This angle might not suggest it but the FIA thinks 20m can be gained
The FIA is set to create more run off area at the Monaco chicane by removing the crane that normally sits there, this blog can reveal.
The barrier hit by Sergio Perez has been moved back since the Karl Wendlinger and Jenson Button accidents. The limiting factor until now has been the presence of the crane, which is parked before a row of trees.
It’s hoped that without the crane the barrier can be moved back to the trees and an extra 20 metres of space can be gained. The TV camera position, currently in front of the crane, would be moved to the trees.
While the Automobile Club de Monaco is keen to have its crane in place the FIA’s argument is that any incident that occurs there in practice or qualifying is in any case likely to be big enough to trigger a red flag, while incidents in the race would lead to a safety car.
The FIA even considered removing the crane on Saturday night after the Perez accident, but relocating the barriers proved too complex a task to perform in the time available.
And this is what the drivers see at the moment. A bit tight...
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
With the second picture, I wonder why Massa didn’t continue down the run-off in the race, and they possibly could’ve avoided a safety car (depending on debris) ?
Good point, I guess we could start a conspiracy theory about Alonso being helped by a team mate again! I think he did his best to get off the racing line and ran out of momentum.
Getting the car where you want it to go tends to be a bit difficult when a couple of wheels are dislocated 😉
Why don’t they block that”dead-end-street” after all? If you close it with a barrier that starts at the chicane entry and ends where that crane is, it will have a nice angle to any uncontrolled cars approaching. It would have “guided” Wenlinger, Button and Perez onto the next straight.
Surely it would make more sense to resurface the downhill entry into the chicane. This should remove the bump which is causing the incidents.
Am I wrong in thinking that the tire change at the re-start affected the outcome of the race? It certainly took the air out of the, “whose tires will last till the end” story. I’m not saying that anything was done incorrectly. It’s just that the race plan that Button used was made pointless. Yes, with 6 laps to go, it’s a stretch to think he’d win. But with the tire change he was certain not to win.
I absolutely agree there.. as a viewer and fan of the sport i felt absolutely deflated myself when it was confirmed that they could change tyres under the red flag, what build up we had to a thrilling final few laps ended in a processional march to the flag and a bitter taste in the mouth to all those tuned in to a cracking race. Surely cars should be treated as parc ferme like after qualifying as this gives an unfair advantage to some drivers and robbed us of a classic race.
It’s been in the rules for years, we just hadn’t had a suspension since Europe 2007 – when it was a wet/dry race and changing tyres for the restart was logical. Everyone should also remember that the FIA could have kept the race running under the safety car for those six laps and we would have had a finish like last year’s…
Yes, they could have done that. But that would not have produced the result that Paul and I wanted. Namely, for Jenson to win! That’s really at the heart of our thinly veiled criticism .
I’ve got a feeling that trying to drive on tyres that have cooled down from racing temperature while sitting in one position would be a bit bumpy. They don’t have hugely high pressures inside to keep them round, so if they cool (further reducing the temperature) and go hard in one position I suspect you’d get a huge flatspot on each tyre.
I wonder whether it would be better to nót have the run-off on the right of the barrier, but rather have the guardrail that runs alongside the track, cross the run-off inside the chicane, and join the left of the barrier. That way, the barrier doesn’t stick out like it does now, although a downside is that all crashed/runaway cars would end up on the bit of tarmac towards Tabac, i.e. on the circuit itself.
What do people think about the idea of altering the barrier so it guides the car into the run off rather than providing an abrupt perpendicular wall.
Much easier said than done though!
So where is the crane going to go? Please not at the end of the run-off area. It needs to be near to lift crashed cars off the track.
As the story says there will be no crane. They can rely on red flags and safety cars. It’s also easy to have mobile recovery vehicles located just on the left just before the chicane, next to the water, where medical cars and so on are currently located
What seems to make more sent to me than having an end-on barrier, whether it’s at its present location or 20m later, is for tecpro to be deployed at an angle that goes from the outer edge of the corner entry (i.e. where the white line goes perpendicular to the armco to mark out the chicane) to the current position of the tecpro barrier that Perez and co all hit. This forms a sloping angle which, should a car approach out of control, will direct their collision onward toward where Rosberg ended up. Of course this would still require a crane and clean-up and thus a safety car in the race, but the ultimate aim of driver safety will be achieved.
If there is an absolute imperative that the escape road be accessible to public traffic between sessions, and for emergency vehicles, then surely an entrance can be located between the trees with the simplest of creative minds. Even I can think of ways so I’m sure a trained monkey could, let alone the safety gurus.
Although if you feed out of control cars back onto the track there’s a middling chance they’ll collide with another car in doing so.
No perfect answers, only degrees of risk.
Any word on what they propose to do about the bump on the track just after the tunnel? After all isn’t that where all the accidents started?
The bigger issue to to finally sort out the bump in the surface that causes car’s barge boards to momentarily raise the wheels off the road. It is the loss of drectional control resulting from this that is the route cause of the problems last weekend and pervious years.
Yes the Monaco auhtorities re surfaced it, but did the test that bump had gone?
Changing the barier is still required, regardless of (re-) resurfacing the bump in the braking zone. If there was no bump you could still have a collision (like vd Garde & Bianchi in Saturday GP2) that would sent you straight into that perpendicular barrier. I can’t think of a F1 corner around the world where the barrier is so close (relative to speed) and perpendicluar to the track.
Having seen footage of Graham Hill driving Monaco before the race on BBC, I can’t help wondering whether the shicane itself is the problem, not the barrier. You can move it all you like but the basic fact is ALL the accidents have happened on the tunnel exit while braking, NOT straight into the barrier, so this is barking up the wrong tree in my view. There is clearly a tendency for the cars to bottom out under heavy braking FOR the shicane where they exit the tunnel in the right hand lane on the racing line. They lock up, vere right and hit the right side barrier – after that at 180mph, what difference is moving the barrier back 20 m going to make? Maybe they should get rid of the shicane and make it less of a braking point Or sort out the hump on the tunnel exit. If they sited the crane further up the exit road, it would still have the same access. Also, I don’t see anyone actually “using” the ‘escape’ route – because they are all out of control by that point having hit the right hand barrier! Maybe they should lose the escape road and create a curved tyre barrier with a gravel trap in front!