Massa incident highlights the inherent danger in motorsport

Ferrari Formula One driver Felipe Massa of Brazil steers his car during the practice session at the Hungaroring circuit near Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, July 25, 2009. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

There’s no question that safety in motorsport has improved in leaps and bounds since the FIA committed to a renewed safety drive following the tragic weekend of the 1994 San Marino GP. But as Felipe Massa’s freak accident in Hungary demonstrates, danger always lurks in a sport that can never be made truly safe.

Massa was travelling in excess of 250km/h when struck by a steel spring that weighed just under a kilogram from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn car.

It struck Massa with such intensity that it briefly knocked him out and resulted in a damaged skull and brain concussion that required emergency surgery.

The odds of such an incident occurring are incredibly remote.

However, the incident has sent shockwaves through Formula 1, coming only a week after British driver Henry Surtees was killed in a Formula 2 race at Brands Hatch when he was struck in the head by a wheel that had come off a rival’s car.

Despite the huge advancements in track safety, much improved medical facilities at the tracks, improved cockpit protection and the like, such freak accidents are a sad reality of motorsport.

While the likes of Barrichello and Lewis Hamilton have called for the FIA to not ignore the accidents, in such scenarios, there is little that can be done.

To protect drivers from such injuries, the FIA would have to consider having a closed cockpit in Formula 1, something that was already being discussed in the Budapest paddock as Massa was being taken to hospital.

Such a move would fundamentally change the sport and have huge repercussions for the rest of the motorsport world.

Would the sport be prepared to commit to such radical change on the back of two incidents that are best described as freak accidents?

If the FIA’s reaction to the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix tragedies is a guide, you feel had Massa been fatally injured in the crash, it may not have even been up for debate.

It seems unfathomable however and traditionalists would be quick to lament the death of proper open wheel racing.

The FIA mustn’t rush any decision.

They need to be careful to avoid overreaction.

Formula 1 Grand Prix racing is already in a perilous state and it cannot afford knee jerk reactions that risk alienating its supporter base.

Without wanting to sound fatalistic, perhaps in such scenarios there needs to be an acceptance that motorsport can never be made totally safe and such crashes are a reality when speed is combined with human and mechanical frailty.

This doesn’t mean the FIA should standstill on safety but the sheer physics of the accident; the weight and size of the spring and the damage it caused demonstrates that even the most obscure and freak circumstances can have such terrible repercussions.

Can every possible element of danger be eliminated from the sport?

As long as they are racing prototype machines at speeds in excess of 300 km/h, then danger will lurk and will strike randomly.

This is the problem Formula 1 has faced since it received such huge criticism when Ayrton Senna was killed on live television in lounge rooms across the world.

While it has the worldwide popularity that few sports enjoy, it is still is an extreme sport that flirts with disaster and tragedy.

It has not reconciled these two facets of the sport.

Motorsport should never be complacent about safety, but it needs to accept that it can never be safe.