The marshals have defended the way they managed Scuderia Ferrari Spanish driver Carlos Sainz’s fire at last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg, after a lot of criticism for not responding fast enough.
The Ferrari driver had to retire from the race at the Red Bull Ring, while running in third place and with a great opportunity to finish P2, as he was a lot faster than Max Verstappen ahead of him. Sadly, Carlos Sainz’s Austrian Grand Prix ended with 12 laps until to go, due to a catastrophic power unit failure, that led to a blaze on his Ferrari F1-75 car.
The flames took hold of his car, and the Spaniard himself was one of several people arguing that the moment could have been dealt with more swiftly.
In an interview after the Austrian Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz explained: “I was calling the marshals to come and help me, to put something on the tyres to stop the car rolling down but I think the whole process was a bit slow. And at some point, there was so much fire that I had to really get a move on and jump out independently. I think it was just at that time that the first marshal arrived and stopped the car.” – he said.
There was a heated debate after Carlos Sainz’s scarry moment and the official safety crew at the Austrian circuit wanted to explain the situation, by issuing a statement outlining that all procedures were followed by the book – even if from the TV it appeared that things had been slow.
Firstly, it stated that the first initial issue at stake was the fact that marshals are not permitted to attend to incidents until they have been given the go-ahead by race control.
“After the terrible accident of Jules Bianchi in 2014, the FIA’s rules regarding recoveries and interventions on the track have been drastically tightened,” said the statement.
“Intervention is only allowed after instructions from race control. On the one hand, this naturally increases the safety of the drivers and marshals, but on the other hand, it has the disadvantage that interventions take a little longer.”
The marshals also pointed out the fact that there were a set of unique circumstances which meant the fire had to be dealt with by a vehicle and not by fire extinguishers carried by individuals.
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“Several unfortunate circumstances came together,” they added. “The place where Sainz parked the Ferrari was not visible from the marshals’ stand. They received instructions over the radio to go to the car with fire extinguishers, and when they saw the situation, they made the decision to call in the fire engine (S-car). This decision had to be made within seconds and, in retrospect, was absolutely correct. If you remember [Romain] Grosjean’s accident, in a situation like that, hand-held fire extinguishers are absolutely not enough. Therefore, the fire extinguisher was turned off and the car was [left], which led to that unfortunate image on TV of the marshal “running away”. Another problem was that Sainz, understandably, became nervous in the vehicle and went off the brakes too early. The wedge had to be pushed under the rolling vehicle, which of course made the whole thing extremely difficult. However, due to the resistance of the wedge, the vehicle steered in and stopped at the guard rail. Afterwards, the fire could be extinguished with a few pushes of the extinguisher.”
At the same time, the marshals are aware that there is room for further improvements regarding how things are managed in such situation, but highlighted that they did nothing wrong in terms of the following the current procedures to deal with the fire.
“Of course, in retrospect, when you look at the TV pictures and recordings from the track cameras, you find things that need to be improved. We will also discuss these internally and together with our people. But in this exceptional situation, because a fire is not an everyday occurrence for us either, the marshals reacted well on the whole. We had a fire engine on the scene in less than 30 seconds, which would have brought a fast-spreading fire under control. Since Grosjean’s accident, it is very important for us to have a lot of “extinguishing power” on the spot immediately in order to protect the driver in the best possible way. We are a team of motorsport enthusiasts who sacrifice their free time for training and exercises in order to do our best for safety along the track at such events. We will also take this incident as an opportunity to improve further.” – the statement concluded.
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