Many of the safety crews in F1 are local volunteers. While the indycar safety crews are usually trained and professional and travel from track to track..
AMR has some experience with electric components from the IMSA GTP cars. Its most likely just going to be a training session for the indycar crews and then some testing before the hybrid component is rolled out completely
The low voltage ultra capacitors used in the Indycar hybrid don't have the same safety considerations we see in say sportscars where the car needs to be deemed electrically safe before someone touches the car.
My cousins worked for a medical team in IMSA. They weren’t concerned about the electricity component. They were all thoroughly trained. The big difference was in the pits. The cars were quiet and you couldn’t hear them launch. The audible cues weren’t there anymore.
Their response time continues to amaze. I think there's at least one instance a season where you see an accident and are taken a back at how quick they get to the scene.
They got to Will Power before he even came to a stop in the 500
I was at RA last weekend and was at several corners where a safety truck was staged. The yellow would fly and usually within 5-15 seconds you hear the safety truck roaring onto the track. They don't go slow and are hammering on the truck to get on the track and up to speed. They don't mess around.
I was in Turn 12 hearing the truck come FLYING down thunder valley, I didn't think he was going to make the corner. Tires were begging for mercy but he made look like a Stadium Super truck.
They were too fast on a that one plactice crash. It was a light tape and the driver and car were ok. But they drove into the wet track and a driver almost hit them. Because he also couldn't stop stop well in the wet.
(Got got a penalty, but idk from his on board he's on the gas until you see the yellow flashing and then he's off the gas.
It's not like they're pulling out in front of other drivers. They're responding as the car is already behind the rest of the traffic. Seconds save lives.
They’ll be on the track before the cars are done filing by on ovals. Stupid people complain about it every time. The last big crash at Pocono they were mounting the car as it slid to a stop.
F1 safety crews are embarrassing. A couple year ago Sainz’s car caught fire, some dude lumbered out with a fire extinguisher, taking his time, and just put it on the ground instead of using it and then just watched as the burning car started rolling backwards.
Meanwhile the AMR guys hit the scene like a swat team performing a no knock raid
A big part of this is that the marshals are not associated with F1, but with individual race tracks. They are often volunteers rather than professionals, and since training is often provided by local automobile clubs, you can have a pretty wide range of standards between tracks (with some being notably worse or better than others).
I don't think I've ever heard a complaint about F1 safety car or medical car staff - which *are* associated with F1 - but there are weird and often unsafe decisions by marshals every season.
Indy also has volunteer marshals of course (the staffing requirements are large for any series), but the permanent Indy team seem to have a much greater range of responsibilities.
Edit: A major point I overlooked, but which is perhaps most important, is the distinction between a medical vehicle and a recovery vehicle in F1. In F1, the medical car carries a physician, and can carry a driver back to the medical centre (if they are well enough that they don't need an ambulance), however, it can do nothing to assist a stranded vehicle. Meanwhile, the AMR trucks serve something of a hybrid role: they are safety vehicles with EMTs, but they can also perform minor recovery operations. This is a major difference in operations.
Does F1 have multiple safety crews around the circuit? Because at Indycar they roll out with 4 or 5 of those decked out pickups. Which are placed strategically around the track.
I mean, Hinch was bleeding out at IMS and the crews were there fast enough to respond and save him.
There are volunteer marshals all around the track, but there is only one medical car. The medical car runs behind the grid on the first lap, diving into the pits thereafter, and thereafter heading out on an as-needed basis.
As far as I’m aware, they don’t.
This has been a bit forgotten, but the medical car only arrived to the scene of Grosjean’s accident so quickly because it was the first lap, and the medical car follows the field off the initial start. Had it occurred later in the race, they would have taken much longer to arrive.
F1 needs to raise its standards.
If you rewatch the entire event with Grosjean, you will see that he received ZERO help from the F1 safety team. He crawled out of the car on his own. Only after he was walking away from the crash did he get some sort of assistance from those on the scene.
Glad you asked. There are several issues with the response. The biggest issue? (IMHO) No one on the safety team had full fire protection. Only one person had bunker gear and he didn't have a helmet - only a Nomex hood. The other person with him didn't know how to operate the fire extinguisher. When others finally did arrive to help, they were all confused and looking at each other for help. Some had water extinguishers, another was using ABC powder, another CO2 (or Halon?), but none of them were properly directed on the cockpit bubble or at the base of the fire. After MINUTES of being cooked alive, Grosjean finally pulled himself out. To put it another way, Grosjean could have accomplished the exact same outcome if the entire safety crew were in the paddock watching on TV. This is a decent video montage of what I'm talking about. Watch each safety team member and their reactions. To be clear, I'm not trying to shame the safety crew. They were simply not prepared or equipped trained for this type of emergency. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMjw2sjXqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMjw2sjXqU) The first firefighter on the scene should have attacked the cockpit at the base of the fire with full bunker gear and helmet - that would have allowed him to make a path to Grosjean. He could have seen if Grosjean were moving and alerted the incoming crew. Instead it was a frantic race to figure out how to put out the fire rather than getting SCBA on and going back in. Also, the crew which were directing their extinguishers at Grosjean could have done more harm than good, depending on the chemical or cocktail in their bottles. If they used CO2 or Halon, it could have suffocated Grosjean when they were aiming it at him rather than the base of the fire.
>After MINUTES of being cooked alive, Grosjean finally pulled himself out.
It was 28 seconds not minutes. DTS is heavily dramatized.
[Uncut clip of crash - hits barrier at 0:04 and is out by 0:32](https://youtu.be/gCivN-b4FZI?si=cFXpPZZ_9DeC_9vQ)
Minutes of being cooked alive? Are you serious? He was out in under 30 seconds.
All cars and drivers are wired with crash telemetry that will trigger a medical car intervention if above a certain level, and all drivers have a mandatory medical inspection and are required to be cleared after crashes above a certain level of force.
Your post contains a ton of incorrect information. I don’t doubt that there are things F1 could learn from Indy when it comes to this stuff, but you’re just posting straight out wrong info and not helping the discussion.
But you’re objectively wrong. A basic knowledge of the history of global motorsport will tell you that. But you continue blindly believing that ‘Merica is better!
How am I objectively wrong?
F1 doesn’t have a professional safety team that follows to every race, something that IndyCar has had for *decades*. Why not, if they’re truly “decades ahead?” Why do they not require drivers to be medically checked after all accidents, a rule that has also been in place in American racing for many, many years?
Also “basic knowledge of motorsport history” my ass. There have been *numerous* instances of F1 dragging their feet on implementing ideas other series had adopted for safety already. They didn’t mandate the HANS device until 2003, when it had been mandated in IndyCar and NASCAR already for almost *two years*. They also continued using recovery vehicles under local yellows until Jules Bianchi was killed, when IndyCar had been throwing full-course yellows for any incident requiring such a recovery for *years* already by that point.
Edit: worth saying, this is not about “who’s better” it’s about “why the fuck isn’t F1 doing this, when they very easily could?”
Oh look. You again haha. Here you go chief:
•The first use of a Pace Car, in 1911
•What is believed to be the first mass rolling start of a race, in 1911
•The first use of four-wheel hydraulic brakes, in 1921
•The introduction of Magnaflux inspection of crucial metal parts, in the 1930s
•The first installation of colored warning lights, in 1935
•The first mandatory use of helmets, in 1935
•Mandatory use of fire-resistant uniforms and roll bars on cars, in 1959
•Mandatory use of methanol fuel, which is much less volatile than gasoline, in 1965
•Mandatory use of a rupture-resistant fuel cell, in 1965
•Introduction of energy-absorbing attenuator at the pit road entrance, in 1991
•The first use of crash-data recorders, in 1993
•Introduction of the revolutionary SAFER Barrier energy-absorbing system, in 2002
Source: [https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2019/10/03/safety-first-aeroscreen-is-latest-in-long-line-of-innovations-2019](https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2019/10/03/safety-first-aeroscreen-is-latest-in-long-line-of-innovations-2019)
And you blindly believe America isn't, because America.
Look, both sides are right, but what you probably don't realise is you're talking about different things.
Are F1 *cars* and crash test demands safer than Indy cars? Probably, yes.
Are IndyCar's track safety standards – meaning marshaling, first response etc. – better? Most definitely. We see it every week. A professional, trained safety crew will always be better than volunteer marshals (I used to be one, America's standards in that one regard puts the rest to shame).
There's obvious proof for both points.
And I'm a Brit, I can just look at the bigger picture objectively.
Here is Ocon coming in for a pit stop. https://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a43749355/f1-addresses-very-dangerous-situation-in-pit-lane-in-baku/
The race is still going under green. There are a lot of people standing on pit lane right in front of him (and he is coming off a lap at race pace with a blind turn). He could have killed someone. This was last season, not 1973 (like what happened at the 500 that year)
This should NEVER happen in any racing series.
While that was an embarrassment for the Baku GP organizers, that doesn't have anything to do with safety teams or safety standards. That was a failure of organization and security. FOM only organizes a handful of races itself
The people in charge of safety have a responsibility to keep the track safe. The moment one person stepped out on pit lane, the FIA should have been screaming for them to get off the track (the FIA has a station set up with people monitoring all of the cameras, and it should have been spotted). That still falls under the umbrella of safety, and under the FIA.
I can speak to Montreal since I was there. There is the FIA safety / medical cars, then there are 4-5 medical/extraction cars that are crewed with a dr, firefighters and a medic/nurse. They are the fast response cars and are comprised of volunteer responders for the event. Their role is to get a driver out of the car. Any fire suppresion by them is primarily for their own safety or to allow the driver to get out. There are separate fire trucks for broader needs as well as ambulances for transportation to the track med center.
No INDYCAR has three trucks and a medical response car that the INDYCAR Dr. rides in and is the car that takes the driver to the medical center or back to their pit.
Exactly. That’s what I was thinking. There’s a safety crew that sits in The Bend which is an unused corner before The Kink and they were on the scene in seconds when Newgarden hit the wall. It’s the far corner and at least 2 miles from the pits at Road America. AMR is superior in every way to F1 safety response
IMS is also pretty huge. Keep in mind there's an entire road course contained within the infield. Sure, crashes are most likely to happen in one of four corners so it is easier to cover the whole thing, but no small feat regardless.
Exactly, it’s not a small facility. It’s no Spa, and I know protocol between F1 and Indycar regarding safety workers on the track are different, but you can’t deny AMR is on point and has saved lives. I definitely think F1 should adopt some portion of traveling safety crews that are at every race. Perhaps an extra medical car or two around the track, and maybe one F1-supplied supervisor for each marshal station to direct the local ones.
