© Getty Images

Bulls' Guide To: Operational SafetyIn the latest addition of our Bulls' Guide series we take a look at how safety in Formula One is maintained from an operational perspective.

A few weeks ago, shortly before the , our Bulls’ Guide series looked at safety within F1, focussing on the car and the drivers’ kit, with a view to writing a second part to accompany this weekend’s . Given the appalling crash in from which Romain Grosjean walked away relatively unharmed, the subject has been thrown into sharp relief.

The drivers’ kit and the construction of the car that we spoke about in Portugal are the last lines of defence: they exist as crash mitigation: designed to minimise the effect of an accident that’s already happened. Upstream of that comes the accident prevention tools: operational guidelines designed to decrease the number of occasions in which crash mitigation is necessary.

Max's HANS Device© Getty Images

Beyond this, circuit design straddles the boundary between prevention and mitigation: smart circuit design reduces the risk of serious accidents – but when they do happen, it can reduce the seriousness. In this part, we’ll look at Operational Safety.

PartThree:OperationalSafety

When discussing safety within F1 it helps to decouple it from the notion of sport and think of it more as an industrial operation. It has many people working in a confined space with heavy, fast-moving equipment. There are chemicals, pressure vessels, power tools and so on.

The vast majority of operational rules in F1 have very little to do with racing cars, and a great deal to do with health & safety in the workplace – thus trackside, you’ll see everyone donning a hi-vis for packdown because they’re working around forklift trucks; the rules for the way in which DHL deliver fuel drums, or the signs outlining exit routes, first-aiders and muster points are no different to those that you would see in warehouses and factories on the industrial estate where Red Bull Racing is based.

Pack Up Begins For The Team© Vladimir Rys

The vast majority of rules and regs in the paddock stem from commonplace laws – where F1 has to write its own codes is in the operation of 250mph racing cars: that stuff doesn’t tend to get covered in a standard health & safety manual. There are thousands of processes contributing to the challenge of making F1 a safer sport in which to race, watch and work: some the product of common sense and forward-thinking; others are reactive, via observation analysis and problem-solving. Here’s a snapshot of a few.

TheCurfew

There are many reasons why things go wrong but one of the most predictable is ‘finger trouble’. There are many ways in which F1 can be made safer, but few are quite so broad spectrum as cutting down on tiredness and fatigue.

F1 cars follow the maintenance philosophy of military vehicles rather than road cars – i.e. they are designed for frequent maintenance by a large team of people, rather than occasional, unhurried maintenance by one person. This is an excellent way of preparing cars for two hours of operation – the downside is that it requires everyone to work rapidly, effectively and largely unsupervised.

Looking Into The Garage© Getty Images

The curfew, currently requiring operational staff to be out of the paddock for eight-hour periods, beginning 11 hours before FP1 and FP3 is designed to ensure everyone is able to get a reasonable amount of sleep on Thursday and Friday night before operating the cars (Saturday night has the cars in parc fermé conditions). Before the curfew rules came in, the all-nighter – or consecutive all-nighters – were not that uncommon. Putting a stop to that has been perhaps the single-most effective safety measure F1 has ever had.

Briefings

Every paddock and every circuit is different, and thus there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to safety at any of them. Just as the drivers will have their briefings with Race Control, so too will the team managers. If the team principal is the colonel of the regiment, then the team manager – sometimes titled sporting director – is the regimental sergeant major. He is responsible for work done in the garage or pit box and is usually the first point of contact with Race Control and other teams.

Whenever F1 collectively decides to implement a new safety measure – either planned or in response to a problem – it is typically a matter discussed in the regular briefings attended by the team managers. Everything from working securely in the garages to protocols for safely getting VIPs to the grid across a live pit lane will be a matter for discussion in the briefings.

While F1 is incredibly competitive on track, behind-the-scenes a lot gets done because the working environment is highly collaborative whenever the topic of safety is raised.

TheSafetyCarAndVirtualSafetyCar

Use of the safety car in F1 can be slightly contentious because it has the capacity to change a race. In terms of severity, it’s the fourth of five measures used to control the pace of a race in dangerous circumstances, following a waved yellow flag (slow down), double waved yellow flags (slow down and be prepared to stop), and a virtual safety car.

