Cooper Straight

When Juan Pablo Montoya cut the grass and came heading straight at me on the first lap, and nearly took out the BAR of Olivier Panis, I was glad to have the security of the fence in front of me.

Four laps later I saw the Villeneuve accident on the giant TV screen. At first there was relief when both drivers were seen to be out of their cars, but that turned to anxiety when, after several laps of safety car activity, the medical BMW stationed next to me set off for the site. Not long after, an ambulance followed. Its pace was relatively sedate, which suggested that if someone was hurt, the situation was not serious. Sadly, I was wrong.

The second F1 fatality in five races has inevitably brought safety issues into sharp focus. Once again certain inadequacies in our sport have been emphasised, at the expense of the astonishing progress in chassis safety, demonstrated in a string of serious accidents over the weekend.

The initial crash had much in common with last year's Monza incident. Just as that was triggered by Heinz-Harald Frentzen running into the back of Rubens Barrichello under high speed braking for a tight corner, so the Albert Park incident was caused by Jacques Villeneuve hitting Ralf Schumacher, albeit with what appeared to be a much greater force.

In both cases the driver in front insisted that he had braked normally, and the guy behind said that the car ahead stopped unexpectedly early. To whom can one attach blame in such circumstances? In truth it's hard to describe either crash as anything but a racing accident.

What you didn't see at home was the in-car footage from the BAR captured by the digital cameras. The closing and impact speed was so great that it appeared as if either Ralf's transmission had seized or Villeneuve's brakes had failed completely, but neither driver reported any such problem.

Monza happened on the first lap, but in the case of last weekend's accident the teams can at least look at the telemetry and see if their guys did anything different on the lap in question.

"We're doing 300kph into that corner," noted David Coulthard after the race, "and a guy turning in is probably doing 60-70kph. There's a predetermined braking distance, and if you get out of step on that by one or two metres, the speed difference is incredible. It's always going to be difficult."

In the early stages of the race, when fuel loads are high, drivers are to a certain degree still feeling their way in terms of when they hit the brakes. It's worth noting that Ralf had already sailed across the grass at the first corner at the start of the second lap and was obviously not in a very good mood. The incident cost him three places, and left him in front of Jacques. It also probably did his tyres no good, but in any case the Michelins induced understeer in the early stages. It could be that he was having to adjust his driving to cope.

It's interesting to note that between laps two and four, the gap between the pair at the startline was 0.413s, 0.439s, and then 0.313s. The crash happened two corners later, and in other words at that point Jacques was almost certainly marginally closer to Ralf than he had been previously. He was also effectively being held up. Up ahead Jarno Trulli was getting away slightly, and Jacques was also coming under pressure from behind, as his team mate Olivier Panis gained 0.9s on lap four alone, to put himself 1.1s behind. Jacques would have been very keen to get moving and get past the Williams.

Whatever the cause of the collision, it's what happened next that led to the tragedy. The BAR took off, veered over to the left, and struck the debris fence with its nose. It then whipped round and hit with the rear.

At this point, by sheer fate, the car found an access hole in the debris fence. This ran the length of one concrete block, 3.5 metres, and was some 0.39m high. It's there to give marshals access to the track, stranded drivers an escape route, and photographers an unobstructed view. However, no course or flag marshals were stationed by this particular hole, and I suspect that its position was of little interest to photographers throughout the weekend.

The rear of the BAR stuck itself partially through this hole, and a fraction of a second later the gearbox hit the upright metal fence support pole at the end of the concrete block. This pole (and indeed the rest of the fence) did its job and stood up well, and it deflected the chassis back out towards the track.

Had the car whipped round one or two metres earlier, more of it would have poked through the hole before it struck this post. An impact halfway up the cockpit would surely have broken the engine clean off the car and sent it spiralling into the public enclosure.

As it was, the right rear wheel tumbled onto the wrong side of the fence. As I said, it's been reported that the gap was 39cm high; a rear tyre is 38cm wide, not accounting for any suspension parts that might still be attached. Pictures indicate that the fence at the top of the access hole was forced slightly open, but nevertheless the sheer chance involved in the wheel sneaking through this gap is obvious.

The wheel continued on a straight path, more or less parallel to the fence and track. This ensured it went down the 2m wide tarmac 'no-man's land' that separates the public enclosure from the debris fence and concrete wall. As mentioned there were no course marshals in the immediate vicinity, although a large group was stationed some four concrete blocks, or 14 metres, further down towards the corner.

Spectator marshal Graham Beveridge was standing alone, a few metres from the access hole. A wide angle TV picture showed that he turned at the moment of impact and the wheel caught him full in the chest.

Thankfully the wheel did not hit anyone else, and reports say that it lay not far from where Graham fell, which indicates just how much force he absorbed. Also a great deal of energy must have been lost when it hit the post and was torn off the car. Bear in mind that the car was doing 120mph or possibly more when the wheel came off; the chassis carried on for several hundred feet before it scrubbed off speed and stopped.

Like the fireman killed at Monza last year, Graham was a race official who knew the risks inherent in standing in places not available to the public. But whereas Paolo Ghislimberti was standing in an exposed position between a waist-high barrier and some trees, far from any spectators, Beveridge was behind a debris fence and standing just a few feet in front of three or four rows of fans. As elsewhere on the Albert Park track, the fans were behind a fence comprised of four or five strands of wire, decorated with plastic ribbons, and which thus offered no second line of defence.

