Point of Impact: Interview with Charlie Whiting

The sight of Heikki Kovalainen waving as he was being stretchered away from the scene of last weekend's accident was a relief to everyone watching at home and at the track. If he gets the all-clear from the FIA medical team in Istanbul next Thursday, the Finn will be allowed to participate in the Turkish Grand Prix.

Of course there is always an element of good fortune in such matters, but equally there is also a lot of science. The fact that the McLaren driver emerged from such a major accident without harm says a lot for the steady progress the FIA has made on safety matters over the past few decades, and especially since Imola 1994 provided an extra impetus.

Kovalainen's crash has inevitably attracted a lot of attention, and put a renewed focus on safety matters, which is never a bad thing. But according to the man ultimately responsible for implementing many of the improvements, it was not as serious as it may have first looked.

"My overall thoughts are that it was just a crash," says the FIA's safety delegate and race director Charlie Whiting. "A guy went off, hit the wall quite hard, and came out of it unhurt, which was good. It happens all the time. I don't really understand why everyone has talked about it so much!

"But yes, it was a fairly spectacular crash. I don't know what the causes were, that's another story altogether. But in terms of the effects, it was very pleasing. Everything did exactly what we would expect. Having said that, I think we can always learn something."

Perhaps the most important safety development of recent years is not an item that has a direct bearing on the driver's health, but rather has provided the FIA with valuable guidance on what actually works.

FIA's safety delegate and race director, Charlie Whiting © LAT

The accident data recorder now fitted to each car - in testing as well as at Grands Prix - provides details that previously could only be estimated. Every major accident can be studied, and the results used in future developments.

"It tells us what happened, as opposed to guessing," says Whiting. "We used to look at accidents and say 'he didn't slow down at all, did he?' People shouldn't say anything until they know what they're talking about it. We don't say anything until we analyse things, because appearances can be deceptive.

"Heikki's was a big accident, but it was a long accident, in that it was over 100 milliseconds, which is bloody long by crash pulse standards. Hence the reason for his very low deceleration of 27g.

"The speed at which he lost control is in the data recorder, but once he's lost control, you don't have wheel speeds any more. But you can calculate the velocity from the deceleration, and come up with a figure that is not only accurate, but also quite surprising.

"Anyone who says that the car didn't slow down at all, that's complete nonsense. The fact of the matter is that the car lost control at approximately 260km/h, and hit the wall at approximately 135 km/h."

Mark Webber, for one, has criticised the size of the run-off area at Turn 9, but it meets the FIA's requirements, which are not arrived at by chance (as was the fact that there were five layers of tyres at the corner). The FIA employs a sophisticated computer programme called CSAS (Circuit Simulation and Safety) that analyses corners, and predicts the ideal level of run-off required.

Of more interest perhaps is that in this case the run-off was still comprised of gravel, rather than asphalt. In recent years the FIA has taken the view that asphalt is better at slowing cars, and newer tracks have been designed from the start with it in mind.

At existing circuits there has been a gradual programme of changing gravel traps to asphalt where it is felt necessary, but it's not always been possible. It's an expensive exercise, and some tracks have other considerations. Barcelona is one of two current F1 venues (along with Sepang) that also hosts a Moto GP event, and that may have had some bearing on why it was not changed.

"The gravel did its job, although asphalt probably would have been slightly better," concedes Whiting. "Although it's hard to say with a deflated tyre."

The circumstances of the accident made it look a lot worse than it was, and in particular the way that the conveyor belt surrounding the tyres came down behind the driver's head. That created a rather nasty first impression that clearly shocked the marshals who arrived on the scene.

The addition of belts to the front of tyre walls has been a very successful development, and it's worth remembering that in the past we often saw tyre bundles flying all over the place after major impacts. But belts are vulnerable to head-on impacts.

The damaged McLaren monocoque © LAT

Contrary to what many people thought, the McLaren did not go under the belt or the tyres. It actually went through the belt and into the tyres, in other words it did not go underneath the tyre wall and lift the whole lot up, it buried itself in them and lifted only those above the chassis.

