Welcome to another week of TheJudge13 #F1 Bar Exam.
Last week’s question(s): Can you name the driver, car and Grand Prix at which this crash took place and what caused it?
The answer(s) I was looking for were: The driver was Jos Verstappen driving the Footwork Arrows FA17 – Hart V8 in the 1996 Belgium Grand Prix held at Spa. A wheel/suspension failure caused Jos to have a massive accident but he walked away, almost unharmed.
Jos Verstappen had pitted on Lap 10 as he thought he was having problems with a sticking throttle. No problem was found but when he returned to the track he shortly afterwards had a mechanical failure (broken wheel axle) resulting in him demolishing his car when it collided with the Armco barrier at 160 km/hr.
When the safety car came out all the teams carefully planned strategies were now thrown into disarray. Williams called their lead driver Villeneuve to pit but he didn’t hear the call. He was unaware of the accident and by the time he went past it he was already behind the pits. They then called their second driver Damon Hill to pit. The problem was that the tyres and fuel were ready for Villeneuve and not Hill.
At the last minute they told Hill to go around again as they weren’t ready for him. This resulted in a very slow lap for Hill. Schumacher had come in as soon as the safety car had come out but he said later that this was more luck than anything else. He was already planning to pit for more fuel and so everything was ready for him. Schumacher came out in the lead behind the safety car and went on to win the race. Spa was like a home race for him because it was the closest track to his home.
Despite Verstappen’s significant collision at high speed his injuries were much less than were expected. In fact, without the change to the cockpit headrest padding that had just been introduced for the 1996 season it may have been a fatal accident. He managed to extricate himself from the car but collapsed shortly afterwards and was stretched away. Jos’s wife said, “Never before had the mechanics of Arrows seem such a wrecked car. Everything but the monocoque was broken. Without the newly introduced enhanced cockpit rim Jos would not have survived.”
Well done to Taflach, Tony, Milestone11, Thomas888, Emil, Philip, Alan, Cassius42, Simon, Sid, The13thDuke, Devon, TheBoixy88, Barry, Jim, Frans, Johnny, Tim, AC2290 and Reinis.
This week’s question(s): Can you name the drivers, their cars and the race in the picture below. In which position did they finish and who won the race?
Please provide your answers in the field below:
