Investigating Formula 1's WEIRDEST Crash
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🔴 Investigating the WEIRDEST Formula 1 Crash Ever
• Investigating the WEIR...
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Look at this image, it’s one of the most bizarre crashes in Formula 1 history.
The driver is Sebastian Buemi, and he is driving down the back straight in Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix in 2010.
At the end of the straight, travelling over 200 miles per hour - he hits the brakes. And BANG - both wheels fly off.
He lost both front wheels at the same exact moment - which is completely bizarre.
So I did some digging into what on earth caused this. Oh, and we spoke to the driver himself to find out.
First, this is clearly a suspension failure - but they don’t normally happen like this. Normally if the suspension is to fail, it’s a wishbone or a pushrod. The more fragile parts of the suspension, but this seems to be much worse than that.
So to figure this out, we need to look at a load of factors.
The first thing I thought, was about the track. Yes, I know it seems to be a car failure. But I had a slight hunch about what was going on.
Now the straight at Shanghai is extremely long - 1.1 kilometres long, one of the longest in Formula 1. But on top of that, the cars enter the straight off the back of Turn 13. A corner that gradually opens up - so the cars are doing 140 miles per hour at the START of the straight.
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#Formula1 #Crash #Racing
Seeing Buemi trying to steer a wheel-less car never gets old.
It was just the most reactive thing that you’d do but it’s still hilarious
Like seeing the brake lights on when Mark Webber's Le Mans car decided it was an aircraft.
Come on, thats harsh 😂 All of us will be steering first seconds
@@aidarhelpswithenglish4160 and then changing some pants
@@Quattro_Joe yeah. I wonder if F1 history have any "shit himself" stories
I like how Buemi presents himself like he's not a WEC and Formula E champion
One humble man, he has the creds of a top driver and knows his spot. He doesn't have to brag about what he has achieved. Most drivers dream of having a career like his (and talent to match it, too).
Don't forget being a 4-time Le Mans winner as well
Most Sebastiens in Motorsport end up as world champions!
Lmao not knowing shit the way he talked I assumed he had just faded off into mediocrity after getting booted from F1
Thanks, didn't know that.
So the braking zone became the breaking zone?
Ingenious
Wait thats not a typo
Da dum tishh!
@@BLX187 Ba dum tssss
👍🤣g1!
Never knew about the tarmac actually buckling under the force of braking, crazy.
tarmac waves my guy, moving it like water :'D
You can even see it on the road when there is a downhill section and then a stop sign, when the road is older, it starts to get wavy
I think something similar happens on dirt roads, causing a corrugated surface
Probably an issue with the track. It was made in China
just like tires actually changing form with the force of the cars, so much stuff going on we can't appreciate at first sight.
Nice to see Seb. he's been great fun to watch in Formula E and WEC
Lmao that sounds so odd if you dont know for buemi
Very big "yeah I'm just some dude" energy in his intro
Well you see the problem is the front fell off.
Is that normal?
@@Kalimerakis Chance in a million
@@Kalimerakis generally they’re designed so that the front doesn’t fall off.
Well, the stewards towed it out of the environment
that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point
This crash always reminds me of an article I once read either in Evo or Octane magazine, around the same time as this crash (iirc). The writer had the opportunity to drive a Formula 1 car. During his briefing with car’s engineers, when it came to the notoriously stiff brake pedal, they told him something like: “Press as hard as you can. Do not worry, you cannot break the pedal no matter how hard you push. If you break the brakes we will buy you a bottle of whatever champagne you like.” I wish I could cite the exact source, if anyone knows the article I’m describing please let me know!
Not formula 1 but in my FSAE team the pedals were designed to be dummy strong. I think the force required for failure would be something like squatting 800lbs with one foot
My favourite part about Buemi's incident was David Coulthard laughing at him for trying to steer the car with no front wheels.
It’s like stepping on the brakes in the air! 😁🤭
I like how Buemi introduces himself as if most of us have never heard of him
Surprising but not everyone viewing these videos are F1 enthusiasts, I literally searched for a video about this crash because of a meme
Funny, I always thought Buemi had a lock-up a few moments earlier and the flat-spotted tires generated vibration and stress on the suspension, then under load it all exploded. Dont know if and when I came up with that myself or if I saw it in any other place, though... Anyways, the reasons presented here also make a lot of sense.
wait, i saw somewhere that it was the flat spots too
Probably you got confused with Kimi Raikkonen's crash on Nurburgring when he flatted one of his front tires on a lock-up and then it snapped just at the end of the race, while he was leading and about to win
@@samuelromero4696 oooooh, thats exactly it! You nailed, it was indeed Kimi's crash and now I remember it clearly. Another one of those moments where my questionable memory makes me think I'm going senile. lol
Congrats to buemi for their p2 finish at the 1000 miles of Sebring
😂I remember he was steering without front wheels
Total panic move. I bet he felt like he was gonna shit his pants. Or suit.
Blind terror makes fools of us all.
Best of Buemi - staring last in Buenos Aires and finishing second, overtaking everyone.
As an engineer I can say this is most likely either an issue with loads estimates/loads collection or simulations settings. A part like this should always be fatigue limited in design, and the fact that both uprights failed simultaneously means the design was laughably far from being strong enough. So either this load case wasn't properly considered for this design or the simulation showed better strength than reality. Usually this second scenario is caused by improper boundary conditions at the joint absorbing forces that wouldn't be taken by the joint in real life.
Considering the story about how they had to restart their own development team, this kind of mistake can definitely have happened. You wouldn't expect it from veterans working years after year on the car, but from someone who was eager to lighten a part and hadn't really tested if the part they simulated would work the same IRL, I think you're spot on.
@@MiguelAbd What happened most likely is that the track specific loads weren't communicated to the engineering/development department within the team.
like he explained in the video, the left failed a few tenths earlier than the entire force was on the right and failed too
I love Detective Scott 😂 keep investigating please. This is a great series keep it up ❤
It's crazy that you made a video about this because I was just telling a friend last week about it and showing him the video! Love your videos as always.
Getting the man himself on call is just legendary youtube content
With this title, I would've thought that this was about alonso's 2015 pre season crash
You deserve more subscriptions, visualizzations and likes. This article was astonishing (nut sure if wrote right) that as always is written with the highest details evaluations as far I could see. Great job, ty for sharing.
I was just at the 1000 mile at Sebring. He’s not kidding about how bumpy that track is. His car came in 2nd and the sister car came 1st. I know Sebring is a piece of crap for a track, but is such a fun time for the spectators. Was my 10th race weekend out there. Many more to come
Let's just say that the track was made in China...
Nice
Great to see Buemi again - fly safe !!
Looks similar to Derrike Cope's front end exploding at Watkins Glen in 2016 in the NASCAR Xfinity series. Just a massive WTF moment.
Might have been a materials layup issue with the carbon fiber. I have had a couple of hockey sticks from a defective run of composites basically explode in my hands.
Think you’re absolutely right. Lighter components under immense strain that bump suddenly adds a jolt of extra pressure to an already loaded item and bang, in the tyre wall with no wheels.
Where is "We put a subscriber in F1 car" video? You've crossed 1M subscribers!
Super interesting, I always wondered what those bumps were about right at the start of a braking zone at Sardegna in GT7
A fine bit of research. I assume the team were not forthcoming with any information whatsoever. Excellent. Keep it up.
very comprehensive analysis
Congrats on the 1 MIL!!! Heres to Overdrive reaching 1 mil
Interesting. Thank you as always
A second important question you did not consider is, what happened to the wheel tethers? The internet tells me F1 was using them in 2010 and it seems unlikely both would suffer complete failures. Or was the team saving weight on them too?
I know the idea of a driver crashing isn't supposed to be funny, but when I was watching that live and both tires just flew away from the car like that, I burst out laughing. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen in a legitimate race. It was like a cartoon.
Congrats on 1 mill!!
your channel is simply amazing!
@Driver61 I have some great video ideas, that might intrest others as well : 1.) How is Alonso still so good in his 40s 2.) How aston evolved so much 3.) Why are Mercedes and Ferrari strugling I hope you might find these topics intresting as well😊!!
Just before entering that straight, Sebastian Buemi locked his brakes, causing flat spots. I've seen it live. You could see the suspension members oscillate a LOT for about half of the straight. It was even visible on a normal TV set.
Love this kind of video!
I had to laugh in 2018 when Hartley's Toro Rosso Had a similar failure to the LHF. And the team said "we have no idea what's happened. We have NEVER seen anything like this before!" . I was like WHAT lol
Congrats to 1 Mio Subscribers!!🎉
Thank you I had been curious about this since I saw it happen
The bumps at Sebring are absolutely something else. It's one hell of a thing watching high downforce racing machines bouncing like anything over those. It's even more impressive watching the Peugeot hypercar going over those, almost free of any downforce because ground effect don't work so good if you're not on the ground, and realising just how much all that downforce actually matters.
That "circuit " is 50 years overdue for resurface.
Privacy on Zoom is a joke, but great content nonetheless. Keep up the good work.
quick snack before quali time
Crew: “Um...I found those bolts, you were looking for. ” Crew2: “Quick! Hide it!”
For anyone that doesn’t want to wade through the conjecture and speculation and actually just get to the interview it starts at 6:20
I love how torro rosso is literally red bull in Italian
0:03. Look at this photograph....everytime it makes me laugh...
👏Such an entertaining video!
Ever come to a stop sign or a stop light thats all washboarded asphalt approaching it ? Same thing really. I work for construction company that also has a Concrete Raising company. We use a combination of concrete and loom to flow under sunken concrete to hydraulically raise the sunken areas. Tricky really cause as you raise one side the opposite side drops like a Tettertotter effect. Im curious if thats was the socalled foam that they used to raise that muddy area of the corner at Singapore's F1 race track ?
Buemi has done it all. he also had one of the scariest quali crashes for the Indy 500.
That's Bourdais, not Buemi
@@simoneburini4036 shiiit you're right. 😅 thanks for the correction. get 'em confused sometimes lol.
Gonna be honest, Kudos for making me believe you are Richard Hammond at the start of this video cause of your voice! Great video I watched this live!
Just got back from a great weekend at Sebring, sad the WEC aren’t going back there
I'm not a F1 fan or much into cars for that matter but my father and brother both very much are, one thing I've always found surprising with car's set up for speed and performance is just how hard the suspension has to be, you run over a beetle and it nearly breaks your spine! Must be a lot of force involved
The load shifting instantly was like the Hotel New World in Singapore where columns failed transferring their load to others which instantly were overloaded & failed in turn.
Would be nice to have a conversion of the mph in kph on the screen when cited, you know for the 90% of the world that doesn't use mph
Learn to convert like we do. 1 mile=1.6km (Also English speaking nations almost all use miles in population terms)
If you really want to know the mph to kph there’s a really useful conversion tool on google I use it when videos use kph because I’m used to mph, hope this helps.
@@jordanclark4635 english speaking COUNTRIES yes, but viewers (or english speaking PEOPLE) are not mainly brits or americans.
@@jordanclark4635 mph are used on cars and roadsigns as a way to measure speed in ~15 countries (counting only sovereign nations) we arrive at ~22 counting the one were both as used, out of ~195 sovereign countries that makes little more than ~11% of the world that use mph. So while, yes, you can convert mph in kph more or less on the fly (excluding people that have difficulties in mental calcolous) if he want his videos to be accessible to all the world these details makes the difference in improving the quality of videos imo.
It's quite easy to do on the fly, just keep in mind that 60mph is around 100kph, 50mph=80kph, 30mph=50kph (more or less) so lets say 180mph would be 300kph (3x60), and so on. You have to get used to these things since most of the car releted channels are based in the UK and USA which use imperial units. I can't get my head around MPG and inches yet, but I bet I will sooner than later
Frame by frame, at least one wheelside lower whishbone link failed (and went up first) then you can see the upper twisted before breaking the link, and the nose goes down. Most of the wishbones being stil there make me think that it's a bolts problem
"Hello Sebastien. Which were your first words when u've been back at box?"
A truly excellent video examination of this bizarre incident. My assumption, at the time, was that the front A-arms were too lightly made. All of these open wheeled race cars have A-arms designed to break in an accident and to not have the suspension part spear into the driver cockpit or his helmet as happened when Ayrton Senna died. The track 'looked' smooth but all of the force complications you described are a perfect storm to pop both A-arms instantly to pieces and release both tires off the car. I was very surprised the tethers did absolutely nothing about keeping the tires with the car. But in this case,that may well have saved Buemi from injury. Just a very bizarre double suspension failure I hope we never see again.
Suspension was made of chinisium for this venue
"Everything was going fine until the wheels came off." BEEN THERE.
The violence of the failure, and the fact it happened to both front tyres simultaneously makes me think this is not an issue with down force. Those components you would expect, if they do break, one member would break, or parts would crack, or bend and fail, not this. This has to require a sudden but large increase in the forces applied, and I don't think a bump explains it. This looks like a case of Newtons 3rd Law. Every actions has an equal and opposite reaction. I think the failure was from the sudden application of brakes, resulting in an equal torque force being applied to the calliper and thus whatever the calliper is attached to. I think you can see the failure too when you watch the video (seemingly missing from this video). If you freeze frame the first deformation occurs on the right hand wheel, you see one of the main members suddenly bend downward. Just before the whole thing self destructs. So when you spin something up, say with a motor, you generate a torque to do so. If the motor is held in place, the motor and the wheel will turn in opposite directions. Similar to when a helicopter loses its tail rotor and starts to spin. The same is true for stopping a rotating body. You apply a torque, opposite the direction of spin. I think the downforce loaded the suspension up, and the sudden torque generated by the brakes, exceeded the strength of the parts (by a significant amount).
It wasnt the bump, it was mario landing on the nose!
