• Japanese GP

Mosley calls Bianchi crash 'a freak accident'

ESPN Staff
October 7, 2014 « Ecclestone wants answers regarding Bianchi crash | Smedley backs closed cockpits in F1 »
Jules Bianchi receives urgent medical treatment at Suzuka after hitting a recovery vehicle © Sutton Images
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Max Mosley, the former president of the FIA and a man who did more than almost anyone to help make Formula One a safer sport, said that Jules Bianchi's crash was a "freak accident" and that track officials could not be blamed.

"What happened in Suzuka was very unfortunate and I can't really fault any of the people involved, the marshals or the race director or any of those people," he told Sky Sports. "Everything was done as it should have been.

"There is pretty much an automatic procedure, which is that as soon as a car goes off, that car becomes a danger to other cars because if another car going off hits it, the effects are unpredictable. So you want to remove the car as quickly as possible.

"They then send a tractor to do that but before they do that you get a succession of flags at the previous marshals' post; a stationary, a waved and, if necessary, a double-waved yellow, to warn the drivers that this is going on and they must slow down and take every precaution, because if they go off in the same place then it is, in the first instance, obviously very dangerous for the marshals."

However, former world champion Jacques Villeneuve was one of those who said that the situation was exacerbated by not putting out a safety car when Adrian Sutil slid off a lap earlier. Bianchi hit the tractor that was lifting Sutil's Sauber off the circuit.

"When I was racing, and afterwards, I was always saying that any time there is an accident there should be a safety car," he told Autosport. "There shouldn't be room for judgement. If someone has to go out to pick up a car stranded on the track, it's simple. Accident - safety car and that's it. It should have been like that for years.

"The problem now is every time the FIA send the safety car out all the media and fans complain, saying they destroyed the race. So now they second-guess themselves. It's a lose-lose situation."

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