According to Max Verstappen, the layout of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit is not the reason for the fatal accident of Dilano van ‘t Hoff.
Sad weekend. Two Dutch people were killed while racing, including Dilano van ‘t Hoff. The 18-year-old teenager was killed during race two of the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA). The other rider is Joey den Besten (30), who was riding his bike when he lost control during a Superbike race.
Back to Belgium. Unfortunate decision by the race management: they decided to drive one more lap after a situation behind the safety car. It was raining hard and visibility was pretty bad. The Dutch driver crashed and was hit on the side by Adam Fitzgerald, with all the consequences.
The circuit in the Belgian Ardennes is notorious. There was also a fatal accident in almost the same place in 2019, when Anthoine Hubert died after a collision by Juan Manuel Correa.
Verstappen over Spa-Francorchamps
Many drivers, including Lance Stroll, blamed the layout of the circuit for the accident. There are corners, think of the Eau Rouge and Raidillon, that are dangerous. According to Stroll, Formula 1 is ‘playing with fire’ by maintaining these corners. He believes that there should be changes to the track.
Max Verstappen agrees with Stroll that the corners are dangerous. But the accident didn’t come through the corners. It was more due to the weather conditions: it rained quite a bit. Visibility is then almost zero due to the spray. Verstappen mentions much more dangerous bends elsewherenamely on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Saudi Arabia.
He says about this:
It’s definitely a pretty dangerous corner, but we also race in Jeddah and the first sector is probably even more dangerous there.
Solution
Of course the circuit can be made safer. Verstappen, for example, thinks about the walls. These can be set more at a distance, so that you don’t come back to the track so quickly after a crash.
But most importantly, he says, “the first thing you should look at is why they had a reboot.” The track conditions must be decisive. And looking back, which is always easy, it might have been wiser to stop the race during the heavy rain.
This article Max: Layout of Spa is not the reason for fatal accident appeared first on Autoblog.nl.
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