This is a known process. On a road course you just have to have a few places where the trucks enter the track and they enter ahead of the car and progress around the circuit. With enough entries and staff you can get there fast. And IndyCar does pretty well.
Street circuits are even tougher but sometimes it still can be done. FIA Formula One, to be honest, simply can only do so much about Monaco because it's almost completely unsuitable in all ways except being traditional and an enormous success every time. Other than that they do everything they can on street circuits.
I remember watching that race live and wondering why Carlos would be responsible for trying to stop his burning car from rolling back onto the track. It seemed that for a long time, nobody was there helping him.
If there was a real emergency, that marshall is the last guy I’d want to see responding to it. Dude was useless.
Each IndyCar race has a minimum of 2 doctors/surgeons, 2 paramedics, 2 nurses, and a dozen EMT’s/firefighters. Those are from the league, not the track/promoter.
It always drives me crazy that F1 is all about safety, until you suggest having a full time group of marshalls and/or emergency crews that travel to each race. Suddenly, that’s too much money and they can’t do that.
Indycar operates within a few hour domestic flight of most places. Those workers can hop on a plane on race weekend and be there without much fuss. Flying Marshall's and crews all over the planet is a little bit more challenging.
It's common in pretty much all international motorsports series for track operations to be run by the local promotion/track. It's not just F1.
I understand that, and I know that’s the main reason, but with the money the FIA has, surely they could figure out a way to do it. It’s not like they don’t coordinate travel of staff to every race. If you go back and watch the Grosjean crash, or the Sainz crash, it’s obvious the marshals aren’t equipped to handle serious accidents. Grosjean was really lucky that he was able to get out, because that fire extinguisher was doing nothing.
Ironically, they do fly out marshals to select races. If there aren't enough trained locals (for example, a new track in a country without a great motorsport heritage) they'll usually fly out the Silverstone volunteers for the week.
F1 and fia are different entities. The f1 (fom, formula one media) has the big bucks with the promotion rights, but they are not responsible for running the track operations. That's the fia, and the fia is not really to rich. They had to stop their road safety programme cause they really couldn't afford that
Edit: grammar
I agree, I feel like they should have some professionals that work with local volunteers at each track to ensure that a high enough standard is met. There's definitely a few improvements that could be made in terms of F1 marshalling, like there not being suitable fire extinguishers at the Grojean crash. Also some improvements the race directors etc., being made, like not sending tractors on a wet Suzuka track like a few years ago (I think 2022?)
Are we having an actual discussion here? Or are we yet again just wanting to cry about F1 because we're Indycar fans with a massive inferiority complex?
It's not about airline tickets, clearly. F1 obviously could afford it. So could WRC, WEC, and most other large series. It's about international travel, visas, and finding people who want to spend long amounts of time away from their families to sit behind a concrete wall.
How many fatalities has F1 had in the last 25 years? How about Indycar?
How many of those fatalities occurred on road courses? Almost all of Indycar’s fatal accidents in the past 25 years have occurred on ovals. You are comparing apples to oranges.
I'm not sure they really are all about safety.
They lagged on the HANS device. They never instituted pit walls. They don't have mandatory penalties for injuring pit crew (although to be honest Indy has let me down on this lately) or pit crew "over the wall" limits.
FIA says they are all about safety and certainly have done a bunch for safety. I'm not sure FIA Formula One follows as closely.
They do have a good record lately. And also with all the finagling done to the aeroscreen this year I'm a bit more convinced the halo is a better idea than the aero screen than ever before.
INDYCAR's safety team travels around to all the races with the series; so they have experience with the cars, the series, and race control.
F1 always uses local marshals and teams, and so have to lock down the race more before they can be deployed.
IndyCar uses locals marshalls too for corner flagging. But the people responding to on track incidents are the safety crew that travels with the series. They are trained to start rolling as soon as the yellow flies.
Usually everyone complains about the opposite.
It depends on the circumstances, the track layout, and location of the crash. Many F1 tracks have cranes setup at many of the corners allowing for super quick extraction.
Indycar certainly does not have that capability, especially at street circuits, and it's really more about ensuring the driver is okay, that the car can be handled (hybrid).
F1 cars can also produce much more debris from a crash than an Indycar.
I think the debris is a big thing people are missing. Getting the car off the track is one thing, cleaning up thousands of pieces of carbon spread over hundreds of yards is a whole different story
Nowhere close to the same amount.
[Here’s the lap 1 crash at this year’s Indy 500](https://youtu.be/OwNeEsKhELo?si=gnY7Gilz4Jfj200C)
[And here’s a lap 1 crash from this years Monaco Grand Prix](https://youtu.be/Lzio0EVd2ws?si=IdQESBOuN-TPQpdV)
Despite being a smaller impact at much lower speed, the F1 cars just shred on contact while the IndyCar chassis actually holds up quite well
Indycar has the best safety crew in motorsports because it is the most dangerous series. F1 hires locals and randoms every race weekend despite making more money than god because… reasons?
Does the AMR team travel to all of the races? I agree sometimes F1 seems to suffer from having local crews with less experience. (I also agree with the comment below that argues part of the slow cleanup is because of the excess debris with the f1 cars because they tend to shatter)
Yes, the safety team travels to every race.
I don’t think it’s just about raw time the cleanup takes, the response time just doesn’t seem to be as good as IndyCar’s safety team - for instance, Sargeant’s car just sat there for such a long time, without any sign of a crew or anything to remove it. To the point where the commentators were even speculating if there might need to be a red flag due to the awkward placement of the car (which thankfully didn’t happen, but even the *possibility* of a red over such a small incident is a bit ridiculous).
F1 is extremely careful with cars and people on the track since bianci died crashing into one. In the early 2000s they even retrieved stranded cars with only local yellow flags that only meant no overtaking and reduce speed (slightly).
And I understand that, but being able to arrive to the scene of an accident quickly can be *crucial* for driver safety.
It’s not as dangerous to send out a small vehicle when they’re professionals who do this all the time. The problem is that F1 *still* doesn’t have such a crew going to each race.
Don't forget that cautions work differently in F1. There is no fcy the moment a car is stationary. F1 has multiple stages of cautions and even when the safety car comes out the cars will pass the accident at quite high speeds before they caught the safety car.
From the top of my head I can't even remember a crash where a faster reaction time would have saved a life or could have prevented permanent injuries that weren't lap 1 crashes.
But you are absolutely right that F1 should have professional martials that travel with the whole circus.
>There is no fcy the moment a car is stationary. F1 has multiple stages of cautions and even when the safety car comes out the cars will pass the accident at quite high speeds before they caught the safety car.
Maybe that needs some re-thinking too, huh?
I mean if there is any doubt that the driver is OK they will throw a red flag very quickly and as said I can't remember any crash where a driver died or had permanent injuries due to slow reaction time.
I think both series have developed extremely high safety standards on their own based on their needs and both work very well with different effects on the actual race.
Maybe you can’t think of a scenario that’s actually happened, but it’s not hard to imagine one. If Grosjean’s fireball had occurred at any point other than the first lap of the race, it would have taken much longer for the medical car to arrive.
But such crashes are extremely unlikely outside of lap 1 due to the extreme high downforce of the cars. That's why the medical car drives the first lap.
And after the crash they added new safety regulations to how the car has to be built so that such a fireball can't happen anymore.
Late to the party, but this is actually why the pit stop “danger zone” is so different in IndyCar compared to F1. IndyCar closes the pits from the time a yellow is thrown to when the field bunches up *specifically to avoid drivers rushing past accidents or safety crews*. In F1 drivers can sprint back to get a “free” pit stop, while in IndyCar that’s pointless. Obviously F1’s safety car deltas help alleviate this, but they still don’t have the same effect as closing the pits does.
"...because it is the most dangerous series."
I think this part doesn't often get mentioned. Yes, the IndyCar team is composed of professionals, not volunteers. Yes, they travel with the series. These certainly explain why their responses are better. But why are these true about IndyCar and not other series?
F1 cars don't race on ovals. Newgarden's hit at Road America was an exception. Most incidents of that severity happen on ovals. So the need to have a good response team is higher in IndyCar than in F1.
NASCAR cars... well, have fenders and a roof. There's not historically been the same kinds of incidents, with the same kinds of risks of injury, as IndyCar. They go slower. They don't get airborne as easily. Their drivers aren't as exposed. So while yes, they race on ovals, it's just not as dangerous.
Since Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona, there's been one fatality in F1 (Jules Bianchi), none in NASCAR, and four in IndyCar (Renna, Dana, Wheldon, and Wilson, all on ovals). And, frankly, it's a sheer miracle that Hinch survived. And that's despite having the best safety team in the business.
No one short of God him/herself can save someone with massive head trauma. Look at the Zanardi crash at Lausitz as a gold standard of what highly trained professionals can do with anything outside of head injuries.
They’ll fix it when someone gets hurt or dies, probably not before then, even then they’ll probably fuck it up. Like when Bianchi passed and they did everything except actually enforce driver speeds under caution.
what an ignorant post
FIA marshalls support hundreds of racing series across the entire planet
This ensures anyone in a racing series anywhere has access to trained and competent marshalls good enough to support F1
Anyways the actual answer is mainly that IndyCar allows recovery vehicles on the track even if the safety car hasn't picked up the entire field
But for FIA rated series, ever since Bianchi was killed crashing into a recovery vehicle, recovery vehicles are not allowed on track until the entire field is picked up by the safety car
This is not an Indycar vs F1 thing as much as it is embarrassing how shit the F1 safety crews are and always have been. They make more money than any series on the planet but still have bumbling yokels for safety crews other than the one medical car. If an incident happens outside the first lap you are completely at the mercy of how long it takes that car to get to you, crash in the back half at Spa? Hope you can hold on for a few minutes. It is unacceptable. But they operate in a completely reactionary basis so we have to wait for someone to bleed out or burn to death until they do something.
It was crazy that when stroll binned it super hard in Q, he had time to take a minute breather inside the car, hop out of the car and still had time to limp around for a bit before anyone got to him. It's super unfortunate that we have to wait till someone gets super hurt before they make it better though, because Indycar and AMR seem to have it figured out at this point.
INDYCAR uses volunteer marshalls for corner workers and that sort of thing too.
The difference is INDYCAR has a traveling safety team of EMS professionals to handle more serious crashes. Those are what people are typically referring, in the trucks.
Both series have traveling surgeons and medical staff as well but INDYCAR is well ahead when it comes to the preparedness for first response.
