Did the Roll Hoop FAIL in Zhou's Crash?

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The crash at the start of the British Grand Prix was incredibly scary to watch, there were multiple cars involved - but the most serious incident was the one between George Russell and Zhou Guanyu.

That led to Zhou’s car being flipped at more than 150mph and sliding across the track upside down.

But one of the most concerning things, is that the safety feature that was put in place to protect the driver in this sort of incident, the roll hoop, wasn’t there during the crash.

So what happened? Did it fail? Or is something else going on here?

Let’s get into it.

Now, we should first address the incident. It was a wrong place, wrong time thing.

George Russell was alongside Zhou when he moved over to take the racing line, not realising that Gasly was between them. This send George into a half spin, meaning that Zhou’s rear right wheel hit the back of George’s front left.

This meant that the rotation of the rear tyre, and the engine power behind it, sent Zhou’s car up into the air. This rolled the car in a way that we don’t see very often. These cars have an incredibly low centre of gravity, and so tipping them over is uncommon.

Now, I personally think George is a fantastic driver, but on this occasion he made a mistake. I think it’s as simple as he either didn’t see Gasly, or didn’t think he was quite as close as he actually was. There’s so much going on at the start of a race, that it’s difficult to see everything - especially when there was a big difference in how quickly everyone started at Silverstone. George started to open up his racing line going in to Abbey, and unfortunately Gasly was there.

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