itself, ever existed.

If I had my druthers, Tertre Rouge would be slowed, at least somewhat, and the second part would be a nice curve, rather than a kink. This would reduce the tendency to run wide after the first apex, onto that blue paint, when trying to make a nice arc out of the rest of the corner.

Also, I'd just like to rip out the traffic circle at the end of the Mulsanne, and take that corner back to how it used to be: straight in, straight out. We don't need a repeat of the Toyota/Ferrari incident from last year.

[Matra-simca]

MY first trip to Le Mans was in 1972, motivated in large part by reading about and watching Ford's assault on the race unfold from 1964 on. The first time I saw pictures of the Ford GT, that was it. ABC's Wide World of Sports was my avenue - and the only one back then -to endurance racing. I caught Steve McQueen's "Le Mans" in a Times Square movie theater the day after it was released in June 1971. Blown away by the movie only increased my desire to find and save two nickels to rub together so I could get there the following year. Once I arrived, I could immediately feel that Steve's film fully captured the flavor of Le Mans right down to "T", with the atmosphere from pit exit thru to the Dunlop Curve down to the esses and into Tertre Rouge remaining that way for many more years.

I can't even begin to describe the level of sensory overload I felt right from the beginning during first practice, particularily the long walk around the outside of the Dunlop Curve down to the start of the Mulsanne Straight, with the combined aroma of cooking French Fries and sausage, the faint wiff and sweet smell of what I later discovered was Castrol "R" put out by some streaking machine. The carnival, too, off to the side, and places there I wouldn't have taken my children. What was so beautiful, when it finally got dark, was the sound and headlights bouncing of the trees and the backfire from unburned fuel when they braked and downshifted for Tertre Rouge. You could park yourself against a tree for a while, as it was heavily wooded down there, taking it all in, doing your best to make out who it was cresting the top of the Esses with blazing headlights; the Matras made it easy as they would clear the wax out of your ears. And without a doubt, my most vivid memory, was listening to the Matras again scream around the Dunlop curve during the middle of the night as I lay in my tent as rain beat down.

It's all gone now..the trees, the carnival, the food, the little run down to Tertre Rouge..all gone, all made to look like some modern GP track, in the name of making things safer.

Todd

[Tim the Grey]

My son commented on how the chicanes on Mulsanne Straight seem to have made things MORE dangerous. We had, I think, SIX red flags in qualifying, all but one for barrier replacement at 'Michelin'...
I lost count of safety car periods in the race, but IIRC correctly, we lost a LOT of race time for that same area.
The thought was, the council replace the white lines on Route de Tours every year, just AFTER LM. The council, being a council, carried on this year, and did it just before...

[Simmi]

I don't want to see snap reactions. But you can't claim to be the world's greatest motor race and have five hours of the event spent repairing barriers. That's obviously a simplistic view of things but I'd say they need to definitely take a hard look at that.

To use a 'Hindyism' it's not the work of a moment to make these changes, and it might take a few years so they should start floating ideas now.

As for the paint - again I'm not calling for a snap change - but if it is overly slippery then they could maybe take a look at what has been done on the Isle of Man TT course. The island made a conscious decision to use 'grippier' white paint on its roads around the mountain section of the course. It doesn't quite have the same reflective properties as normal paint but it's an option. That also shows a deep respect for the race.

If that is true about the council and week-old white lines then that's terrible.

[Matra-simca]

A few years ago while at Lime Rock I had the very good fortune of having a nice and lengthly chat with John Fitch. John needs no intro here but it's probably correct in saying one of John's most notable invention has saved more lives that any creation outside antibiotics. We talked about his time spent as a POW during WW2 as well as the period he was employed by Mercedes as a factory driver.

Besides being big on track safety, John was a very much opposed to gravel traps, thinking in many cases their use only exacerbates the problem, as, in some cases, there's little or no reduction in speed and can frequently cause a vehicle to flip depending on the angle, and more often than not the disabled car becomes an obstuction itself as vehicle and driver are exposed before a safety car is deployed. No, John was adamant that paved run-off was the way to go, and not too much of it, with tires walls of sufficient depth and height, tied to a rubber conveyor belt of some kind...Our conversation took place before Techpro Barriers were were utilized. I'm quite sure John would have given his blessings.

Todd

[Purist]

Gravel, when done properly, is VERY effective at arresting vehicles, which is what you need. Tarmac is NOT that effective, and also just creates a mess for policing the track boundaries. Those speed bump things they have in some paved run-offs are only good if nobody goes through there at great speed; the first time somebody does, it's going to be ugly. I might add that, in Fitch's day, cars had much higher Centers of Gravity, and weren't terribly structurally sound on any dimension. A rough transition on a verge could lead to a fatal accident back in the 1950s and '60s.

Let me put it this way. I would rather be in a car of today driving on a 1960s-vintage track than in a 1960s car on one of today's tracks, at least when it comes to safety anyway.

Also, the abrasive run-offs, like at Paul Ricard, are a problem. They aren't going to arrest an out-of-control vehicle very well at all, and what do you do after you've gotten in the red zone, and blown a tire or two? Then, you can easily be stranded in a run-off with little to no arresting power to protect you from on-coming traffic that arrives after you. It reminds me of the paving they've done on the insides of a number of ovals over here. There have been multiple incidents where a driver has powered most, if not all, of the way into the inside wall on that pavement. Grass at least would have prevented them from accelerating as much before they hit, and maybe they would have spun and dissipated more energy before the hit with that lower-grip surface.