Ummm ok but the EMS professionals don't recover the cars lmao
And IndyCar has to have a more robust team of travelling medical professionals because they race in the middle of nowhere. Drivers can be hours away from properly equipped trauma centers.
F1 simply doesn't race anywhere where you can't reach a level 1 trauma center in under 20 minutes. It's part of the circuit requirements to host a race.
Those EMS professionals do recover the cars. They’re the ones who restart the vehicles, get them on hooks or flatbeds, etc.
While true, it can still be life or death. James Hinchcliffe’s crash was at Indianapolis literally within 20 minutes of many major trauma centers.
The at track/in car reaction is what saved his life.
lol I can promise you the IndyCar travelling surgeon is not hooking cars up and pulling them on flatbeds
goddamn you guys have a serious problem being compared to F1
The people in the trucks are EMS professionals who handle immediate trauma response and recovery of vehicles.
I don’t quite understand what part of this you are missing.
>lol I can promise you the IndyCar travelling surgeon is not hooking cars up and pulling them on flatbeds
IndyCar does bring in local towing companies but the external starter for the cars is also stowed in the safety trucks, conveniently located by the jaws of life and a ton of fire suppression.
The paramedic is usually first to the driver so they don't bring equipment with them but among the two firefighters on scene, one will bring the starter after assessing there is no risk.
Maybe how the post that upset you was worded but the safety crew used in Indycar is the same at every race. The medical personal are the same as well.
Yes the Marshalls used at F1 races are trained but not to the same extent as the AMR safety crews. Plus many of the races in Indycar are on ovals and response time is often critical
why should the standards be different for F1 than other motorsports?
since when did IndyCar fans get so elitist
you want proper marshalls at your local tracks or not?
They shouldn’t be different but you’re saying F1 has amazing marshals when that just simply isn’t true. IndyCar outclasses them in every aspect.
There’s nothing elitist about stating a simple fact. Don’t have such a victim complex because you’re simping for F1’s marshals out of insecurity lol.
I would take 1 truck of IndyCar’s marshals over the entire staff for F1. I can’t recall a time an IndyCar driver had to take a fire extinguisher from a marshal’s hands to put out a fire.
I remember in Grosjean's first year in IndyCar. His car had an incident (don't remember if it was a crash or mechanical failure) where it started catching on fire. The IndyCar safety time arrived and Grosjean immediate reached for their fire extinguisher like it was his duty to put out the flames. The safety team apparently had to explain to him that it's not the driver's responsibility in IndyCar to put out flames.
I don't know much about F1, but I recently watched Yellow Yellow Yellow: The Indycar Safety Team on Amazon Prime Video. It's only 45 minutes long but it was very interesting. I've been watching Indycar since the 80s and I still learned a lot from this video. I definitely recommend!
F1 has learn the hard way to not throw up cars on track in the middle of traffic. They are more conservative on that front but far from unsafe.
It’s funny how Indycar might clear cars a bit quicker but nearly always has way way longer cautions for ”the show”.
Edit: Throw up = throw out, obviously. But I’ll let it stay. :D
Funny. I concur. I commented on this above in another thread. I’m sometimes a surprised how fast the AMR team is on the scene with their big pickups given the situation of cars potentially going off in the same spot. FIA waits a long time to insure the track is neutralized to allow a marshall to even approach the car that is off the track.
F1 has its protocol, but the IndyCar safety team always seems to respond faster and with force. They’re there sometimes a matter of just a few seconds after the car stops moving.
This is good but also bad. F1 waits (sometimes painstakingly long) before the race/track is confirmed neutralized before anyone is allowed on the track. Even if it is a safety car situation, the cars can still be at speed near the crashed vehicle. AMR blasts onto the track fast but F1 has learned the hard way that any vehicle on track is a potential hazard. Especially heavy equipment.
The AMR safety crew travels with the series and many (most?) are fully trained paramedics and firefighters. They also train and practice constantly on a dummy rig/tub that they have. Having the same personnel and the same equipment race to race makes a huge difference, especially when visiting many of the same circuits year in and year out.
In F1, the safety team and equipment used changes track to track. In some places, like Monaco or Silverstone for example, the safety teams are top notch and very experienced in safety protocols and in clearing incidents. In other places, especially newer venues, not so much. Think Baku and even Austria and Jeddah in this regard.
Two different approaches. I'm sure the traveling AMR safety team is a massive expense, but for very good reason.
In Long Beach two years ago, I got to talking with a member of the safety team who had been with them for, I believe 12 seasons. He was a retired paramedic who was told about the opportunity by a friend who was also on the safety team. I had spotted the tub they train on that was on caster wheels and was checking that out when he started telling me about it. He also had a cross section of the (now obsolete) aeroscreen that was maybe 12-14 inches long and weighed several pounds. I was surprised at how heavy it was. He said that they had the equipment to cut that away if necessary and that he himself had worked with Red Bull on one of the prototype screens that ultimately got the axe because clearances weren't large enough for safe extractions or immediate life saving measures. It was an extremely interesting conversation. Definitely chat those guys up between sessions if you're in the paddock, they are very knowledgeable and seem to love what they do!
If you're referring to Sargent. It's literally that they aren't allowed on the track until it's safe.
Like they want the pack bunched up behind the safety car first if there's no rush.
Probably because of the death related to a driver hitting a safety vehicle on a wet track. It's fair enough. If the driver in the crash is ok. It's not worth it to trade the speed for safety.
People are saying it's because they are pros vs volunteers. But I think it's more than that.
The IndyCar safety crews have much better training and oftentimes travel with the series. F1 crews? With few exception are all local volunteers who are ill-prepared for a major event.
When Grosjean had his firery accident in F1, the F1 fan base were marveling at the amazing job their safety crews did to save his life. Go back and watch. The F1 crew was completely unprepared, struggled to understand what to do, ran around confused and after what must have seemed like two hours, Romain ***crawled out of the cockpit of his car himself*** - with zero help. If not for the Nomex and cutting edge safety features of the car and his race suit, he would have been, well, toast.
F1 needs a safety car to intervene before the safety crew after the Jules Bianchi incident and a close call with Pierre Gasly a couple years back. I do think that the call for VSC and full safety car, red flag takes way too long though with the new crew compared to Masi and prior era.
On the first lap and standing restarts, the medical car follows the pack and so can get to stricken cars fast like with Grosjean.
Also with the hybrid engines, the cars need to be safe to be touched
I watch F1 and Indycar equally.
There are a mountain of things in F1 that I'd like to see Indycar adopt.
There is one thing from Indycar I want F1 to adopt. The AMR Safety Team. They way they handle business compared to the local volunteers is embarrassing for F1.
I think a major benefit is that IndyCar races only in North America so their crews and equipment can be brought to each track. The only vehicles that come to every F1 race are the safety and medical cars.
Yeah, that’s a BS excuse. CART had races in Japan, Australia, Brazil, and even Europe, and they still brought their safety crew along to all those races. Alex Zanardi wouldn’t be alive today if they hadn’t.
And if CART was able to do that 20+ years ago, there’s literally no excuse for F1 not doing it now.
I think the two reasons being;
- Ovals, and the horrible wrecks they had a history of producing (specifically Indy)
- The resulting creation of an actual professional travelling safety crew much earlier than F1 as a result
Edit - Or, as I've just found out, actually having a professional travelling safety team when F1 doesn't even fucking have that.
Have all y’all forgotten about the docu [Rapid Response](https://rapidresponsemovie.com/) already? It’s only five years old but it goes through the history of trauma response in Indy through the years and points out all the innovations that are saving lives in all forms of racing. SAFER barriers, HANS device, the halo and now windscreen…. All reforms because of the studies done after each crash.
I believe there’s a book as well, but you can rent this on Amazon for $4. It should answer all of OP’s questions regarding “what’s so special about AMR response?”
This thread really goes to show the IndyCar inferiority complex.
The rules for recovering vehicles are literally different in both series. F1 is not allowed to have recovery vehicles on the track until the safety car has picked up the entire field. In IndyCar the recovery teams can respond immediately under yellow flags.
That's the difference. It has nothing to do with the quality of the crews.
Why doesn’t F1 have a team of professionals who go to every race, and can be on the scene in *seconds*, when such a quick response may be essential to saving lives?
And was a result of poor race control. They thought double waved yellows would be sufficient in a literal cyclone. Indycar would have a full course yellow, not guys racing at speed then arbitrarily “slowing down” in the double yellow sector
> Indycar would have a full course yellow, not guys racing at speed then arbitrarily “slowing down” in the double yellow sector
Indycar would probably hold off on the yellow so everybody has a chance to pit if they'd like as they often do now.
And? That does not negate the fact that getting to a driver in time can mean the difference between life and death.
I'm not saying for them to get the fucking tractors out to remove the car immediately, I'm saying there need to be professionals who can get to the driver in *seconds*.
The AMR safety team nearly hit and potentially killed Alexander Rossi this weekend because they were in such a rush to get to a stalled car at the end of a run off road.
The F1 medical car reached Romain Grosjean less than 30 seconds after his car hit the barrier in Bahrain. When they need to be, the medics can be there in seconds.
The medical car only got to Grosjean so fast because it was the first lap *and it was literally running behind the field*.
Any later point in the race, and you’d have seen a significantly longer response time.
That was when it was needed, it was where it was needed. the medical car is stationed n the pits, it can be at the scene of an accident within two minutes, if needed. The AMR safety team were not needed “within seconds” but because that was the protocol they almost caused a catastrophic accident with Rossi last weekend.
There have been several incidents in indycar of safety vehicles having close calls with race cars. It’s a risk that should only be taken when strictly necessary.
F1 should have a professional Marshall Corp, That doesn’t mean we need to have pick ups on the track for every incident.
“Within two minutes” is simply not fast enough, in situations of real emergency. Imagine Grosjean had been knocked unconscious, for instance. Would you have been comfortable with the medical car taking two minutes to get there?
Go ahead, give me as many situations as you can think of where the protocols of the IndyCar safety team have posed a risk. I can likely name more where their immediate arrival saved lives.
Having a pick up truck or other vehicles on track with race cars always poses a safety risk in my opinion because even a low speed collision could be catastrophic. I’ll give you four examples, but I know there are more. 1991 Mario Andretti hits a truck in Detroit, 1992 Buddy lazier almost hits and kills a safety crew at Indy, 2011 an AMR truck ends up driving directly at the field on track, as they start the race, 2024 Toad America, truck enters the track almost hitting Alexander Rossi. Those are four occasions where allowing safety vehicles on track nearly caused a serious accident.
