Hi ya'll, it's a typical Formula One race weekend for me...Sitting on the couch with my wife Faith and our cats watching the racing action. This week's race comes from Monza in Italy, a fast track, and one with a long history of turning up action galore.
With last week's racing death of Anthoine Hubert, the French F2 driver which I wrote about here the teams are approaching this weekend with a downcast mood. Motor racing never stands still for long though and after the minute's silence last week for Hubert the teams pushed forwards. As they have always done.
The Parabolica
This high-speed corner is one of the most exciting corner and the last before the start/finish straight. It's an increasing-radius, long right-hand turn and is taken at 200kph+ to set the driver up to mazimise speed down the straight to come.
Alex Peroni and the unexpected flight
Only a couple of hours ago Australian driver navigated into the Parabolica in his Campos Racing F3 car during the first F3 race of the weekend, ran slightly wide and struck a sausage kerb designed to dissuade drivers from taking a wider line and exceeding track limits. The car launched into the air and spun its way towards the catch-fencing and tyre barrier landing upside down on the cockpit at one point.
The 19 year old Peroni, who hails from Tasmania in Australia, was able to walk away from the accident and is undergoing medical checks at hospital - It seems he is ok at this stage however it may be some time longer before a clean bill of health is declared.
A couple of things stand out here...The bravery of these guys to put themselves into these cars week after week and the amazing safety standards these cars meet. The HALO device on the car, the carbon fibre halo structure built around the cockpit undoubtedly saved Peroni's life. Two years ago the F1/F2/F3 paddock's would be mourning another life.
F3 and then F2 are lead-in category's to F1 and whilst fast, are not quite as fast as F1. Had that been an F1 car though it would have been in the forrest...All because a sausage kerb which was installed to prevent drivers exceeding track limits and gaining a better run into the main straight. (Gaining an unfair advantage).
The kerb is gone now...And predictably the F1 drivers have been pushing track limits in Practice 3 but times are deleted when they do. With race qualifying coming up in under an hour it remains to be seen how they handle it.
Anyway, I'm going to get back to it. Writing blogs takes a long time and I want to watch the lead up to F1 qualifying.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
Video taken by me on my phone...Off my TV.
