[ERC] Rally di Roma Capitale 2024

[dimviii]

Crugnola finally won.
Larena 3rd Campedelli 2nd.
Pirelli 1-2 at the hot Italian asphalt against the new michelins.

[Fast Eddie WRC]

Franceschi didnt gain much on Paddon in the Championship race.

[Doon]

The Ostberg/Barth accident could have been far more serious, but why the hell was there a bail protecting the car from every tree, apart from the one the cars were most likely to hit?? There’s even a bail on the inside/exit of the corner. I’m still baffled.

[Sulland]

Rallycars need more protection for sideways impacts!
Had the tree impact been more on the co-drivers door, he would have been seriously indured or worse.
He was bleeding from the head, and knocked out, you can see om Mads` reaction that this was a big one.

Not easy to get more steel into the cage in the micky mouse size cars they use thses days, maybe we need one size up?

[dimviii]

https://x.com/rallyssimo/status/1817482633929965873

[Jarek Z]

Very interested to see the pace of Llarena this weekend now he has switched away from MRF. If his pace is suddenly a lot better, it will strongly indicate that Sesks struggles have been tyre related.

I think we have an answer what was wrong with Llarena's results this year. After his switch to Michelin tyres he suddenly makes several top 3 stage times and finishes the rally in a strong 3rd position.

[Jarek Z]

why the hell was there a bail protecting the car from every tree, apart from the one the cars were most likely to hit?? There’s even a bail on the inside/exit of the corner. I’m still baffled.

You are right! How stupid is that?!

[Jarek Z]

Final Day Highlights:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le_pE5ojjrQ

[Sulland]

From Mads' Facebook

Update ⚠️ We are still in hospital after our accident in Rally Di Roma. @patrikbarth has got a broken jaw and a broken hip, and will have to undergo surgery. For the moment we don’t know if it will be here in Italy, or if we can bring him home for the surgery there. But he remains positive as always❤️
I’ve been lucky and only broke one rib.


Thanks for all the messages and support ❤️❤️ it means a lot to both of us!

[Mirek]

Rallycars need more protection for sideways impacts!
Had the tree impact been more on the co-drivers door, he would have been seriously indured or worse.
He was bleeding from the head, and knocked out, you can see om Mads` reaction that this was a big one.

Not easy to get more steel into the cage in the micky mouse size cars they use thses days, maybe we need one size up?

Sulland, this is a common misconception. Larger car =/= safer car. I can tell you for sure that had this car been a much larger Impreza gr.N it would end worse than with the C3.

Larger heavier cars are usually better when you collide frontally with another car but when you crash into something solid it is pretty different because all your energy is spent only on your car, it doesn't split on two cars. Therefore first and foremost you need to have least possible energy, i.e. if the speed is same, you need least possible weight. Larger cars usually weight more. That's why pick-ups and SUVs generally have worse passive safety than smaller cars when impacting a solid obstacle.

When it comes to side impact like this one the major factor is the moment of inertia. Take one 20 cm long wooden stick and another one which has 40 cm and try to break both by hitting an edge of a table. The longer the stick the easier it brakes and the very same physics apply to cars. Long car with a lot of weight distributed far from the center of gravity bends around a tree easier than a short one. For the side impact the best car is therefore as short as possible with as much weight as possible placed in the middle (mid-engine ideally). That's why I wrote that Impreza would cope with this accident worse. It has a heavy engine placed in front of the front axle, i.e. as far from the center of gravity as possible. The moment of inertia grows with a square of the distance from the CoG, i.e. the situation is not linear but it gets worse exponentially as the car grows in length.

Only after that comes what you can mitigate by crash zones. In the side impact there isn't much more you can do. Today's Rally2 cars have actually pretty wide bodyshells. This C3 has 20 mm wider bodyshell than the "big fat" Octavia WRC which once was considered to be a tank. Modern cars are not narrow. Using bodyshells of larger cars would bring more negatives than possitives because you would get dozens of negatives for winning something like 1-2 cm on each side which would have close to zero impact on the safety.

The best way to make rallycars safer for the side impact is to use the spaceframe prototypes like Rally1 because there you can place the crew closer to each other and win a space for special super deep door pannels. But I guess you don't like the Rally 1 concept.