To add to this, the FIA regulations are that a medical evacuation should reach hospital in under 20 minutes, if that's not possible by ambulance then the race shouldn't have run surely? Paddock rumour according to twitter is that the FIA asked Honda twice to change the start time, but they refused.
Only photos available according to this site (slideshow): http://www.repubblica.it/sport/form...ente_a_jules_bianchi-97371346/1/?ref=HREA-1#6 Looks very bad.
**** this is terrible news. Looks exactly like the kind of freak worst place, worst time crash we all hoped would never happen.
Maurice Hamilton is saying that the helicopter could have flown, but transfer by ambulance was chosen for other reasons.
Finnish press have apparently spoken to the driver steward Mika Salo, who's seen the accident. Jules apparently got "a hard hit into his head".
That was just horrible to watch. Brundle was almost in tears, you could hear him choking up. Once again he has also more or less predicted a crash, he is scarily accurate with that. I thought the second i saw stuff, adding all the little hints together (no live crash footage etc) that it was very, very bad long before reports were coming out on what happened. I hope he has escaped with the minimum damage and makes a full recovery.
Even if Bianchi is fine (and I desperately hope he is) there is going to be some serious fallout from this. FIA are already trying to pass the buck onto Honda, Honda will blame Bernie, Todt will have to do *something*. I think we might lose Japan from the calendar.
I hope that is not true.... sadly having seen pics and going on things sutil has said, reports, i fear that is true. Praying for positive news.
I personally don't like the morbid fascination with posting photos and stating how bad it looks. I've seen much much worse happen to F1 cars and the driver walk away without a scratch, so we can't learn anything from pictures of a car. This is just an accident, and from the driver's reaction it seems unfortunately serious. Personally thought the JCB being present was dangerous, and should only have been that close to the circuit under very slow safety car conditions, but I don't like when people go overboard in F1 (they shouldn't be starting a race behind a saftey car, that's a nonsense, go out and drive to the track or start later), so I'm hoping that Jules is ok and they just think about track clearing procedures a little bit more carefully in future. We all would have been mortified if we'd have got up and they'd cancelled the race, so let's not be hindsight marytrs.
Very true, however when you know what he hit and where..... Obviously not a definite signal either way, but..... It's one thing obliterating a car on a tyre wall, it's quite another going under a metal jcb and allegedly taking a big hit to the head in the process. Hopefully the car took the brunt though.
I just don't know why things like this happen, wrong place and wrong time and such. Wouldn't wish this on anyone. Reminds us this is the most dangerous sport in the world. Also puts a young Verstappen joining F1 into perspective.
Going to cancel posting what I have, we don't need to know. All we need is good news. I saw him on the F1 feed wiping his visor because of the rain before the race, and that was the last I saw of him since then. Next time we see him, lets hope he has thumbs up, Ferrari aren't going to win the title without him are they.
Really hope he's ok, all the driver interviews you can tell that they think something bad has happened
Terrible news. Hopefully he'll pull through but I can't help but fear the worst. He was so desperately unlucky, he could've gone off anywhere on the track, even a foot to the left or right and he'd probably have been OK. The safety car should've been called as soon as Sutil went off, I was worried about the marshalls in those conditions but never imagined one of the drivers to be in any real danger. Hopefully they'll learn from this and not try to recover cars under yellows in treacherous conditions. In the dry, fine, but in those conditions anyone can have an accident anywhere on the track. They can't really bring it forward, people have already made plans for that start time, booking flights etc. Apparently people attending the race are allotted a specific train time as well, it's not like they can just hop on an earlier train. And I'd have been fuming to wake up at 6:30 and find the race had already finished. They have to stop shifting grand prix start times to suit European timezones though. If this had been starting at 5am like it was supposed to they'd have had some leeway before sunset to shift the race back a couple of hours if necessary. It's also ridiculous the number of races we have now which a finishing in gloomy conditions because they're being held late in the afternoon. It's happened so many times in the last five years or so. On the helicopter thing, apparently it was seen taking off, just not with Jules in it. According to someone on Autosport the pressure changes of flying can worsen brain injuries, and it was this that killed Mark Donohue. So presumably that's why Jules has been taken by ambulance.
