F1: FIA reveals details of Jules Bianchi's crash in Japanese GP

The FIA has revealed more details about the circumstances that led up to Jules Bianchi's horrific Formula 1 accident at the Japanese Grand Prix

F1: FIA reveals details of Jules Bianchi's crash in Japanese GP

During a media briefing at the Russian GP on Friday, F1 race director Charlie Whiting ran through CCTV footage of the minutes before Bianchi crashed into a recovery vehicle.

The video footage, taken from cameras overlooking Turn 7, showed the cars coming through the long left-hander in the closing stages of the Japanese Grand Prix.

FIA plans changes to yellow flag rules

With rain falling, the racing line appears to have less water on it - with worse conditions on the outside of the bend where cars are not running.

The incident begins when Adrian Sutil runs wide onto the outside line of water and spins off.

Whiting said: "There is a dryish line. As the rain has intensified, a little bit of water creeps on to the drier line, and as cars go a little bit wide there, you see that Adrian got onto that and lost control.

"He touches that slightly wetter bit of track, and he is behind Jules at this point.

"When he hits that slightly wetter bit of track, he loses control and spins."

A lap later, with double waved yellow flags being displayed, Bianchi hits the same bit of water.

But unlike Sutil, Bianchi does not spin around. Instead, he attempts to correct the slide but over-corrects and spears straight off the track.

Whiting added: "You can see Jules doing something similar. He hits the same bit of water, but there is a slight difference - he does not spin like Adrian did.

"He corrects and goes off at a slightly different trajectory."

Bianchi's car slides straight off the track and skips across a gravel trap before colliding with the recovery vehicle that is retrieving Sutil's car.

Whiting said that it was not yet possible to judge exactly what speed Bianchi hit the truck at.

"It is a little too early because you don't get any proper data from the car when it is going across gravel," he said.

"GPS data is all you can rely on and you cannot rely on that very much.

"It is not a good idea at this stage until we have proper investigations, really analyse the footage and GPS data to see what the impact speed was.

"It would be too early to throw a figure out there and come back later and say it wasn't quite right."

The trajectory of Bianchi's accident means that even if he had not hit the truck, it would still have been a sizeable accident with the barriers.

"Looking at the first estimates of the speed of the car, I would say it would have been - with three row tyre barrier and guard rail -very similar to Heikki Kovalainen's accident in Barcelona [in 2008]," said Whiting. "But that is a very rough estimate."

Whiting said that initial analysis had ruled out mechanical failure for causing the crash.

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