This article titled “Nico Rosberg takes Russian F1 GP pole to keep pressure on Lewis Hamilton” was written by Giles Richards in Sochi, for The Observer on Saturday 10th October 2015 14.21 UTCNico Rosberg will count his day at the office in Sochi as an unqualified success. His pole was the minimum required to take the championship fight to his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton, but Formula One as a whole was taking a more cautious view of the day’s events after Carlos Sainz’s major accident – described by Sebastian Vettel as shocking – brought track safety to the fore once more.
Rosberg trails Hamilton by 48 points for the world championship and even a win at the five remaining races would not be enough to secure the title. He also needs Hamilton to suffer a DNF or finish outside the points, but to stay in the fight he must at least take the wins.
Saturday’s pole was the first step in that task and Rosberg did with it aplomb, outgunning Hamilton on every lap down to the final hot run, when the world champion made a mistake and had to abort his lap.
Mercedes have a clear advantage here in Russia, as they have had all season. Should they out-score Ferrari by three points, the pair will also secure the marque’s second constructors’ championship. It must be hoped they do so without incident, because Sainz’s accident in the third practice session caused considerable concern at the time, and the prevailing disquiet continued to reverberate around the paddock afterwards.
Sainz lost the back of his Toro Rosso on the fast entry to turn 13, hit the side wall, and went straight on into the barriers. The 21-year-old Spaniard, who is in his debut F1 season, was later pronounced unhurt but is unlikely to race despite posting on social media from his hospital bed that he was “already thinking how to convince the doctors to [let me] on the grid for tomorrow”. At the sharp right-hander at the end of the very fast back straight, where he would have been travelling at a minimum of 180mph before braking, his first impact scraped the paint from the hoarding. The second impact was at the 50m sign, after which there was little time for the car to slow further.
Toro Rosso believe a change of brake bias rearward and a switch to the lower-grip prime tyre caused the rear wheels to lock-up, but what was of concern is that the car went under the Tecpro barriers and so through to the final Armco fencing, with the Tecpro ending up on top of the car, making it difficult to extricate the driver.
“It was shocking to see, he was so deep in the barriers and he was covered by the barriers,” said Vettel. “It is something we need to understand because the idea is not for the barriers to come on top of you or the car to go under the barriers. It is something that has to be avoided.”
Franz Tost, Toro Rosso’s principal, was equally determined the incident would be investigated. “We must find a solution because that’s quite dangerous. It reminds me of the [Luciano] Burti accident at Blanchimont at Spa,” he said. “I think the barriers should be more fixed.”
Burti was driving for Prost in 2001 at Spa when he suffered a near-fatal crash after clipping Eddie Irvine’s Jaguar through the high-speed Blanchimont, then bouncing through a gravel trap and hitting a tyre wall. He had no memory of the incident and did not race in F1 again.
The barriers were designed by the French company Tecpro in collaboration with the FIA in 2006. Made of energy-absorbing blocks and constructed from polyethylene, they are assembled in segments joined to one another.
In this case, however, the issue seemed to be about them moving vertically rather than laterally. Sainz’s team-mate Max Verstappen walked away from a similar high-speed crash into the Tecpro earlier this season at Monaco, where they performed exactly as designed. “The crash I had in Monaco was better,” he said. “They need to find a solution so it doesn’t go up. It shouldn’t do that as it can hit his head. For sure the next meeting we have the drivers will talk about it.”
Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ head of motorsport, also expressed his concern. “It was frightening to see it at first because the car was so deep in the barriers,” he said, while also noting his team’s GPS had clocked Sainz’s impact at just under 90mph. “Maybe you have to come up with a system where you cut the asphalt and you put them deeper down so you avoid the whole thing going up and covering the car,” he added.
Jenson Button, the most experienced driver on the grid, believed an investigation was necessary. “It definitely needs to be looked at,” he said. “We shouldn’t be able to go under the barriers because then they are not doing what they are supposed to, which is slow you down before you hit something hard. I think safety is improving all the time but there is definitely room for improvement.”
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