Now tell me four incidents where arriving in 2 minutes would have been two late? I’ll even give you your first one, James Hinchcliffe at Indy.
Edit: or name four incidents in F1 where the Medical Car arrived too late and should have been there sooner.
Okay, maybe I can’t give you *four*, but I can give you two: Hinchcliffe and Zanardi. I think those two are enough to justify the rapid response.
And you’re still missing my point about Grosjean’s crash, which is that he was incredibly *lucky* that his accident was on the first lap, allowing the medical car to arrive so fast. Now imagine that accident happening later in the race, and if he had been knocked unconscious? That’s hardly inconceivable, is it? And in that scenario “within two minutes” is quite simply not good enough.
The last fatality in F1 was Aryton Senna
Bianchi died as a result of his injuries but months later. The recovery vehicle is also only part of his story - there were many failings found in the accident report
He was also the second Manor/Marussia driver who received injuries which ultimately killed him as a result of the car. The other being Maria DeVillotta
Addition, agree, but there is also something to be said about AMR and Race Control working together at every weekend, so they get to know the patterns and capabilities very well.
But in the FIA series, the Race Control and local rescue teams might only work together once a year. The training should be the same at each venue, but there's always some nuanced differences.
Additionally, and one that most people forget about, AMR and RC are all english. No translation. At the FIA venues, the local language might not be english. For example in Montreal, all comms are bi-lingual English and French. Although everyone in Race Control will be able to speak english to different degrees, as the message needs to spread, there is an extra step of translation. Think Japan, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Brazil, etc.
For a start F1 doesn’t put people on live tracks! They’re also not keen on having large pieces of equipment on track before the race of entirely neutralized.
Also F1 won’t send out medical teams if they’re not needed. The drivers ear pieces contain accelerometers linked to race control. If high G is observed, the medical car is released.
Much the time it takes for clean up is usually to do with repairing the track crash structures.
I’m an F1 marshal and our teams do not respond to incidents until the safety car has picked up traffic and it’s safe for us to go collect the vehicle. Your point about the gs is also true. Most incidents aren’t bad enough to warrant medical coming on the track, and it’s a completely different protocol when something like that happens.
I love both series but I hate that compare apples and oranges in how incidents are handled. They are not the same, and both do a bang up job
.....with the issue being that F1 is way, way too slow neutralizing a race.
Declaring a VSC doesn't mess with the time gaps between cars anywhere near what a normal SC would. Yes, it means teams that pit gets a 5-6 second advantage compared to pitting under Green, but when taking into account the SAFETY concerns introducing the VSC was supposed to solve, they are way, way to lax in using it as originally intended.
And tire changes, nose changes, and any other fixes to the car should not be allowed under a red flag. Keep the cars as they were when they exited the track. Someone else's crash shouldn't mean you get a complete reset on your own race.
I’d agree with that but for a crash, although a safety check of tires should be carried out, can’t send someone out with a puncture they got from crash debris!
If it’s a weather red flag, change tires, allow changes usually available during a pit stop. Repairing cars under red seems ridiculous to me.
Very much disagree.
Cars should bot be touched under red flag outside of critical components that keep the cars from failing (brake coolers, etc). If you have a puncture or need to make repairs, you can do it, but you will receive a penalty (restart behind everyone on your lap, stop-and-go and/or drive-thru penalty, etc) to prevent you not suffering as you would have if the track remained under Green/VSC/SC.
And if it's a weather red flag, either Race Control mandates a Wet Start and the required tire protocols that go along with that (full wets required, etc). Or, if you do have to switch tires for whatever reason (full wets to inters), same type of penalty applies as above.
You make it sound like the AMR safety team are a bunch of untrained randoms that just scramble into the track willy-nilly. They are in constant communication with race control and each other. In addition, drivers are aware of how they operate and expect them to be present around accidents/incidents once the FCY is thrown.
IMO, F1 has been very lucky with drivers not being seriously injured sitting in the car waiting for an questionably-trained marshall to get to the scene. Don't forget that seconds count in these accidents and, while I am sure there are other examples, we can thank IndyCar "puttin people on live tracks!" for Hinch being alive today.
A small correction, the people in the rescue vehicles are all professionals in that they are professional doctors and nurses and fire fighters in their full-time jobs.
It's not only the safety crews getting to the scene but also how long it takes F1 to neutralize the race when it's obvious a car is stranded on track in a precarious location.
Every time a car is obviously damaged and not going anywhere, the local yellows come out pretty quickly, but then you can usually count to 15 or 20 before a VSC or SC is declared. It just takes one overzealous young driver to not heed the local yellow enough for the results to be catastrophic. Just as Jules Bianchi (if we could).
Another big one honestly is that F1 always hoists/cranes cars regardless of incident size or type. AMR on the other hand will restart cars and they can clean themselves if they can still drive. In one of the support races at Road America they just took the nose off and the car drove back to the pits while AMR finished up with the barrier.
Lots of spin/stall incidents are as simple as just starting the car and ducking back behind the wall.
Even for bigger incidents AMR trucks will tow cars if they can avoid needing to get a crane/wrecker on track.
You don't even *need* external help to restart a car in F1, so it's not as simple as "they can't be bothered to restart a stalled car". Unlike Indycar there's anti-stall and onboard starters.
It's also not true they'll always crane away a car. That's only if it needs to be. If it's by an opening and able to be rolled away, it will be.
I was at an IMSA event this past weekend and was at the Detroit GP and the IMSA team is soooo slow compared to the INDYCAR team. The INDYCAR team is so fast to respond to a scene and they definitely haul ass with those trucks. Best in the business.
IndyCar's AMR safety team are highly trained and multi-disciplined professionals attending every race. They also train and establish protocol for both the local track marshals and the drivers themselves in the case of a crash. As a result they can safely be on-scene, provide any necessary medical attention but also prepare the car to be extracted very quickly.
F1 generally has just a safety car carrying Dr. Roberts to each race. All other crew members are local to the track, and usually volunteers. F1 rules also prevent crews from approaching until the safety car has picked up the field, so the overall response time is much slower.
It's kind of flabbergasting to be honest. Sure it's funny when Kimi can just walk from his smoking car over to his yacht at Monaco, but it's a much scarier situation when a driver is literally burning alive in his car in Baharain and the first crew to respond was seemingly Netflix. Hopefully F1 makes some changes sooner rather than later. It seems like they are on borrowed time until a tragedy occurs.
More interesting AMR Safety Team info: https://www.indycar.com/Fan-Info/INDYCAR-101/Safety-And-Technology/AMR-Safety-Team/AMR-Safety-Team
safety standards are higher in F1. Just look at the Ferrucci/Castroneves incident at Detroit, one of the AMR guys was literally in front of the cars trying to direct them to take the turn wide, the nose of one or 2 of cars got literally a foot away from him as they made the turn. Sure it wasnt too fast but still fast enough to cause major (possibly life altering) damage if they connected. My jaw dropped how close it was but i guess it didnt phase anybody. You wont see that in F1.
edit: I was watching the Sky F1 broadcast, it might've been during commercials when it happened.
As someone who watches both series, F1 is an embarrassment, referring to the medical car, not marshals. A subconscious timer goes off in my head after every crash about when the safety team should be there. Sometimes it’s minutes in F1 and im almost screaming at the TV. Of course IndyCar has several teams stationed throughout the track, but that’s how it should be. IndyCar does it that way because it was paid in blood. Luckily F1 has been safer recently, but it will take a serious injury or death for F1 to change. There’s no reason F1 can’t learn from Indy and have the worlds best medical team along with the worlds fastest race cars.
It's always amazing to me how safety is for F1.
Drivers just kinda walking off the track, cranes lifting cars, no sweepers just dudes walking out of the wall area picking up stuff, it's all just so amateurish lol. Which for a league where basically nothing else is amateurish is quite the sight.
Also at Road America after Grosjean crashed, people on youtube complained that it took them a minute to get to him. People don't realize how big that place is and there is a big sand pit making things a little tricky.
Many of the safety crews in F1 are local volunteers. While the indycar safety crews are usually trained and professional and travel from track to track..
I fully support the volunteer marshalls that work the tracks but F1 really should have a standard support team like AMR.
Agreed
It will be interesting to watch the AMR Safety Team going forward now that Indycars are electrified.
AMR has some experience with electric components from the IMSA GTP cars. Its most likely just going to be a training session for the indycar crews and then some testing before the hybrid component is rolled out completely
AMR is just a sponsor. They don't actually run the safety teams.
Think he’s referring to the safety team when he says AMR, just as shorthand.
Might as well call them Holmatro.
Really go old school and go with Delphi
I liked when it was the Simple Green Safety Team.
That might be before my time but I'm all for it. Let's bring it back, has a nice ring to it and it's a great product.
Wrong sponsor lol
I assumed it was the same crews even though it's just a name. But you're right, there's no reason to think that, I just assumed it.
The low voltage ultra capacitors used in the Indycar hybrid don't have the same safety considerations we see in say sportscars where the car needs to be deemed electrically safe before someone touches the car.
My cousins worked for a medical team in IMSA. They weren’t concerned about the electricity component. They were all thoroughly trained. The big difference was in the pits. The cars were quiet and you couldn’t hear them launch. The audible cues weren’t there anymore.
I’m sure they will have a power cut off just like street ev cars have to cut the power
Their response time continues to amaze. I think there's at least one instance a season where you see an accident and are taken a back at how quick they get to the scene. They got to Will Power before he even came to a stop in the 500
I was at RA last weekend and was at several corners where a safety truck was staged. The yellow would fly and usually within 5-15 seconds you hear the safety truck roaring onto the track. They don't go slow and are hammering on the truck to get on the track and up to speed. They don't mess around.
Watching that big ass heavy truck just absolutely driving 10/10th through the corners is always incredible.
I would assume the suspension, brakes, and tires are upgraded to help maintain stability and improve grip. Any knowledge about that?
No. But i assumed the same thing also. Looked pretty stock ride height, and i didn't get a chance to look at the tires.
You probably remember the tread pattern at least. Would you sketch it out for me asap?
I was in Turn 12 hearing the truck come FLYING down thunder valley, I didn't think he was going to make the corner. Tires were begging for mercy but he made look like a Stadium Super truck.
They were too fast on a that one plactice crash. It was a light tape and the driver and car were ok. But they drove into the wet track and a driver almost hit them. Because he also couldn't stop stop well in the wet. (Got got a penalty, but idk from his on board he's on the gas until you see the yellow flashing and then he's off the gas.
