Extreme danger: The unfortunate truth in motorsport

The multi-car crash during the restart in the Formula 1 Tuscan Grand Prix has brought back the focus on racing safety. A minor error of judgement can cause a shower of carbon fibre bodywork and also possibly serious injuries.

Luckily, no driver was injured in the incident at the Mugello track in Italy on Sunday. The race stewards concluded that “the root cause of this incident was the inconsistent application of throttle and brake, from the final corner along the pit straight by the drivers”. The stewards also issued a warning to 12 drivers.

Basically, the back of the grid had started racing before the cars at the front did. And Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi, Haas’s Kevin Magnussen and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz were involved in the incident. The chain reaction that followed took out more cars.

The stewards also said that restraint should be exercised during restarts.

Last weekend’s incident in Mugello clearly shows that motorsport is always dangerous, despite the safety measures that are put in place. No matter how much safety is improved, there will always be accidents. That is the nature of the sport. The motor racing world recently remembered French Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert on the first anniversary of his death in a 2019 crash in Belgium that left everyone shocked.

Track racing is far safer these days and it is not like before when fire-resistant racing suits and halos (the ring above the driver in an F1 car to prevent objects falling on him) were absent. Back then, drivers put their lives at far greater risk than the present day.

MotoGP has had its share of incidents recently. Yamaha factory rider Maverick Vinales had to jump off his bike moving at nearly 230 Kmph in Austria because the brakes had failed. The Spaniard’s split-second decision to jump off the bike probably saved his life, considering that the machine was in pieces after it crashed into the air fence and went up in flames.

The Vinales incident was just a week after he and teammate Valentino Rossi were nearly taken out by the crashing motorbikes of Frenchman Johann Zarco (Ducati) and Italian Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha SRT) at the same venue. The two were involved in a crash and Zarco’s bike narrowly missed Vinales, while Morbidelli’s bike very nearly crashed into Rossi.

Later, Rossi admitted that he just did not see the bike coming at him. It was his lucky day but the narrow escape was enough to shake up the nine-time world champion. When he went back to the garage after the race was stopped, the expression on his face said it all. He was clearly reeling from the incident that could have cost him his life.

Following the Zarco-Morbidelli incident, the organisers made changes to the track at turn three, where the incident occurred. A wall was put up at the hairpin bend so that a bike that has gone off the track does not re-enter the track and cause an accident.

The stiff competition we are currently seeing in the MotoGP is probably the result of the unfortunate (and nasty) crash of defending world champion Marc Marquez in the opening round of the season in Spain, his home race. He is still recuperating from the crash at Jerez.

What could be done to prevent such accidents? Unfortunately, there isn’t a ‘solution’ for this. Any kind of accident could happen. Who could have predicted the crash at the restart of the F1 race or the incident involving Zarco and Morbidelli? Every incident is a learning process. Organisers and the promoters can do as much as they can and hope that there are no accidents. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the sport.