"If you've got something relatively sharp like a nose, the fact that the tyres are bolted together is going to mean nothing. That's why we need conveyor belts. They are OK, but we know that at high speed, they can still be penetrated.

"Over the last two and half years we've had a very intensive programme going on with regard to very high speed barriers. This was highlighted by the first test we did, with a trolley with an F1 nose on it, when we saw how easily it penetrated even the thickest available conveyor belt.

"Heikki's car split the belt about 40cm above the ground. That's where it first hit, and it penetrated and then went through the tyres. When I looked at the pictures I thought it had gone under it. But when you look at it closely, it didn't actually go under it, which is another example of why I think it's important to get as many facts as possible before saying anything."

The accident has put an extra focus on the barriers developed by TecPro, which were seen at Monza in 2006. The fact that the GPDA chose that weekend to make a fuss about safety at the track - seemingly oblivious to the fact that a major development was being introduced - did not go down well with the FIA.

"We put the TecPro barriers in front of tyres at the second chicane and Parabolica. They incorporate a 4mm thick layer of steel, and that stops the nose actually going through it, and consequently it uses the tyres as opposed to actually penetrating them, as it were. So the things we can learn from last weekend are that asphalt could have performed better, and a TecPro barrier could have prevented penetration."

The fact that the car penetrated the tyre wall in the way it did obviously massively reduced the forces involved - don't forget Robert Kubica's Montreal crash started with an impact with an unprotected concrete wall - but of course what it did mean was that Kovalainen's head was very vulnerable to contact with the tyres.

He was helped by the fact that he was wearing a HANS device, and in particular by the latest FIA 8860 standard helmet, which has been mandatory for F1 drivers since the 2005 French GP. These helmets feature a composite shell, are lighter, and allow loads from impacts to be spread.

Because these helmets are very expensive for the manufacturers to produce, they are not yet compulsory in other formulae. However, Bell, for example, now makes them generally available for those who are willing to pay extra for the ultimate protection. Kovalainen's Arai showed clear signs that it had done its job in protecting his head.

Heikki Kovalainen is loaded into the medical helicopter © XPB/LAT

"It was only a 27g deceleration, so it wasn't anything massive. I think probably what concussed Heikki is the fact that it penetrated, and he got a bump on the head from the tyres. The improvements that have been made to the helmet standard for example - the 8860 that all the drivers have been using for the last few years now - certainly paid off. It was heavily scuffed, shall we say. All round, lots of safety systems worked very well."

And that includes the side headrests, introduced this year as a direct result of the Wurz/Coulthard collision in Australia last year. Although intended to help deflect the wheels of flying cars away from the helmet, they probably played a part in keeping at least some of the tyre wall away from Heikki's head.

"I think they must have helped, although they are obviously designed primarily to prevent intrusion from the side. If his head got pushed back into the headrest behind his helmet, which is 90-100mm thick, then those side headrests would have come into play."

Stricter crash tests and improvements to the chassis rules, which the teams have helped to formulate as well as implement, also helped Kovalainen. The pictures of the broken front of the chassis were frightening, but he was not injured.

We all know how strong the modern monocoque is - Kubica proved that beyond all doubt - so the fact that this one broke showed that some extraordinary forces were at work when the nose jammed in the tyre wall. It's not entirely clear how much damage was done on impact, and to what degree the job was finished when the car was towed out of the tyre wall when the front was still locked firmly in the tyres.

"It's hard to tell," says Whiting. "I imagine it was broken in the accident, and it broke about 40cms back on the chassis. That's no fault of McLaren. It was just a massive impact at about 45 degrees, so it would have induced some significant bending, and it just snapped it off. You can see all the latest anti-penetration panels were sort of shattered. We'll discuss everything at the next Technical Working Group."

F1 has a good safety record these days, but it's important to guard against complacency. Just as Kubica's accident provided a wake-up call last June, so Kovalainen's has given the FIA and the FIA Institute (and the teams) more food for thought. And that can only have a positive influence on the future.

"We've been blessed really," Professor Sid Watkins told me after Kubica's crash. 'Although we've had some big accidents, nobody's really got hurt since 1994.

"We keep trying. But dealing with the unknown is always difficult, and that's what motor racing is."