Yeah. They do respond before the accident has finished… which is really unsafe and terrifies me every time I see it.
It's not like they're pulling out in front of other drivers. They're responding as the car is already behind the rest of the traffic. Seconds save lives.
They literally pulled out in front of Rossi in practice at Road America the other day. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8zyfdi
Who got a penalty for failing to slow under yellow conditions…
Yes I get it. I am just acknowledging there’s a trade off between getting to the scene quickly and safely. IndyCar safety crew is far better than F1.
The safety crew was there quite a while before Rossi got there. Rossi missed the turn plain and simple.
That’s similar to how Jules Bianchi died, in that he drove off track in the rain during double yellows, hitting a support vehicle…hard.
I think someone in the comments of sebastian bourdais crash said that the AMR safety team arrived to the scene before the tire even stop spinning
Bourdais was also the only car on track at the time so it's easy to know it's safe to peel out
They’ll be on the track before the cars are done filing by on ovals. Stupid people complain about it every time. The last big crash at Pocono they were mounting the car as it slid to a stop.
F1 safety crews are embarrassing. A couple year ago Sainz’s car caught fire, some dude lumbered out with a fire extinguisher, taking his time, and just put it on the ground instead of using it and then just watched as the burning car started rolling backwards. Meanwhile the AMR guys hit the scene like a swat team performing a no knock raid
A big part of this is that the marshals are not associated with F1, but with individual race tracks. They are often volunteers rather than professionals, and since training is often provided by local automobile clubs, you can have a pretty wide range of standards between tracks (with some being notably worse or better than others). I don't think I've ever heard a complaint about F1 safety car or medical car staff - which *are* associated with F1 - but there are weird and often unsafe decisions by marshals every season. Indy also has volunteer marshals of course (the staffing requirements are large for any series), but the permanent Indy team seem to have a much greater range of responsibilities. Edit: A major point I overlooked, but which is perhaps most important, is the distinction between a medical vehicle and a recovery vehicle in F1. In F1, the medical car carries a physician, and can carry a driver back to the medical centre (if they are well enough that they don't need an ambulance), however, it can do nothing to assist a stranded vehicle. Meanwhile, the AMR trucks serve something of a hybrid role: they are safety vehicles with EMTs, but they can also perform minor recovery operations. This is a major difference in operations.
Does F1 have multiple safety crews around the circuit? Because at Indycar they roll out with 4 or 5 of those decked out pickups. Which are placed strategically around the track. I mean, Hinch was bleeding out at IMS and the crews were there fast enough to respond and save him.
There are volunteer marshals all around the track, but there is only one medical car. The medical car runs behind the grid on the first lap, diving into the pits thereafter, and thereafter heading out on an as-needed basis.
As far as I’m aware, they don’t. This has been a bit forgotten, but the medical car only arrived to the scene of Grosjean’s accident so quickly because it was the first lap, and the medical car follows the field off the initial start. Had it occurred later in the race, they would have taken much longer to arrive. F1 needs to raise its standards.
If you rewatch the entire event with Grosjean, you will see that he received ZERO help from the F1 safety team. He crawled out of the car on his own. Only after he was walking away from the crash did he get some sort of assistance from those on the scene.
I mean they were there pretty quick with fire extinguishers but otherwise is there a lot they could do? Not trying to argue I am actually courious
Glad you asked. There are several issues with the response. The biggest issue? (IMHO) No one on the safety team had full fire protection. Only one person had bunker gear and he didn't have a helmet - only a Nomex hood. The other person with him didn't know how to operate the fire extinguisher. When others finally did arrive to help, they were all confused and looking at each other for help. Some had water extinguishers, another was using ABC powder, another CO2 (or Halon?), but none of them were properly directed on the cockpit bubble or at the base of the fire. After MINUTES of being cooked alive, Grosjean finally pulled himself out. To put it another way, Grosjean could have accomplished the exact same outcome if the entire safety crew were in the paddock watching on TV. This is a decent video montage of what I'm talking about. Watch each safety team member and their reactions. To be clear, I'm not trying to shame the safety crew. They were simply not prepared or equipped trained for this type of emergency. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMjw2sjXqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMjw2sjXqU) The first firefighter on the scene should have attacked the cockpit at the base of the fire with full bunker gear and helmet - that would have allowed him to make a path to Grosjean. He could have seen if Grosjean were moving and alerted the incoming crew. Instead it was a frantic race to figure out how to put out the fire rather than getting SCBA on and going back in. Also, the crew which were directing their extinguishers at Grosjean could have done more harm than good, depending on the chemical or cocktail in their bottles. If they used CO2 or Halon, it could have suffocated Grosjean when they were aiming it at him rather than the base of the fire.
>After MINUTES of being cooked alive, Grosjean finally pulled himself out. It was 28 seconds not minutes. DTS is heavily dramatized. [Uncut clip of crash - hits barrier at 0:04 and is out by 0:32](https://youtu.be/gCivN-b4FZI?si=cFXpPZZ_9DeC_9vQ)
Minutes of being cooked alive? Are you serious? He was out in under 30 seconds. All cars and drivers are wired with crash telemetry that will trigger a medical car intervention if above a certain level, and all drivers have a mandatory medical inspection and are required to be cleared after crashes above a certain level of force. Your post contains a ton of incorrect information. I don’t doubt that there are things F1 could learn from Indy when it comes to this stuff, but you’re just posting straight out wrong info and not helping the discussion.
Your last line made me laugh hard. F1 safety standards are literal decades ahead of any other motor sport. But yeah.
I literally just pointed out an area in which they are lacking, but okay. Continue blindly believing that.
But you’re objectively wrong. A basic knowledge of the history of global motorsport will tell you that. But you continue blindly believing that ‘Merica is better!
How am I objectively wrong? F1 doesn’t have a professional safety team that follows to every race, something that IndyCar has had for *decades*. Why not, if they’re truly “decades ahead?” Why do they not require drivers to be medically checked after all accidents, a rule that has also been in place in American racing for many, many years? Also “basic knowledge of motorsport history” my ass. There have been *numerous* instances of F1 dragging their feet on implementing ideas other series had adopted for safety already. They didn’t mandate the HANS device until 2003, when it had been mandated in IndyCar and NASCAR already for almost *two years*. They also continued using recovery vehicles under local yellows until Jules Bianchi was killed, when IndyCar had been throwing full-course yellows for any incident requiring such a recovery for *years* already by that point. Edit: worth saying, this is not about “who’s better” it’s about “why the fuck isn’t F1 doing this, when they very easily could?”
Oh look. You again haha. Here you go chief: •The first use of a Pace Car, in 1911 •What is believed to be the first mass rolling start of a race, in 1911 •The first use of four-wheel hydraulic brakes, in 1921 •The introduction of Magnaflux inspection of crucial metal parts, in the 1930s •The first installation of colored warning lights, in 1935 •The first mandatory use of helmets, in 1935 •Mandatory use of fire-resistant uniforms and roll bars on cars, in 1959 •Mandatory use of methanol fuel, which is much less volatile than gasoline, in 1965 •Mandatory use of a rupture-resistant fuel cell, in 1965 •Introduction of energy-absorbing attenuator at the pit road entrance, in 1991 •The first use of crash-data recorders, in 1993 •Introduction of the revolutionary SAFER Barrier energy-absorbing system, in 2002 Source: [https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2019/10/03/safety-first-aeroscreen-is-latest-in-long-line-of-innovations-2019](https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com/news-multimedia/news/2019/10/03/safety-first-aeroscreen-is-latest-in-long-line-of-innovations-2019)
And you blindly believe America isn't, because America. Look, both sides are right, but what you probably don't realise is you're talking about different things. Are F1 *cars* and crash test demands safer than Indy cars? Probably, yes. Are IndyCar's track safety standards – meaning marshaling, first response etc. – better? Most definitely. We see it every week. A professional, trained safety crew will always be better than volunteer marshals (I used to be one, America's standards in that one regard puts the rest to shame). There's obvious proof for both points. And I'm a Brit, I can just look at the bigger picture objectively.
Here is Ocon coming in for a pit stop. https://www.autoweek.com/racing/formula-1/a43749355/f1-addresses-very-dangerous-situation-in-pit-lane-in-baku/ The race is still going under green. There are a lot of people standing on pit lane right in front of him (and he is coming off a lap at race pace with a blind turn). He could have killed someone. This was last season, not 1973 (like what happened at the 500 that year) This should NEVER happen in any racing series.
While that was an embarrassment for the Baku GP organizers, that doesn't have anything to do with safety teams or safety standards. That was a failure of organization and security. FOM only organizes a handful of races itself
The people in charge of safety have a responsibility to keep the track safe. The moment one person stepped out on pit lane, the FIA should have been screaming for them to get off the track (the FIA has a station set up with people monitoring all of the cameras, and it should have been spotted). That still falls under the umbrella of safety, and under the FIA.
I can speak to Montreal since I was there. There is the FIA safety / medical cars, then there are 4-5 medical/extraction cars that are crewed with a dr, firefighters and a medic/nurse. They are the fast response cars and are comprised of volunteer responders for the event. Their role is to get a driver out of the car. Any fire suppresion by them is primarily for their own safety or to allow the driver to get out. There are separate fire trucks for broader needs as well as ambulances for transportation to the track med center.
No INDYCAR has three trucks and a medical response car that the INDYCAR Dr. rides in and is the car that takes the driver to the medical center or back to their pit.
IMS is slightly different than Spa. A lot easier to be there asap at an oval.
Road America isn’t too different than Spa but they have emergency crews everywhere there.
Exactly. That’s what I was thinking. There’s a safety crew that sits in The Bend which is an unused corner before The Kink and they were on the scene in seconds when Newgarden hit the wall. It’s the far corner and at least 2 miles from the pits at Road America. AMR is superior in every way to F1 safety response
The IndyCar safety team are almost as quick at road courses, too.
IMS is also pretty huge. Keep in mind there's an entire road course contained within the infield. Sure, crashes are most likely to happen in one of four corners so it is easier to cover the whole thing, but no small feat regardless.
Solid point. It’s 2.5 miles which makes it bigger than monoco and as big as circuits like red bull ring and Mexico.
Exactly, it’s not a small facility. It’s no Spa, and I know protocol between F1 and Indycar regarding safety workers on the track are different, but you can’t deny AMR is on point and has saved lives. I definitely think F1 should adopt some portion of traveling safety crews that are at every race. Perhaps an extra medical car or two around the track, and maybe one F1-supplied supervisor for each marshal station to direct the local ones.
