Luck is a subjective term but the presence of a ‘blue sausage’ was clearly lucky for Floersch in her incredible crash at the Macau Grand Prix.
The incident has by now been viewed from every angle and dissected by race followers and racers alike. Kiwi Marcus Armstrong had a unique track-level view of proceedings and said it was the worst crash he has ever witnessed first-hand. He – like many – doubted it was survivable.
At Macau, in the last hurrah of non-halo ‘old school’ Formula Three racing, crashes were always on the cards. On any regular Macau year the Lisboa corner at Macau usually sees at least one multi-car pileup per race, so to see the field stream through unscathed for a couple of laps was in some ways a bit unsettling.
Then as the field returned to racing speed after an earlier crash, Floersch lined up 15th placed Jehan Daruvala for a pass down the kinked front straight. Briefly, there was – apparently – a waved yellow flag from a marshal point. Most modern circuits (ie all F3 circuits) have a yellow light system as their main warning of damaged or stranded cars and some have a link to the data dashes on the race cars that alerts the driver.
But by comparison, a race re-start packs massive amounts of action and information into milliseconds and a manual yellow flag is either seen or not seen. The cars were tipping 270 km/h on the straight leading into Lisboa corner.
Marcus Armstrong’s team-mate, Guanyu Zhou, was behind the pair on the run to Lisboa.
“Coming out of Mandarin [the preceding right-hand kink], I saw the yellow, but I think it was just a mistake by the organisers’ station. Sophia was really close to Jehan, so when Jehan braked early she had no time to react.
“She hit Jehan’s right-rear, and that spun her around straight into Lisboa, and she flew into the other car.
Reacting to the brief flash of yellow flag, Daruvala decelerated briefly on the run to the Lisboa braking zone, Floersch’s left front wheel smashed into the right rear of Daruvala’s car. Sliding across the track, Floersch was a passenger from that point onward. Daruvala flicked the other way, toward the left side of the track, but was under control and able to stop in the run-off area.
Floersch’s car meanwhile slithered backwards at high speed down the right side of the track toward a bunch of cars heading into Lisboa. It was punted into the air by an auxiliary ‘blue sausage’ kerb set behind the concrete kerb to discourage ‘hopping’ by racers.
Her car was disintegrating – three of four wheels no longer where they should be – by the time she slid backwards across the sausage and lifted into the air. After slapping the engine cover of fellow competitor Sho Tsuboi, her car sheds its skin, losing nose cone, engine cover and a side pod and flinging the front and rear wings across the track on their own low-earth orbits.
The ‘catch’ fencing dismantles more of the ancillaries, absorbing some of the crash energy as it does so., then Floersch and the remainder of the car – basically the tub, engine and some suspension bits flicks nose-up into the front of the photographer stand.
I’ve shot from that stand before, in 1996 when I covered the Guia Touring Car race (second on the billing behind the Grand Prix). Even then, the sight of 27 Supertouring cars thundering three-wide into the single-car width Lisboa was enough to give me a ‘hm’ moment. What if Biela and Rydell come together? What if Brancatelli misjudges his braking and spears through the middle of the field/
Back to 2018, and a long delay while Floersch is extracted from her wrecked car. This is the interesting bit.
The honeycomb composite tub that encases the drive is never going to go racing again, nor the pedal box, nor the engine or transaxle. But the tub, that claustrophobic central core of the car, has done its job, protecting the driver and maximising survivability through the most massive crash seen at Macau in decades – or in fact ever.
Now the safety systems come into play. Like our own Tatuus-built Toyota Racing Series cars, the F3 Dallara has a cradle in which the driver’s foam seat liner is placed and around which their six point harness wraps. Emergency services can cut away carbon fibre panels and extract the driver without disturbing them or further compromising injuries suffered in the crash.
Though by now the driver is complaining of back pain – a good sign – the crews are well versed in extraction procedures and are able to get her to a waiting medivac helicopter with minimal delay, making best use of what the Order of St John refer to as the Golden Hour: the 60 minutes after a major crash or injury in which a patient’s prospects of survival are greatest.
Stabilised, Floersch was well enough to update her fans with a Twitter post later that evening. She underwent a seven hour operation to set her broken vertebrae in place and is well on the way to recovery. So lucky.
Look now at the remains of the car. As she flew backward through the catch fencing and into the photographers’ stand, the engine cover and roll structure have protected Floersch’s head. In the process they are compromised, absorbing more of the impact energy as they are designed to do.
If anyone ever wondered whether the thousands spent on modern helmets and neck restraints were worthwhile, they should only watch the slo-mo footage of this crash. Her helmet and HANS device are designed to work in concert with the car’s safety structures and have played their part, saving her from all but the deceleration forces.
In the slo-mo, her arms have stayed within the confines of the car thanks in part to the cockpit side bracing even though g forces as the car hit the photographer stand would have gone beyond the recording range of the onboard sensors.
Then in a graceful movement the nose of the car unpeels from the photographers’ shelter as the car lowers itself back to track level, the rear landing partly on a marshal who had fallen over as he tried to scramble clear. The marshal is lucky too – sheltered partly by the steel of the shelter, he is only indirectly impacts by the hot metal of the car’s transaxle. Internal bruising, facial abrasions and a couple of cuts on his body. For that, he too should than the blue sausage. And perhaps make his way to the nearest casino and bet on Floersch’s race number, 25.
Comments