That race to watch will be Sainz working his way forward from 15th and how Checo fares from 5th...with Albon in front of him and the two Renaults behind.

All the drivers are saying that the track allows a lot of passing opportunities

Bummer for Sainz, didn't hear an official cause of failure.
Looking forward to the midfield scrap while the front 3 walk away.

I wonder if Albon can hang on to the top 3 with no traffic between. Might be fun to watch. The key is getting out of DRS range. With 3 DRS zones it will be hard to shake someone if they are.

Haven't seen something like that in a long time.
Halo likely literally saved a life today.

Amazing. Have never seen anything like it, and the medical team pulling him out showed real bravery. Good outcome thankfully.

Unreal, for sure.
Early report is possible broken rib(s). Pretty amazing considering the severity of it all. Can't imagine the G-load experienced.

Medical team earning their keep today

Grosjean got himself out. If he hadn’t been able to, it was going to be quite a while before anyone got to him. At the time he got himself out, there were only two hand fire extinguishers on the car, and they had almost no effect on knocking down the fire, but at least one was spraying from the side that Grosjean came out on, so was able put him out as he climbed over the fence. He’s one very lucky boy. The Halo definitely saved him.

I'd rather have F1's halo than Indycar's screen looking at this incident today. They've both probably saved lives this year, the halo is a beast.

Initially I thought how hard it would be to get back racing after watching countless replays from the pits. But maybe the opposite is the case, you're driving a tank, damn near bullet proof. F1 is so much safer than back in the day, drivers regularly make bad choices that were unthinkable in the past. Whatever the case, we haven't seen anything like this in decades.

With zero reason to say this, I hope Haas hadn't cut any corners that led to this level of destruction.

Underneath the aeroscreen is a structure similar to the halo. The screen adds some additional debris protection.
The main failure today was the section of guardrail but that may have been due to the way the car hit absolutely nose straight in. Looked like the nose went straight through like a bullet and the wider part starting at the engine ripped loose while the tub/front went through. The fuel spill causing the fire was actually quite small considering they were full, on the first lap. They will have to look at the data to determine the G's but something has to fail at some point or the sheer G load itself would be fatal.
Some excellent engineering, great work by the medical car guys and a lot of luck made this a relatively good outcome.

Fantastic outcome, IMO, considering how severe it looked.

I imagine any car in the field would've split similarly, given the speed & entry, and the fact that there are only a few connections between the safety cell & rear end.

Given how cocooned in they are, pretty impressive that he extracted himself as quickly as he did.

The halo earned its place in history today. Kudo's to the medical crew, running into the danger.

Watch Peter Windsor’s analysis. The straights have poor barriers as considered low risk. Those will likely be addressed next year to some degree, as will the medical/safety car guys with closed face helmets - that guy had an open faced helmet and went into the fire to help Romain. Romain’s Helmet and faceplate melted and burned.

My prediction, in addition to the helmet the crew and marshal’s will have some serious fire equipment going forward. They will go through the car and will see if they could have contained the fire better - always a chance to learn.

If Romain had been unconscious, this would have had a pretty terrible outcome. The fact that he had some burns on hands and feet, no broken bones and doesn’t seem to be suffering from High G stop (bruising on face, petechia on eye). Pretty miraculous - and due in no small part to the focus on Safety within F1. Sir Jackie Stewart (the Flying Scot) and the old school drivers that stood up and said “no more” and drove this culture are real heroes. Check out their story if unaware - I am a huge fan of Sir Jackie, but even more respect for what he and they did to change the sport and the balls it took to stand up and fix F1.

^ well said.
I noticed that the Marshall behind the wall was spraying the extinguisher from pretty far back, didn't seem to have much effect until he got closer

Big kudos to the track dr for running straight in & to the med car driver for having the quick mind to grab an extinguisher & follow straight in.

Saw a comment that the guardrails may not have been up to the standard they should be, from a source whose brother is heavily involved in the running of Watkins Glen.

Amen, with regard to Jackie Stewart

quote:

With zero reason to say this, I hope Haas hadn't cut any corners that led to this level of destruction.

The impact tore the engine off the chassis exposing the fuel cells...I don't think there is much you can do to prevent that

One a brighter note,Sainz, came up from 13th to finish 5th.

Feel bad for Checo to have his engine let go when he was clearly headed to the podium. Not so much for Stroll with his, "I turned in and someone hit me."...that happens when your rear tire runs over someone else's front tire

I felt bad for Kvyat today.
He had zero blame for Grosjeans crash, even turned sharply away on the in car video after Grosjean veered sharply in front of him.
In Strolls he took a penalty that screwed his race. Really just a racing accident anyway.

Yeah, no blame on him for Grosjean, RG came hard across the track at a pretty sharp angle.
Bit of blame on both for Stroll's rollover. LS turned in to the apex & DK was coming up the inside. Majority of it on LS, IMO. Should've seen him coming up the inside & left a bit more room.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
Yeah, no blame on him for Grosjean, RG came hard across the track at a pretty sharp angle.
Bit of blame on both for Stroll's rollover. LS turned in to the apex & DK was coming up the inside. Majority of it on LS, IMO. Should've seen him coming up the inside & left a bit more room.

Yup. On the money.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:

With zero reason to say this, I hope Haas hadn't cut any corners that led to this level of destruction.

Don’t see that as being possible given all the testing and certification the FIA does on the cars. The Halo was fully intact, even through it had punched through a metal guard rail at high speed, and the survival cell around the driver was physically intact. Also, Grosjean remained conscious and was able to get out by himself without any non fire related injuries. Even the fuel cells are FIA certified, but I’ll the damage was caused by being punctured by the twisted metal of the Armco, which is something they may have to look at for the future.