F1 must react calmly to Suzuka events

You have to go back to the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, and before that Imola 1994, to find a Formula 1 paddock so collectively lost in its own thoughts as it was at Suzuka last Sunday night.

After a crazy weekend of drama in the F1 driver market, and mounting fears over the potential effect of Typhoon Phanfone on the race, Jules Bianchi's horrendous accident left everyone simply numb.

Amid uncertainty about Bianchi's condition at the time, and bafflement about how an accident like this could happen, there was very little that anyone wanted to or even could say to each other.

The track action and the world championship dynamic were irrelevant for now: all that everyone was doing was hoping for the best and praying there would be good news from the nearby Mie General Medical Centre.

But, as seems inevitable these days when misfortune strikes in any walk of life, it didn't take long for the critics to emerge and begin demanding answers and scapegoats.

Lessons will be learned from Suzuka's drama © XPB

There were cries about why the race wasn't moved forward from its 3pm scheduled start time to avoid the worst of the weather; why the safety car wasn't deployed when Adrian Sutil's car was being recovered by the crane; and why Bianchi wasn't taken to hospital by helicopter rather than ambulance.

Each of these questions was perfectly legitimate, but each, too, had simple answers.

An early start time would have given no guarantee of better weather - Typhoon Phanfone, whose imminent arrival prompted the proposal to move the race, wasn't due to hit until Monday anyway. And the timing debate was never about the rain fronts moving in ahead of the storm: it was about the potential effect of hurricane-force winds.

Double-waved yellows should have been enough to ensure cars were slow through the section where Sutil's car was being retrieved.

And taking Bianchi in an ambulance with a police escort was, as mandated by the FIA's safety code, just as quick as flying, especially since there was no guarantee that the helicopter could land at the nearby hospital, because the weather was closing in.

This is not to say, however, that lessons cannot - and will not - be learned. Recovery vehicles and safety-car timings are obvious areas to look at. But at times like this, especially when F1 is going to face a barrage of criticism, it's essential that any response is based on scientific rationale rather than simple emotions.

Earlier this year, I spent some time with former FIA president Max Mosley to talk about the dramatic ramping up of safety following that fateful Imola weekend in 1994 when Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna died. His response to the tragedy was to set up a safety working group with then F1 doctor Sid Watkins, which resulted in dramatic progress that has undoubtedly reduced death and injuries in the sport.

But in a sport where cars travel between crash barriers, wheel to wheel, at speeds of up to 220mph, accidents will happen. And when they do, if a set of the wrong circumstances come together as they did at Suzuka, the result can be truly awful.

Mosley cited examples such as the incident between Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen on the Wellington Straight at Silverstone this year, or Fernando Alonso and Romain Grosjean at the first corner at Spa in 2012, where just a slightly different accident profile could have had terrible consequences.

No one was hurt in the Spa 2012 crash, but it was a lucky escape © LAT

"It can happen," he said. "What it's all about is that it will never be safe. But what you do is to reduce the probability of injury, and that's exactly how the aviation industry works.

"Flying, it's never going to be safe. But you can reduce the chances of something going wrong by endless precautions, so the chances of an accident become so small that it's something you come to accept."

I asked him what he believed the reaction would be these days in the event of someone getting badly hurt or killed - for we are no longer used to it happening.

"I would just want to sit down in the evening and make sure that I didn't fail to do something I should have done," he said. "You always have that feeling.

"It was like with rallying. You just knew that there were particularly minor rallies being run where people were standing where they shouldn't stand.

"We took endless precautions, but you knew that however much you did, you could have always done more. And if you had, that person might not have been hurt or killed."

Last weekend has shown us that more can always be done, and it's easy with hindsight to work out which factors came together at Suzuka on Sunday.

But the right response now is not to point fingers and get into the blame game. Instead, it's to react calmly and intelligently to ensure that those factors are never allowed to come together again.