And no, paved run-offs will NOT prevent yellows here in the States as much as many of you are thinking. If an extraction vehicle is deployed over here, EXPECT a double yellow at start/finish, period! If you want to help that situation, have the gravel traps start a bit further back, so that you actually have a grass verge if somebody goes just a little wide. There will be an automatic penalty, but they won't be beached.

[werner]

Originally Posted by wewantourdarbyback

Pardon? If you read what I have written you'll see I said the barriers need to be investigated to see if we can make them safer at the same distance.

If you drive too close to a barrier you hit it, it causes damage but is avoidable, however if you can avoid crossing the white lines on the Mulsanne while coming out of the chicanes then you have somehow invented a levitating car.

If there is no way to avoid something on a track, then it shouldn't be able to create a situation where the car is suddenly out of control.

The barriers should remain the same distance, but should be made safer.

Offcourse I don't argue that barriers, whereever they are placed, must be as safe as possible. But to oppose moving barriers in advance is wrong imo.

Imo the painted lines on the track are more essential to Le Mans. It is a great tribute to the fact that in the LM24 the great roadcars of today, and the technology for the roadcars of tomorrow are tested on what for a large part is a real road. And the differing levels of grip that they produce are an extra challenge for the drivers, as do the changes of tarmac from the road to the racetrack. It is ok that it will cause a few extra spins. There is only a problem if the spinning car hits an object at speed.
If you want to avoid spins, go race on a track with less corners. Dragracing. I know I wouldn't watch that though

[werner]

Originally Posted by Purist

Werner, having barriers right there DOES have a psychological impact on the drivers, and so, yes, it does impact the "challenge" of the circuit, if you will. It also has a direct influence in some areas, because it won't be race control having to make an arbitrary, subjective call, but rather, the laws of physics providing an unyielding answer to whatever you've done, and those laws do NOT play favorites. (True equality can be a real ***** sometimes.)

If that psychological impact is 'fear', wich would only be natural, I'd rather live without it. I also think that respecting the tracklimits is a problem in todays racing, but has more to do with the question wheater or not you must pave run-off area's.

Originally Posted by Purist

BTW, a guy could spin after catching some of that paint, not hit the barriers, but still result in injury as another car comes along and nails him in the middle of the track.

That might be true, but the chances are greatly diminisched if there are no barriers around to bounce the car back on the track. The crash of Mackowiecki is a great example of this issue.

I agree mostly with your other statements.

[TWRv12]

Originally Posted by Purist

BTW, a guy could spin after catching some of that paint, not hit the barriers, but still result in injury as another car comes along and nails him in the middle of the track

Its not just the track that needs looking at.

Doubt safety package is as good as it could be on GT cars. NASCAR, V8SC and V8ST are probably better in some regards.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by Purist

Gravel, when done properly, is VERY effective at arresting vehicles, which is what you need. Tarmac is NOT that effective, and also just creates a mess for policing the track boundaries.

Firstly, I don't want to see any more paving at Le Mans and I generally don't like those paved run-offs, but you ignored one thing: gravel is pretty good at helping cars to flip, unlike tarmac. And there just seems to be pretty big conflict with your statement and what is now the reality. You'd think if the tarmac wasn't more effective in most cases, they wouldn't have ruined pretty much every GP-level track with them in Europe ("ruined" = safer but less of a track).

[nkoske]

I was at Monza last year and took a picture of their gravel.



Seems like they have it a little better.

How much money as been spent on broken bits of cars over the years? Probably could have replaced the gravel multiple times overs.

[Mal]

I dont really want to get involved until the accident reports are published - but - IF the tree was involved in the accident then this is unacceptable and clearly needs to be addressed in the future., whether by altering the barriers or moving the trees

[Coach Ep]

Another area that could look a bit different next year are the Porsche curves - and more specific the last left hander out of it. I´ve been marshaling there for a couple of years and there´s at least one (heavy) crash, this year it was Tony Burgess´#30 HVM-Status Lola.

With the new, extra kart track now completed and the new pit building for the existing kart track still in construction, I fully expect the old building to be torn down, creating room for the safety fence and wall to be moved back by at least 10 yards. The old pit building was already deemed to ruinous to allow access for spectators on top of it this year.

[Osella]

where did this crash in 2005? http://www.racingsportscars.com/phot...-06-19-091.jpg

why I ask is, unless I'm making it up or imagined it, didn't it go sideways into a tree late in the race (possibly the last few minutes or so)?

I've answered my own question:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e....0%3B750%3B500

how on earth did this happen?

[Coach Ep]

Originally Posted by Osella

where did this crash in 2005? http://www.racingsportscars.com/phot...-06-19-091.jpg

why I ask is, unless I'm making it up or imagined it, didn't it go sideways into a tree late in the race (possibly the last few minutes or so)?

I've answered my own question:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e....0%3B750%3B500

how on earth did this happen?

Story is right there if you click on the link that the pic provides.