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HandyNZL

The Guys In Orange

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There used to be this ad on NZ TV for a mobile car battery service, for a company called Marshall Batteries. The catch phrase being "Hollar for a Marshall"

How does this pertain to Formula 1?

Petrov decided that parking amongst a row of tyres was far superior to that of taking the car back home to Reg in the pitlane. And then he sat there. And sat there some more. And then he got out of the car. And then he got himself a fire extinguisher and he put out a little marshmellow on a stick fire in the back of the car.

Rewind a few races, and one of the Tracey brothers, aka Thunderbirds, aka Heikki Kovalinen parked his BBQ bonfire infront of the pitwall. And he too got out and grabbed himself a fire extinguisher and proceeded to put the fire out.

This raises a few questions:

1/ Where were the safety marshalls for Petrov? Normally it's a rugby huddle of orange overalls around any car on the side of the track, even if the driver has stopped to sign an autograph.

2/ Where, in each case, were the Fire Crew? Even at club level here in NZ, every marshall point has a fully equipped Fireman

3/ Why, when they have them on board, are the drivers not activating the built in extinguishers in the first instance? Sure, you get powder all over your overalls, but there is a fair squirt that goes over the engine at the same time. Or are the "E" stickers on the cars just for show and tell for some corporate schmoo thats come to visit the cars in the garage?

4/ If safety is one of F1's key things these days, why is any of the above happening?

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There used to be this ad on NZ TV for a mobile car battery service, for a company called Marshall Batteries. The catch phrase being "Hollar for a Marshall"

How does this pertain to Formula 1?

Petrov decided that parking amongst a row of tyres was far superior to that of taking the car back home to Reg in the pitlane. And then he sat there. And sat there some more. And then he got out of the car. And then he got himself a fire extinguisher and he put out a little marshmellow on a stick fire in the back of the car.

Rewind a few races, and one of the Tracey brothers, aka Thunderbirds, aka Heikki Kovalinen parked his BBQ bonfire infront of the pitwall. And he too got out and grabbed himself a fire extinguisher and proceeded to put the fire out.

This raises a few questions:

1/ Where were the safety marshalls for Petrov? Normally it's a rugby huddle of orange overalls around any car on the side of the track, even if the driver has stopped to sign an autograph.

2/ Where, in each case, were the Fire Crew? Even at club level here in NZ, every marshall point has a fully equipped Fireman

3/ Why, when they have them on board, are the drivers not activating the built in extinguishers in the first instance? Sure, you get powder all over your overalls, but there is a fair squirt that goes over the engine at the same time. Or are the "E" stickers on the cars just for show and tell for some corporate schmoo thats come to visit the cars in the garage?

4/ If safety is one of F1's key things these days, why is any of the above happening?

1) When you consider that the Vice Minister of Sport (in charge of handling the prize to Dyer) had to be signalled by the drivers who was he supposed to shake hands with, you can tell that Korea is still a rather unexperienced country when it comes to F1. Perhaps they weren't positioned right or didn't know what to do.

2) I didn't see Petrov putting out his own fire, but I recall Kova's and Vettel's and in both cases it seemed to me that the fire crew was in fact heading towards their respective cars and both just took out the extinguishers from the firemen to put down the fire themselves.

3) Those things are messy! That's why.

4) Because...it's Webber's fault? :unsure:

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Good point. For all the criticism I give the IRL, I have to say, I'm always hugely impressed with how quickly the safety crews get to the car, seemingly sometimes before the accident is even over.

Petrov's crash was quite a hefty one, and I was suprised that nobody came to his assistance either. I guess you could put it down to the inexperience of the Korean marshalls, but on the whole, I think that marshalling around the world is pretty good.

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Does F1 standardize a team of safety workers, or are they staffed by the tracks? CART's Simply Green Safety Team in the 90s was the best example of how responsive a safety crew can be when you have a consistent group of permanent employees at teach race. The IRL adopted a similar approach, and as JHS mentions, they're very rapid in their response. Any series that doesn't have a legitimate, full-time safety team is really stupid. The response time for Massa's crash last year was pathetic, which leads me to believe the track supplies their own. A series as big as F1 needs better. Same with NASCAR; for all the money spent on super-effective safety developments over the last decade, I don't trust their safety teams to be particularly good if they were needed (fortunately, they haven't been needed, and to be fair, it's a lot easier to get to a car quickly on an oval than it is on a road course).

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Each track provides their own VOLUNTEER marshals in F1....key admin positions..ie sitting in the same room as Charlie Whiting, go to each race, but they are not at the coal face, as it were.

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