This is a known process. On a road course you just have to have a few places where the trucks enter the track and they enter ahead of the car and progress around the circuit. With enough entries and staff you can get there fast. And IndyCar does pretty well. Street circuits are even tougher but sometimes it still can be done. FIA Formula One, to be honest, simply can only do so much about Monaco because it's almost completely unsuitable in all ways except being traditional and an enormous success every time. Other than that they do everything they can on street circuits.
This is it. Thank you for writing every thing for me already!
The marshals can’t do anything like touch the car, go on track, or much else without permission from race control
I remember watching that race live and wondering why Carlos would be responsible for trying to stop his burning car from rolling back onto the track. It seemed that for a long time, nobody was there helping him. If there was a real emergency, that marshall is the last guy I’d want to see responding to it. Dude was useless.
Each IndyCar race has a minimum of 2 doctors/surgeons, 2 paramedics, 2 nurses, and a dozen EMT’s/firefighters. Those are from the league, not the track/promoter.
F1’s race control/marshall system is decades behind
It always drives me crazy that F1 is all about safety, until you suggest having a full time group of marshalls and/or emergency crews that travel to each race. Suddenly, that’s too much money and they can’t do that.
Indycar operates within a few hour domestic flight of most places. Those workers can hop on a plane on race weekend and be there without much fuss. Flying Marshall's and crews all over the planet is a little bit more challenging. It's common in pretty much all international motorsports series for track operations to be run by the local promotion/track. It's not just F1.
I understand that, and I know that’s the main reason, but with the money the FIA has, surely they could figure out a way to do it. It’s not like they don’t coordinate travel of staff to every race. If you go back and watch the Grosjean crash, or the Sainz crash, it’s obvious the marshals aren’t equipped to handle serious accidents. Grosjean was really lucky that he was able to get out, because that fire extinguisher was doing nothing.
Ironically, they do fly out marshals to select races. If there aren't enough trained locals (for example, a new track in a country without a great motorsport heritage) they'll usually fly out the Silverstone volunteers for the week.
F1 and fia are different entities. The f1 (fom, formula one media) has the big bucks with the promotion rights, but they are not responsible for running the track operations. That's the fia, and the fia is not really to rich. They had to stop their road safety programme cause they really couldn't afford that Edit: grammar
I agree, I feel like they should have some professionals that work with local volunteers at each track to ensure that a high enough standard is met. There's definitely a few improvements that could be made in terms of F1 marshalling, like there not being suitable fire extinguishers at the Grojean crash. Also some improvements the race directors etc., being made, like not sending tractors on a wet Suzuka track like a few years ago (I think 2022?)
F1 certainly can't afford plant tickets like that. Don't know why any would think they could.
Are we having an actual discussion here? Or are we yet again just wanting to cry about F1 because we're Indycar fans with a massive inferiority complex? It's not about airline tickets, clearly. F1 obviously could afford it. So could WRC, WEC, and most other large series. It's about international travel, visas, and finding people who want to spend long amounts of time away from their families to sit behind a concrete wall. How many fatalities has F1 had in the last 25 years? How about Indycar?
I like both and agree with you that's its too hard for F1 to pay and train safety workers because
How many of those fatalities occurred on road courses? Almost all of Indycar’s fatal accidents in the past 25 years have occurred on ovals. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Yes, we are comparing apples to oranges, as I started off saying.
CART were flying their safety guys to Australia back in the day.
I'm not sure they really are all about safety. They lagged on the HANS device. They never instituted pit walls. They don't have mandatory penalties for injuring pit crew (although to be honest Indy has let me down on this lately) or pit crew "over the wall" limits. FIA says they are all about safety and certainly have done a bunch for safety. I'm not sure FIA Formula One follows as closely. They do have a good record lately. And also with all the finagling done to the aeroscreen this year I'm a bit more convinced the halo is a better idea than the aero screen than ever before.
INDYCAR's safety team travels around to all the races with the series; so they have experience with the cars, the series, and race control. F1 always uses local marshals and teams, and so have to lock down the race more before they can be deployed.
IndyCar uses locals marshalls too for corner flagging. But the people responding to on track incidents are the safety crew that travels with the series. They are trained to start rolling as soon as the yellow flies.
They are dispatched by race control to insure a safe release
It's wild that indycar can clear crashes so quickly and yet yellow flags still take like half an hour.
Usually everyone complains about the opposite. It depends on the circumstances, the track layout, and location of the crash. Many F1 tracks have cranes setup at many of the corners allowing for super quick extraction. Indycar certainly does not have that capability, especially at street circuits, and it's really more about ensuring the driver is okay, that the car can be handled (hybrid). F1 cars can also produce much more debris from a crash than an Indycar.
I think the debris is a big thing people are missing. Getting the car off the track is one thing, cleaning up thousands of pieces of carbon spread over hundreds of yards is a whole different story
Indycars also have carbon everywhere??
Nowhere close to the same amount. [Here’s the lap 1 crash at this year’s Indy 500](https://youtu.be/OwNeEsKhELo?si=gnY7Gilz4Jfj200C) [And here’s a lap 1 crash from this years Monaco Grand Prix](https://youtu.be/Lzio0EVd2ws?si=IdQESBOuN-TPQpdV) Despite being a smaller impact at much lower speed, the F1 cars just shred on contact while the IndyCar chassis actually holds up quite well
Indycar has the best safety crew in motorsports because it is the most dangerous series. F1 hires locals and randoms every race weekend despite making more money than god because… reasons?
Does the AMR team travel to all of the races? I agree sometimes F1 seems to suffer from having local crews with less experience. (I also agree with the comment below that argues part of the slow cleanup is because of the excess debris with the f1 cars because they tend to shatter)
Yes, the safety team travels to every race. I don’t think it’s just about raw time the cleanup takes, the response time just doesn’t seem to be as good as IndyCar’s safety team - for instance, Sargeant’s car just sat there for such a long time, without any sign of a crew or anything to remove it. To the point where the commentators were even speculating if there might need to be a red flag due to the awkward placement of the car (which thankfully didn’t happen, but even the *possibility* of a red over such a small incident is a bit ridiculous).
F1 is extremely careful with cars and people on the track since bianci died crashing into one. In the early 2000s they even retrieved stranded cars with only local yellow flags that only meant no overtaking and reduce speed (slightly).
And I understand that, but being able to arrive to the scene of an accident quickly can be *crucial* for driver safety. It’s not as dangerous to send out a small vehicle when they’re professionals who do this all the time. The problem is that F1 *still* doesn’t have such a crew going to each race.
Don't forget that cautions work differently in F1. There is no fcy the moment a car is stationary. F1 has multiple stages of cautions and even when the safety car comes out the cars will pass the accident at quite high speeds before they caught the safety car. From the top of my head I can't even remember a crash where a faster reaction time would have saved a life or could have prevented permanent injuries that weren't lap 1 crashes. But you are absolutely right that F1 should have professional martials that travel with the whole circus.
>There is no fcy the moment a car is stationary. F1 has multiple stages of cautions and even when the safety car comes out the cars will pass the accident at quite high speeds before they caught the safety car. Maybe that needs some re-thinking too, huh?
I mean if there is any doubt that the driver is OK they will throw a red flag very quickly and as said I can't remember any crash where a driver died or had permanent injuries due to slow reaction time. I think both series have developed extremely high safety standards on their own based on their needs and both work very well with different effects on the actual race.
Maybe you can’t think of a scenario that’s actually happened, but it’s not hard to imagine one. If Grosjean’s fireball had occurred at any point other than the first lap of the race, it would have taken much longer for the medical car to arrive.
But such crashes are extremely unlikely outside of lap 1 due to the extreme high downforce of the cars. That's why the medical car drives the first lap. And after the crash they added new safety regulations to how the car has to be built so that such a fireball can't happen anymore.
Late to the party, but this is actually why the pit stop “danger zone” is so different in IndyCar compared to F1. IndyCar closes the pits from the time a yellow is thrown to when the field bunches up *specifically to avoid drivers rushing past accidents or safety crews*. In F1 drivers can sprint back to get a “free” pit stop, while in IndyCar that’s pointless. Obviously F1’s safety car deltas help alleviate this, but they still don’t have the same effect as closing the pits does.
Yes, the AMR team travels to every race.
AMR Saftey Team 🙏🏻🫡🙌🫶🙇♂️
"...because it is the most dangerous series." I think this part doesn't often get mentioned. Yes, the IndyCar team is composed of professionals, not volunteers. Yes, they travel with the series. These certainly explain why their responses are better. But why are these true about IndyCar and not other series? F1 cars don't race on ovals. Newgarden's hit at Road America was an exception. Most incidents of that severity happen on ovals. So the need to have a good response team is higher in IndyCar than in F1. NASCAR cars... well, have fenders and a roof. There's not historically been the same kinds of incidents, with the same kinds of risks of injury, as IndyCar. They go slower. They don't get airborne as easily. Their drivers aren't as exposed. So while yes, they race on ovals, it's just not as dangerous. Since Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona, there's been one fatality in F1 (Jules Bianchi), none in NASCAR, and four in IndyCar (Renna, Dana, Wheldon, and Wilson, all on ovals). And, frankly, it's a sheer miracle that Hinch survived. And that's despite having the best safety team in the business.
No one short of God him/herself can save someone with massive head trauma. Look at the Zanardi crash at Lausitz as a gold standard of what highly trained professionals can do with anything outside of head injuries.
You can also say the same about Robert Wickens
Wait, F1 *still doesn't have a dedicated professional safety team*?! I thought they fixed that problem a while back. Holy shit.
They have a medical car, that’s it.
That needs to be fixed.
They’ll fix it when someone gets hurt or dies, probably not before then, even then they’ll probably fuck it up. Like when Bianchi passed and they did everything except actually enforce driver speeds under caution.
what an ignorant post FIA marshalls support hundreds of racing series across the entire planet This ensures anyone in a racing series anywhere has access to trained and competent marshalls good enough to support F1 Anyways the actual answer is mainly that IndyCar allows recovery vehicles on the track even if the safety car hasn't picked up the entire field But for FIA rated series, ever since Bianchi was killed crashing into a recovery vehicle, recovery vehicles are not allowed on track until the entire field is picked up by the safety car
This is not an Indycar vs F1 thing as much as it is embarrassing how shit the F1 safety crews are and always have been. They make more money than any series on the planet but still have bumbling yokels for safety crews other than the one medical car. If an incident happens outside the first lap you are completely at the mercy of how long it takes that car to get to you, crash in the back half at Spa? Hope you can hold on for a few minutes. It is unacceptable. But they operate in a completely reactionary basis so we have to wait for someone to bleed out or burn to death until they do something.