My theory is that it’s from timing of breaking, the point at which your at at the track and a failure of suspension all at the same time. I think at the moment he breaks he does it right before the bump and I’m talking milliseconds close. Right when he hit the bump the failure happens from just so much of kid coming from breaking and maybe the g force actually just ripped the suspension from both sides. That’s what I think of every time I watch the crash. I remember watching this live and was so confused and how the commentators were confused. No one had an answer for the first time in a long time about what happened in that scenario
There's a couple minutes of really good insights in this video, surrounded by about 8 minutes of Driver61 basically speculating time-wasting nonsense that does not lead the viewer to the right answer. I definitely see why Driver61 has a sketchy reputation amongst a lot of motorsport fans. Long story short: it was the lightweight uprights, cyclic failure at a critical loading point due to a design that "flew a little too close to the sun" in icarus terms. Really didn't need most of Driver61's misleading conjecture in this.
That advert was incredibly painful.
at least it was in accordance with the name: breaking zone 🤣
Red Bull Gives You Wings, and that can only be a good thing when both front wheels fly off simultaneously...
I remember that race if I remember correctly the team changed the uprights and said they failed
Nice to see the video of my Ferrari engined McLaren Honda at 1:23.
The wishbones were underdimensioned and produced with very precise tolerance. So a hard symmetrical braking caused both wishbones to fail
in the 2023 saudi arabian gp i saw a weird movement in lewis hamilton"s hands. then the steering wheel moved closer to hamilton. i am not sure if its DAS or not. can you check that out?
One driver in his first start lost rear wing before first corner and crashed. No more race, said dad.
They used chinesium metal for the wheel nuts. The track is also made of chinesium. Chinesium is not a suitable building material for anything
That’s one way of reducing the weight of the car.
0:40 a wishbone failure could easily cascade and cause loss of the whole outboard assembly.
Is there a separate master for each wheel? Seems like once one broke off and cut the brake line you would loose all the front braking pressure and the other wouldn't go.
Breaking the car and breaking the car are two totally different things. ... Ah yeah, the lovely English language. Splendid! 😁🤟
Truly the most bizarre failure ever however there was a Nascar race car that had a very bizarre incident as well when it was stopping the front tyres exploded! You should check that one out!
He simply drove the wheels off the car 😂
The rules were changed drastically in 2009, so Toro Rosso wouldn't have been able to copy the (rather unsuccessful) 2008 Red Bull for that year. They ended in last place in the constructors' championship, even behind Force India. In 2010, they arguably did even worse, even though they scored more points as the points system had been changed. They still finished last of the established teams in the championship, even though this now meant they finished in 9th instead of 10th. From there on, they would improve until they had a very good chassis in the mid-2010s.
Interesting enough, str had another suspension failure with brendon hartley (in usa i think) under similar conditions although not as dramatic
The drivers can also adjust braking force, on the fly, for each wheel or front to rear. It is possible he had too much braking force input for the front.
The torsional force of braking at maximum speed and maximum downforce was obviously more than the suspension could resist. The weakest link failed.
Those uprights needed more time in testing
Playing F1 games with realistic damage mod and accidentally touched an atomic speck of wall be like:
This remains to this day one of the funniest things (once we knew he was okay) to happen in f1.
What happened to last years F1 competition you were running?
He accidentally mapped the brake pedal to the "jettison front wheels" switch
They put the nuts and wheels backwards 😂😂
Torque from braking ? Front part of the suspension will have load counteracting the weight and rear would have torque increasing load. Or is it the otherway. Then once one bit fails everything else goes out of limit in milliseconds. The uniformity of manufacture plus unifority of load left and right.
wait, so which of the two crashes is actually the ultimate WEIRDEST crash now?
Ya kinda weird they made two vids with such similar titles
He was a very lucky boy! It's chapman's add lightness gone totally wrong.😊
My fav youtuber made a video.. yaaay
"a few tenths" Just no - if it's anything it's in the thousands.
Do the wheel teathers not prevent the wheels from becoming missiles?
Seems not ☹️
To be honest, from the beginning I doubt it has anything to do with the track bump. Because it's not like all other cars broke, just one car. No driver complained about the surface of Shanghai's track. The track is only 6 years old at the time. Built to FIA standards specifically for F1 (China at the time already had tracks for racing, but none met F1 racing standards). Not sure why this video spends 80% of length focus on the track bump that happens to all tracks, and only in the last few minutes to say "oh it's their new parts that were too weak". Might should explain more on the suspension structure and why one part can case wheels just pop off.
The brakes breaks the suspension! 👻🤪🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻♀️ At least the tyres weren’t tired!💩🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻♀️
I dunno what happened I hit the brake and all the wheel come off
They built the track on top of builders foam ?!?!?!?