already talk of implementing a new tether system that loops through everything so in a crash, parts don't go flying off

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I think unfortunately it's probably going to take him a little while to get back to feeling normal again and this might even be a career ender even if it didn't kill him.
They likely put him in a coma because his brain was swelling up from the injury, which is good since it'll help him heal but it also means that his brain suffered enough injury that a lot of brain cells are dying right now.
Brain injuries are really scary stuff since it's literally like a part of you dies, since whatever brain cells that die take whatever they did with them and can totally affect your personality, memories, and all kinds of skills from talking to driving. You can relearn those things but having other brain cells you have left take over the job but obviously if you're competing at the top of your sport and the part of your brain that made you a top-level driver gets damaged you'll never be able to relearn it to quite that level.
Hopefully whatever got damaged didn't harm his driving abilities because that's the worst thing when this kind of injury takes away your career and the core of who you are.

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^Pulled from Youtube allready.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZybt3eOAI

Here is a 3-D slowmotion recreation. It seems that maybe stronger visors would have prevented this?

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There was no crash, spring just broke out of Barrichello's rear suspension.

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Puma GTO: Was not BLAMING Barachello. Maybe the engineer didn't even intend for the spring to fall out of the car. Maybe just loosened to produce ill handling car.

I have watched some horrific F1 accidents, never once has a spring leave the chassis like that. Properly secured, it most likely never will. Left unsecured, now we know what could happen.

When it comes to human behavior, Never say NEVER. Ethically it is unthinkable, but never say never.

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Freak accident though. Of all the places that spring could have gone, it hit his helmet. Which is a tiny little spec in the scale of things...

It happens...

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EU_Reader: I am not a conspiracy theorists, but this needs looking into. Anyone who follows F1 knows that Rubens railed against his team at the last race, calling them less than competent, and saying that they will end losing both the driver's and manufacturers titles.

Could it be that a peed off engineer, engineered the failure of that spring? Not intending to hurt anyone, just to "get" Rubens back. I say if this happened to Jensen's, I would be ready to move on. But RB pissed a lot of people on the team off.

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The spring likely wasn't moving quickly at all, Massa was going very fast though, making the relative speed pretty high.

The spring appeared to hit his visor, which helped it penetrate to his skull. The 2nd skull fracture (at the base of his skull) is almost certainly due to the car's impact with the wall at a very high rate of speed, not because of the spring directly.

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I take it back, from the pics, the spring didn't penetrate the helmet at all. See pic below. I wonder if either of the fractures came from the spring now.

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@ Mr.Oak


What the hell?! Barichello has nothing to do with it. No matter what you don´t like about your team or driver, nobody would do that on porpouse. I remenber Alonso openly criticising Renaut before he went to McLaren, and when he returned nobody sabotaged his car. Everyone in this business take these risks VERY seriously and no matter what, none of them would ever think of sabotaging a car. Racing is a dangerous profession on it´s own, this kind of thing happens eventualy.

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@ Mr.Oak

Have you never heard of Occam's razor? It is far more likely to be human error to blame.

@why not the LS2LS7?

As I understand it, neither of the skull fractures were due to the crash itself but both were sustained by the spring. It is easy to suspect the crash itself, however in mandating the HANS device they have effectively elliminated the fatal basilar skull injury (Of the type fatal to Dale Earnhardt). A good example of this was Robert Kubica's huge crash in 2004 in which his HANS device undoubtedly saved him. The confusion is due to the term "Basilar" used to describe his injury. This term implies the bottom of the skull with the presumed implication that it referes to the back of the head near the top of the spine (occipital region), however it actually refers to the lower part of the skull anywhere on a 360 degree plane. The injury just above his left eye socket shown in many photos therefore constitutes a basilar skull fracture. This injury was undoubtedly the spring impacting with the weaker visor area of his helmet. In addition to this the most pertinent evidence that this was not a high speed crash related injury is that he is still alive, most skull fracture's of the type you describe at this speed result in death.

As for Massa's wellbeing, I wish him a swift recovery. However, I believe Ferrari is being coy about the extent of his brain injury. The media focus for now has been on his survival but there seems to be some speculation (I hope inaccurate) that he could have some brain damage however small. It seems fair to say he will be lucky to get away with missing the rest of this season only.

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I never saw "basilar" anywhere but in speculation. The stuff I saw said fracture "at the base of the skull". The HANS device is great, but I don't believe it can eliminate all injuries of the sort it was designed to prevent. It can raise the limits at which life threatening injuries are sustained, but not eliminate them. I don't see how something above your eyebrow is basilar or at the base of the skull, but I'll take your word for it.

After a brain-swelling injury of this sort, there's no way Massa will be back next week, maybe not for the rest of the season. I do hope he can make a full recovery though.

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