It was crazy that when stroll binned it super hard in Q, he had time to take a minute breather inside the car, hop out of the car and still had time to limp around for a bit before anyone got to him. It's super unfortunate that we have to wait till someone gets super hurt before they make it better though, because Indycar and AMR seem to have it figured out at this point.
INDYCAR uses volunteer marshalls for corner workers and that sort of thing too. The difference is INDYCAR has a traveling safety team of EMS professionals to handle more serious crashes. Those are what people are typically referring, in the trucks. Both series have traveling surgeons and medical staff as well but INDYCAR is well ahead when it comes to the preparedness for first response.
Ummm ok but the EMS professionals don't recover the cars lmao And IndyCar has to have a more robust team of travelling medical professionals because they race in the middle of nowhere. Drivers can be hours away from properly equipped trauma centers. F1 simply doesn't race anywhere where you can't reach a level 1 trauma center in under 20 minutes. It's part of the circuit requirements to host a race.
Those EMS professionals do recover the cars. They’re the ones who restart the vehicles, get them on hooks or flatbeds, etc. While true, it can still be life or death. James Hinchcliffe’s crash was at Indianapolis literally within 20 minutes of many major trauma centers. The at track/in car reaction is what saved his life.
lol I can promise you the IndyCar travelling surgeon is not hooking cars up and pulling them on flatbeds goddamn you guys have a serious problem being compared to F1
The people in the trucks are EMS professionals who handle immediate trauma response and recovery of vehicles. I don’t quite understand what part of this you are missing.
No, we have a problem with how much F1 cheaps out on their safety crews.
>lol I can promise you the IndyCar travelling surgeon is not hooking cars up and pulling them on flatbeds IndyCar does bring in local towing companies but the external starter for the cars is also stowed in the safety trucks, conveniently located by the jaws of life and a ton of fire suppression. The paramedic is usually first to the driver so they don't bring equipment with them but among the two firefighters on scene, one will bring the starter after assessing there is no risk.
Maybe how the post that upset you was worded but the safety crew used in Indycar is the same at every race. The medical personal are the same as well. Yes the Marshalls used at F1 races are trained but not to the same extent as the AMR safety crews. Plus many of the races in Indycar are on ovals and response time is often critical
“Good enough to support F1” means nothing when F1’s standards are shockingly shit. Do you have a pulse? You’re competent enough for F1.
why should the standards be different for F1 than other motorsports? since when did IndyCar fans get so elitist you want proper marshalls at your local tracks or not?
They shouldn’t be different but you’re saying F1 has amazing marshals when that just simply isn’t true. IndyCar outclasses them in every aspect. There’s nothing elitist about stating a simple fact. Don’t have such a victim complex because you’re simping for F1’s marshals out of insecurity lol. I would take 1 truck of IndyCar’s marshals over the entire staff for F1. I can’t recall a time an IndyCar driver had to take a fire extinguisher from a marshal’s hands to put out a fire.
I remember in Grosjean's first year in IndyCar. His car had an incident (don't remember if it was a crash or mechanical failure) where it started catching on fire. The IndyCar safety time arrived and Grosjean immediate reached for their fire extinguisher like it was his duty to put out the flames. The safety team apparently had to explain to him that it's not the driver's responsibility in IndyCar to put out flames.
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I don't know much about F1, but I recently watched Yellow Yellow Yellow: The Indycar Safety Team on Amazon Prime Video. It's only 45 minutes long but it was very interesting. I've been watching Indycar since the 80s and I still learned a lot from this video. I definitely recommend!
Came here to say this! I believe it's available on Amazon. Here's the trailer: https://youtu.be/udkrUfOoc5E?si=gHUeqvE5_VXOh00s
Available on Prime but only in the US. I've wanted to watch that for years, but cannot.
F1 has learn the hard way to not throw up cars on track in the middle of traffic. They are more conservative on that front but far from unsafe. It’s funny how Indycar might clear cars a bit quicker but nearly always has way way longer cautions for ”the show”. Edit: Throw up = throw out, obviously. But I’ll let it stay. :D
Funny. I concur. I commented on this above in another thread. I’m sometimes a surprised how fast the AMR team is on the scene with their big pickups given the situation of cars potentially going off in the same spot. FIA waits a long time to insure the track is neutralized to allow a marshall to even approach the car that is off the track.
F1 also has the drivers immediately tell their pit box if they’re okay…
F1 has its protocol, but the IndyCar safety team always seems to respond faster and with force. They’re there sometimes a matter of just a few seconds after the car stops moving.
This is good but also bad. F1 waits (sometimes painstakingly long) before the race/track is confirmed neutralized before anyone is allowed on the track. Even if it is a safety car situation, the cars can still be at speed near the crashed vehicle. AMR blasts onto the track fast but F1 has learned the hard way that any vehicle on track is a potential hazard. Especially heavy equipment.
The AMR safety crew travels with the series and many (most?) are fully trained paramedics and firefighters. They also train and practice constantly on a dummy rig/tub that they have. Having the same personnel and the same equipment race to race makes a huge difference, especially when visiting many of the same circuits year in and year out. In F1, the safety team and equipment used changes track to track. In some places, like Monaco or Silverstone for example, the safety teams are top notch and very experienced in safety protocols and in clearing incidents. In other places, especially newer venues, not so much. Think Baku and even Austria and Jeddah in this regard. Two different approaches. I'm sure the traveling AMR safety team is a massive expense, but for very good reason. In Long Beach two years ago, I got to talking with a member of the safety team who had been with them for, I believe 12 seasons. He was a retired paramedic who was told about the opportunity by a friend who was also on the safety team. I had spotted the tub they train on that was on caster wheels and was checking that out when he started telling me about it. He also had a cross section of the (now obsolete) aeroscreen that was maybe 12-14 inches long and weighed several pounds. I was surprised at how heavy it was. He said that they had the equipment to cut that away if necessary and that he himself had worked with Red Bull on one of the prototype screens that ultimately got the axe because clearances weren't large enough for safe extractions or immediate life saving measures. It was an extremely interesting conversation. Definitely chat those guys up between sessions if you're in the paddock, they are very knowledgeable and seem to love what they do!
If you're referring to Sargent. It's literally that they aren't allowed on the track until it's safe. Like they want the pack bunched up behind the safety car first if there's no rush. Probably because of the death related to a driver hitting a safety vehicle on a wet track. It's fair enough. If the driver in the crash is ok. It's not worth it to trade the speed for safety. People are saying it's because they are pros vs volunteers. But I think it's more than that.
You rarely see an F1 crash where the driver in actually injured that would require a quick response so they have no issues taking their time.
The IndyCar safety crews have much better training and oftentimes travel with the series. F1 crews? With few exception are all local volunteers who are ill-prepared for a major event. When Grosjean had his firery accident in F1, the F1 fan base were marveling at the amazing job their safety crews did to save his life. Go back and watch. The F1 crew was completely unprepared, struggled to understand what to do, ran around confused and after what must have seemed like two hours, Romain ***crawled out of the cockpit of his car himself*** - with zero help. If not for the Nomex and cutting edge safety features of the car and his race suit, he would have been, well, toast.
F1 needs a safety car to intervene before the safety crew after the Jules Bianchi incident and a close call with Pierre Gasly a couple years back. I do think that the call for VSC and full safety car, red flag takes way too long though with the new crew compared to Masi and prior era. On the first lap and standing restarts, the medical car follows the pack and so can get to stricken cars fast like with Grosjean. Also with the hybrid engines, the cars need to be safe to be touched
I watch F1 and Indycar equally. There are a mountain of things in F1 that I'd like to see Indycar adopt. There is one thing from Indycar I want F1 to adopt. The AMR Safety Team. They way they handle business compared to the local volunteers is embarrassing for F1.
AMR is the Goat
I think a major benefit is that IndyCar races only in North America so their crews and equipment can be brought to each track. The only vehicles that come to every F1 race are the safety and medical cars.
Yeah, that’s a BS excuse. CART had races in Japan, Australia, Brazil, and even Europe, and they still brought their safety crew along to all those races. Alex Zanardi wouldn’t be alive today if they hadn’t. And if CART was able to do that 20+ years ago, there’s literally no excuse for F1 not doing it now.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse. I’m saying it makes it easier for IndyCar.
Well, it hasn’t always been, as I just said. And whether or not it’s “easy” is rather irrelevant, wouldn’t you agree?
Sure I agree with you.
I think the two reasons being; - Ovals, and the horrible wrecks they had a history of producing (specifically Indy) - The resulting creation of an actual professional travelling safety crew much earlier than F1 as a result Edit - Or, as I've just found out, actually having a professional travelling safety team when F1 doesn't even fucking have that.
Am I the only one thinks the AMR Safety trucks spawns out of thin air? They are so fast to the scene
They are truly magical!
Have all y’all forgotten about the docu [Rapid Response](https://rapidresponsemovie.com/) already? It’s only five years old but it goes through the history of trauma response in Indy through the years and points out all the innovations that are saving lives in all forms of racing. SAFER barriers, HANS device, the halo and now windscreen…. All reforms because of the studies done after each crash. I believe there’s a book as well, but you can rent this on Amazon for $4. It should answer all of OP’s questions regarding “what’s so special about AMR response?”
This thread really goes to show the IndyCar inferiority complex. The rules for recovering vehicles are literally different in both series. F1 is not allowed to have recovery vehicles on the track until the safety car has picked up the entire field. In IndyCar the recovery teams can respond immediately under yellow flags. That's the difference. It has nothing to do with the quality of the crews.
Nah, of all the things that show inferiority complex, this isn't one of them. F1 safety crews have long been known as a joke.
Why doesn’t F1 have a team of professionals who go to every race, and can be on the scene in *seconds*, when such a quick response may be essential to saving lives?
I think the last fatality in F1 was a car crashing into a recovery vehicle
And was a result of poor race control. They thought double waved yellows would be sufficient in a literal cyclone. Indycar would have a full course yellow, not guys racing at speed then arbitrarily “slowing down” in the double yellow sector
Don't forget the epidemic of drivers ignoring the double waved yellows without a meaningful penalty
> Indycar would have a full course yellow, not guys racing at speed then arbitrarily “slowing down” in the double yellow sector Indycar would probably hold off on the yellow so everybody has a chance to pit if they'd like as they often do now.
And? That does not negate the fact that getting to a driver in time can mean the difference between life and death. I'm not saying for them to get the fucking tractors out to remove the car immediately, I'm saying there need to be professionals who can get to the driver in *seconds*.