The VSC neutralises the race by setting a minimum lap time (typically, 40 per cent slower than a racing lap) monitored by timing loops, with the driver following a dash delta displayed in the cockpit. Using the VSC allows the race to resume more-or-less where it left off before the interruption.

The full safety car has a different effect in that the field will eventually bunch-up behind it, eliminating time gaps. This is the intent, in so much as it allows the pack to be controlled – for instance, if marshals have to work on or cross the track, they will have a defined window in which to do that, once the safety car train has passed them by. The downside of using the safety car is that it can’t simply be turned on and off like the VSC.

Bulls Lead After The Safety Car Restart In Brazil© Vladimir Rys

While a VSC will on average only last a lap or two, the safety car is out for much longer, particularly later in the race. It has to circulate for a while waiting for the field to gather behind it and then, under the present rules, will usually allow any lapped cars to unlap themselves, so to not be in the way at a restart.

If working or driving conditions are still not considered safe with the full safety car deployed, then the race director brings the race to a halt with a red flag. If the race has been halted for environmental conditions (e.g. rain or fog) then typically the safety car will fulfil one of its secondary functions by heading out to assess track conditions before a restart is ordered. It also does these reconnaissance laps before every track session as a matter of course.

TheMedicalCar

The safety cars (there’s two) do their practice laps on a Thursday, joined by the medical car. The current driver of the medical car, Alan van der Merwe, is indisputably the fastest driver of an F1 car in history, having clocked 413.205km/h in a Honda-powered BAR007 V10 during a land-speed record attempt. Van der Merwe came to prominence winning the Formula Ford Festival in 2001. He became British Formula 3 champion in 2003 and moved into F1 as a test driver for BAR-Honda in 2005, before representing his native South Africa in the A1GP series. He’s been driving the F1 Medical Car driver in 2009.

Race Start Sees The Medical Car At The Back Of The Pack© Getty Images

It is often asked why the medical car – in essence a fast-response ambulance ferrying the FIA medical rescue co-ordinator Dr Ian Roberts, together with his kit and probably a backseat local medic, to the scene of an accident at a rapid rate - requires a racing driver rather than, for instance a paramedic behind the wheel. The answer is not speed, but rather situational awareness.

It isn’t enough to be driving around close to the limit: you need to be constantly thinking about other people also.Alan van der Merwe

“The most important factor is not that you can drive a car fast: there are millions of people who could drive the car fast enough to get to an incident within a clinical time frame where it matters,” says Alan. “The thing to consider is the environment: you’re driving a big, heavy estate car and sometimes sharing the track with extremely fast racing cars, probably the fastest racing cars in the world over a lap. It’s a difficult combination. It isn’t enough to be driving around close to the limit: you need to be constantly thinking about other people also.

“You need the extra capacity to be driving close to the limit while thinking about what’s ahead, what’s behind. You have to be prepared for drivers making mistakes, marshals jumping over the barrier ahead of you. It’s about having the capacity to drive the car quickly enough to get to the scene, stay ahead of the cars on track while maintaining a huge margin of error to deal with the unexpected.”

To get close to the limit in a car like this, you need to be able to push it.Alan van der Merwe

“To get close to the limit in a car like this, you need to be able to push it. On Thursdays I’ll be driving faster than I do throughout the weekend. It’s about getting into a rhythm where I’m comfortable at 98 per cent, so that in the race I can drive at 95 per cent and be on the radio talking to race control, looking in my mirrors and that sort to thing. You’ve got some capacity in reserve, and so does the car. You don’t want to be at 100 per cent so that when something strange happens, there’s no exit option.”

It's significant that Alan says ‘when’ and not ‘if’ – because strange things do happen. It is accepted that cars will crash, that situations no-one has envisaged, much less modelled, can occur. The process of making F1 a safer sport is an incremental challenge. There are no guarantees but with an open mind and attention to detail, the sport, it is to be hoped, gets a little safer every season.