Up to 15 people were reported to have suffered minor injuries from small fragments of debris, and spectators' accounts leave no doubt as to the fact that poor Beveridge was felled right in front of their eyes.

The point of this extended description is to show just how unlikely it was for a complete wheel to find its way through that small hole, but also once that had occurred, how miraculous it was that just one person - and no member of the public - was actually struck by it.

And as I suggested, a slightly different impact with the upright post could have seen the entire rear half of the car break off and go behind the fence, with devastating consequences both to the spectators and, quite probably, Jacques Villeneuve. One shudders to think what sort of turmoil Grand Prix racing would now be in had one or more member of the public been killed. There's no question that motor sport has had another lucky escape.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong for the crash to be considered a fluke, and let's hope that something positive will come out of it. Wheels can fly at any race track, and there are many circuits where they could easily clear barriers and strike officials, photographers or TV cameramen. Indeed, I can think of many places where, unlike at Albert Park, the majority of marshals are sited between the debris fences and the track, with little obvious protection.

At most F1 venues the chance of an errant wheel reaching spectators is slim, but it's never impossible. Having said that, it has often struck me that at Albert Park, like Adelaide before it, spectators are potentially more exposed than at other circuits. It's obvious on TV how close the walls and debris fences are to the track in Melbourne, but what might not come across is how close the fans can get to the other side of those walls with an ordinary enclosure ticket. I would imagine that officials from Silverstone and other permanent venues would be surprised at how fans are allowed so close to the action at Albert Park (and to a degree at the similar 'parkland' track at Montreal).

The reaction of race organiser Ron Walker did not improve his often frosty relationship with the local media. An impromptu press conference after the race began with a plug for the crowd figures before he referred to the fatality. Subsequently he did the usual thing of saying that the facility conforms to FIA standards. True enough, and in these circumstances a promoter has to try and cover himself legally with such statements. But there was a hint of complacency, and perhaps he should have stressed that his organisation would leave no stone unturned in its quest to improve safety standards. By Monday night his public statements had at least taken some steps in that direction, but it was a little late.

Mr Walker also sparked controversy by where he placed the blame for the tragedy.

"We had a mechanical failure here yesterday," he told the press on Monday. "If the wheel hadn't come off yesterday it would have averted the sad death of our brother worker."

What he was trying to say was that the wheel restraint tethers had failed to keep the right rear (and indeed both fronts) attached to Villeneuve's car.

This was more than a little unfair on BAR, who like every other team have complied with the FIA's stricter tether rules. But the forces involved in high speed impacts are such that tethers are by no means guaranteed to work, and the FIA and the teams are well aware of that. They are certainly better than nothing, however, and the very fact that at least one wheel stayed on the BAR is testimony to that. It could also be that the wheel that struck Graham Beveridge would have flown further and faster had energy not been absorbed by the cables before they gave way.

Two wheels flew off Luciano Burti's car when he crashed on Saturday; they all stayed in place when he had an albeit slower impact on Friday. Cables also kept a wheel attached to Enrique Bernoldi's car when he crashed in the race.

Just remember the horrific sight of a dozen wheels flying every which way at Spa in 1998, when we were lucky that none cleared the fence. I'm sure if the same accident occurred now, the tethers would ensure that at least some stayed attached to the cars.

Walker's words will not have gone down well with either Craig Pollock or the FIA. The general public will not understand that the tethers are a sort of optional extra that offer no guarantee - sometimes they'll help, sometimes they won't. But those words 'mechanical failure' literally grabbed the headlines in Australia. 'Cables blamed for death' ran the story in Tuesday's Herald Sun.

Another disappointing aspect was the lack of information given to the media after the accident. Officials obviously knew within minutes what had happened, but unlike in Monza, where we even got the man's name almost straight away, we weren't told until after the race that there had been a fatality. Radio and TV commentators thus continued to shout about a great Ferrari win when someone was already dead.

Immediately after the flag I asked a member of the GP's usually superb press office team what the latest news was. I've known this guy for 15 years or so, and he looked me straight in the eye and said there was no news. It was as if the Aussie organisers, invariably praised for their handling of the F1 race, could not bring themselves to admit that something could possibly go wrong.

I thus headed out into the paddock to interview some of the finishers without yet knowing the true story. At that very moment the drivers who'd made the podium were informed, and their subdued reaction effectively gave the game away. Why weren't we told earlier? We have a job to do, and should be trusted to behave responsibly with what is obviously sensitive information.

On a more positive note, it's worth praising both the FIA's safety group for their insistence on improved cockpit safety this year, and Malcolm Oastler and the BAR design staff for successfully complying with the new rules. Crashes involving Burti, Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher all provided further proof that we have made huge steps.

Sadly it now seems that it's more dangerous to watch F1 cars than participate. Let's hope that last weekend's tragedy leads to renewed efforts to improve the situation. I do wonder to what extent FIA inspections, which obviously focus on the track side of barriers, really take account of the positioning of spectator and officials. Certainly anything done pre-weekend will be of little use in this regard, and problems might only be obvious when the place is packed with people.

"If you look at some of the pictures from the fifties," said Coulthard, "There's a shot of a guy on his hands and knees watching his car spinning in the air back in the days when cars didn't have seatbelts. It's not a new thing, cars going in the air.

"Irrespective of the wings, you're never going to make it 100 per cent safe. But what we should be trying to do is contain the accident within the circuit, and take away the risk of a marshal or spectators getting injured. Clearly in a lot of areas the safety fence isn't able to retain tyres within the track."