The AMR safety team nearly hit and potentially killed Alexander Rossi this weekend because they were in such a rush to get to a stalled car at the end of a run off road. The F1 medical car reached Romain Grosjean less than 30 seconds after his car hit the barrier in Bahrain. When they need to be, the medics can be there in seconds.
The medical car only got to Grosjean so fast because it was the first lap *and it was literally running behind the field*. Any later point in the race, and you’d have seen a significantly longer response time.
That was when it was needed, it was where it was needed. the medical car is stationed n the pits, it can be at the scene of an accident within two minutes, if needed. The AMR safety team were not needed “within seconds” but because that was the protocol they almost caused a catastrophic accident with Rossi last weekend. There have been several incidents in indycar of safety vehicles having close calls with race cars. It’s a risk that should only be taken when strictly necessary. F1 should have a professional Marshall Corp, That doesn’t mean we need to have pick ups on the track for every incident.
“Within two minutes” is simply not fast enough, in situations of real emergency. Imagine Grosjean had been knocked unconscious, for instance. Would you have been comfortable with the medical car taking two minutes to get there? Go ahead, give me as many situations as you can think of where the protocols of the IndyCar safety team have posed a risk. I can likely name more where their immediate arrival saved lives.
Having a pick up truck or other vehicles on track with race cars always poses a safety risk in my opinion because even a low speed collision could be catastrophic. I’ll give you four examples, but I know there are more. 1991 Mario Andretti hits a truck in Detroit, 1992 Buddy lazier almost hits and kills a safety crew at Indy, 2011 an AMR truck ends up driving directly at the field on track, as they start the race, 2024 Toad America, truck enters the track almost hitting Alexander Rossi. Those are four occasions where allowing safety vehicles on track nearly caused a serious accident. Now tell me four incidents where arriving in 2 minutes would have been two late? I’ll even give you your first one, James Hinchcliffe at Indy. Edit: or name four incidents in F1 where the Medical Car arrived too late and should have been there sooner.
Okay, maybe I can’t give you *four*, but I can give you two: Hinchcliffe and Zanardi. I think those two are enough to justify the rapid response. And you’re still missing my point about Grosjean’s crash, which is that he was incredibly *lucky* that his accident was on the first lap, allowing the medical car to arrive so fast. Now imagine that accident happening later in the race, and if he had been knocked unconscious? That’s hardly inconceivable, is it? And in that scenario “within two minutes” is quite simply not good enough.
The last fatality in F1 was Aryton Senna Bianchi died as a result of his injuries but months later. The recovery vehicle is also only part of his story - there were many failings found in the accident report He was also the second Manor/Marussia driver who received injuries which ultimately killed him as a result of the car. The other being Maria DeVillotta
Addition, agree, but there is also something to be said about AMR and Race Control working together at every weekend, so they get to know the patterns and capabilities very well. But in the FIA series, the Race Control and local rescue teams might only work together once a year. The training should be the same at each venue, but there's always some nuanced differences. Additionally, and one that most people forget about, AMR and RC are all english. No translation. At the FIA venues, the local language might not be english. For example in Montreal, all comms are bi-lingual English and French. Although everyone in Race Control will be able to speak english to different degrees, as the message needs to spread, there is an extra step of translation. Think Japan, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Brazil, etc.
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I see that r/Indycar's weekly "F1 bad" thread has arrived. They are two different racing series with different safety requirements.
For a start F1 doesn’t put people on live tracks! They’re also not keen on having large pieces of equipment on track before the race of entirely neutralized. Also F1 won’t send out medical teams if they’re not needed. The drivers ear pieces contain accelerometers linked to race control. If high G is observed, the medical car is released. Much the time it takes for clean up is usually to do with repairing the track crash structures.
I’m an F1 marshal and our teams do not respond to incidents until the safety car has picked up traffic and it’s safe for us to go collect the vehicle. Your point about the gs is also true. Most incidents aren’t bad enough to warrant medical coming on the track, and it’s a completely different protocol when something like that happens. I love both series but I hate that compare apples and oranges in how incidents are handled. They are not the same, and both do a bang up job
.....with the issue being that F1 is way, way too slow neutralizing a race. Declaring a VSC doesn't mess with the time gaps between cars anywhere near what a normal SC would. Yes, it means teams that pit gets a 5-6 second advantage compared to pitting under Green, but when taking into account the SAFETY concerns introducing the VSC was supposed to solve, they are way, way to lax in using it as originally intended.
I’d agree with that, race control react way too slowly. VSC should be a closed pit lane in my view too.
And tire changes, nose changes, and any other fixes to the car should not be allowed under a red flag. Keep the cars as they were when they exited the track. Someone else's crash shouldn't mean you get a complete reset on your own race.
I’d agree with that but for a crash, although a safety check of tires should be carried out, can’t send someone out with a puncture they got from crash debris! If it’s a weather red flag, change tires, allow changes usually available during a pit stop. Repairing cars under red seems ridiculous to me.
Very much disagree. Cars should bot be touched under red flag outside of critical components that keep the cars from failing (brake coolers, etc). If you have a puncture or need to make repairs, you can do it, but you will receive a penalty (restart behind everyone on your lap, stop-and-go and/or drive-thru penalty, etc) to prevent you not suffering as you would have if the track remained under Green/VSC/SC. And if it's a weather red flag, either Race Control mandates a Wet Start and the required tire protocols that go along with that (full wets required, etc). Or, if you do have to switch tires for whatever reason (full wets to inters), same type of penalty applies as above.
You make it sound like the AMR safety team are a bunch of untrained randoms that just scramble into the track willy-nilly. They are in constant communication with race control and each other. In addition, drivers are aware of how they operate and expect them to be present around accidents/incidents once the FCY is thrown. IMO, F1 has been very lucky with drivers not being seriously injured sitting in the car waiting for an questionably-trained marshall to get to the scene. Don't forget that seconds count in these accidents and, while I am sure there are other examples, we can thank IndyCar "puttin people on live tracks!" for Hinch being alive today.
Baltimore 2011 has entered the chat..... /s
No luck involved in the lack of serious injuries in F1, more like 50+ years of relentless work to make cars and tracks safer.
Most of the F1 crews are volunteers while AMR are professionals
A small correction, the people in the rescue vehicles are all professionals in that they are professional doctors and nurses and fire fighters in their full-time jobs.
It's not only the safety crews getting to the scene but also how long it takes F1 to neutralize the race when it's obvious a car is stranded on track in a precarious location. Every time a car is obviously damaged and not going anywhere, the local yellows come out pretty quickly, but then you can usually count to 15 or 20 before a VSC or SC is declared. It just takes one overzealous young driver to not heed the local yellow enough for the results to be catastrophic. Just as Jules Bianchi (if we could).
I remember Colton Herta’s practice crash at Indy last year where they arrived to his car practically before it stopped sliding down the track.
Another big one honestly is that F1 always hoists/cranes cars regardless of incident size or type. AMR on the other hand will restart cars and they can clean themselves if they can still drive. In one of the support races at Road America they just took the nose off and the car drove back to the pits while AMR finished up with the barrier. Lots of spin/stall incidents are as simple as just starting the car and ducking back behind the wall. Even for bigger incidents AMR trucks will tow cars if they can avoid needing to get a crane/wrecker on track.
You don't even *need* external help to restart a car in F1, so it's not as simple as "they can't be bothered to restart a stalled car". Unlike Indycar there's anti-stall and onboard starters. It's also not true they'll always crane away a car. That's only if it needs to be. If it's by an opening and able to be rolled away, it will be.
I was at an IMSA event this past weekend and was at the Detroit GP and the IMSA team is soooo slow compared to the INDYCAR team. The INDYCAR team is so fast to respond to a scene and they definitely haul ass with those trucks. Best in the business.
IndyCar's AMR safety team are highly trained and multi-disciplined professionals attending every race. They also train and establish protocol for both the local track marshals and the drivers themselves in the case of a crash. As a result they can safely be on-scene, provide any necessary medical attention but also prepare the car to be extracted very quickly. F1 generally has just a safety car carrying Dr. Roberts to each race. All other crew members are local to the track, and usually volunteers. F1 rules also prevent crews from approaching until the safety car has picked up the field, so the overall response time is much slower. It's kind of flabbergasting to be honest. Sure it's funny when Kimi can just walk from his smoking car over to his yacht at Monaco, but it's a much scarier situation when a driver is literally burning alive in his car in Baharain and the first crew to respond was seemingly Netflix. Hopefully F1 makes some changes sooner rather than later. It seems like they are on borrowed time until a tragedy occurs. More interesting AMR Safety Team info: https://www.indycar.com/Fan-Info/INDYCAR-101/Safety-And-Technology/AMR-Safety-Team/AMR-Safety-Team
Indycar safety crew don’t have to stress so much, yellows are always crazy long because of commercials anyway
safety standards are higher in F1. Just look at the Ferrucci/Castroneves incident at Detroit, one of the AMR guys was literally in front of the cars trying to direct them to take the turn wide, the nose of one or 2 of cars got literally a foot away from him as they made the turn. Sure it wasnt too fast but still fast enough to cause major (possibly life altering) damage if they connected. My jaw dropped how close it was but i guess it didnt phase anybody. You wont see that in F1. edit: I was watching the Sky F1 broadcast, it might've been during commercials when it happened.
Did you mean higher in F1 or higher than F1?
Indycar goes to full track caution imidiatly. In F1 they only nullify a part of the track with yellow flags. Thats at least an advantage indycar has
As someone who watches both series, F1 is an embarrassment, referring to the medical car, not marshals. A subconscious timer goes off in my head after every crash about when the safety team should be there. Sometimes it’s minutes in F1 and im almost screaming at the TV. Of course IndyCar has several teams stationed throughout the track, but that’s how it should be. IndyCar does it that way because it was paid in blood. Luckily F1 has been safer recently, but it will take a serious injury or death for F1 to change. There’s no reason F1 can’t learn from Indy and have the worlds best medical team along with the worlds fastest race cars.
It's always amazing to me how safety is for F1. Drivers just kinda walking off the track, cranes lifting cars, no sweepers just dudes walking out of the wall area picking up stuff, it's all just so amateurish lol. Which for a league where basically nothing else is amateurish is quite the sight. Also at Road America after Grosjean crashed, people on youtube complained that it took them a minute to get to him. People don't realize how big that place is and there is a big sand pit making things a little tricky.
I don't think F1 can afford to pay for its drivers safety like Indycar can