Multiple drivers struggling with health after exhausting Qatar GP
Multiple drivers struggling with health after exhausting Qatar GP
Text from the linked article:
F1 Rumour: Alex Albon In Medical Centre After Challenging Qatar Grand Prix
Williams driver Alex Albon is reportedly in the medical centre following the Qatar Grand Prix due to struggling to get out his FW45 after the race. The track temperatures reached 37 degrees Celsius and caused issues for multiple drivers. Esteban Ocon threw up in his helmet on Lap 15, Logan Sargeant was forced to retire from being ill, and Oscar Piastri had to lie down in the cool-down room.
Footage of Albon trying to get out of the car at the end of the race has been circulating social media. The British-Thai driver required help from the Williams team to get out of the cockpit and then had to sit on the car when he seems to have extremely low energy.
It has also been reported on social media that Albon has been sent to the medical centre to be checked over after the session. (...)
Video of Stroll trying to get out of his car: https://youtu.be/FPpsvLEZAH4?feature=shared
Video of Albon trying to get out of his car: https://youtu.be/1KjRzzKYvic?feature=shared
Why tf are we even racing here? Human rights barely exist, it's extremely hot, there's sand all over the track, the kurbs destroy tires and the "champagne" doesn’t even spray.
And I didnt hear anyone mention over the whole weekend that Qatar used to fund Hamas for years.
Is there a official list of who to fund somewhere?
If you're boycotting races based on who the governments used to fund then there won't be many paved left to race at!
Oil money doesn't care about human rights.
And apparently the owners of FIFA and F1 like oil money more than human rights.
Human rights violations arent gonna wash themselves
I mean it’s formula 1 - the answer to that and all other questions is money, lots of money. Makes it hard to love this sport.
It begs the question- could these drivers safely exit the car if they had a crash towards the end of these races? Were some of them already past a safe limit?
Watching Sargent bring the car in on the lap he eventually retired was shocking. He looked like someone struggling to function in the most basic sense, not like someone in control of their car.
After going back and watching his driver cam and listening to team radio calls around the time he went out (There may be more before this that I've missed) he definitely seems to be reeling from exhaustion-
Lap 40 Logan radios in to tell his engineer he doesn't feel well, and is almost immediately asked if he's retiring. There's some back and forth but he is ultimately told if he doesn't feel well he's retiring.
A couple corners in to lap 41 he radios back that he needs to stop. A few turns farther and he radios back that he needs to stop again and says he has no mirrors. From this point on he drives very erratically as he gets calls for where drivers are on track. At one point he's all the way down in 1st gear crawling so slowly that his engineer asks him repeatedly if he's ok and tells him to park the car.
As he enters the pits he tries and fails to open his visor, and later struggles to finally get it open. Before the camera feed cuts you can see him trying to get out of the car, stopping to gather himself, and ultimately being helped out by the mechanics.
I'm not a doctor but it would seem like a better solution is needed to decide if race conditions are safe if this is how things are going to be. F1 doesn't need to turn into a middle eastern blood sport.
They'd jump out like a rabbit with the adrenaline pumping through their bodies because of the risk of losing their life.
That's what we'd like to think, sure.
DC had commented during the F1TV coverage that he was surprised the drivers were feeling ill or much of anything besides adrenaline from racing so the conditions must've really been taking a toll. When an expert on the subject takes note of the extreme conditions that's a red flag to me that something may need a closer look.
Just hypothetically- If they're already peaked out just trying to keep themselves driving because the conditions make them ill, what kind of decision making would we see? To me, Logan looked like a driver in survival mode on the way back to the pits. If he drifts back into the racing line because he's blacking out or delirious from heat exhaustion, what capacity is he going to have to free himself from the car if someone were to collide with him?
It just seems logical to me that if the FiA are going to do things like the halo, survival cell, checking vertical oscillations for high G load, red flags for rain, etc, all in the name of driver safety, then maybe they will look into days like today before something tragic happens.
Adrenaline doesn’t overcome a body shutting down from heat exhaustion and definitely not from heat stroke.
Watching Logan, Alex, and Lance get out of their cars there’s no doubt in my mind they were suffering from heat exhaustion at minimum. I’ve suffered from it many times in my life and I know what it looks like, and this is it. It doesn’t matter how much you need to move, you’ve reached your limit and your body is actively shutting down because it simply can’t function at those temperatures and with that much fluid loss.
Christ, Ocon vomited in his helmet at lap 15 and continued?! Fuuuuck
They should really consider adding more cooling for the drivers. Kinda hard to watch the race knowing they're sick and struggling so much.
Why don't they have cooling suits. Seems logical but nothing about F1 is very logical.
MotoGP had a similar issue in India a few weeks back, a rider laid out in Parc ferme needing medical help instead of the usual interviews with the top 3...
I think more can be done, because someone could die pushing in extreme heat. As another comment says, we should also think about someone's ability to exit the car in an emergency.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/FPpsvLEZAH4?feature=shared
https://piped.video/1KjRzzKYvic?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.