Denmark's Johan Price-Pejtersen aquaplaned into a corner and was almost submerged in an enormous puddle as he crashed off his bike.
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Behind him, there was mayhem and chaos in a crash-filled thriller that was twice stopped and re-started, with five safety car periods and lengthy delays after cars aquaplaned off.
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Trulli took the lead with Coulthard in second. None of the leaders made pit stops to switch to wet-weather compound tyres immediately because half of the track was dry while the final hairpin was flooded. On lap four, Montoya, Bernoldi, Heidfeld and Villeneuve aquaplaned into a gravel trap and retired. Race officials deployed the safety car on the lap though several cars, including Trulli, Coulthard and Barrichello, aquaplaned into the turn 15 hairpin.
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Defending World Champion Nelson Piquet made the strange decision to start the race on slick tyres. It proved to be the wrong choice as his Lotus aquaplaned on the wet surface and clouted the tyre barrier going into the Ostkurve chicane on the first lap. Larrousse driver Philippe Alliot would later repeat Piquet's mistake. He changed from wets to slicks just 8 laps later and while being lapped by Senna, went offline and aquaplaned into the same tyre barrier the Lotus had hit.
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The No. 1 Audi of Lotterer aquaplaned into a gravel trap and narrowly avoided piling into Davidson's No. 8 Toyota on the Mulsanne Straight. The No. 3 Audi of Jarvis moved past Lapierre's No. 7 Toyota for third during pit stop rotation and Lapierre went off at the exit of Indianapolis corner as he battled to retake the position. Kristensen's No. 2 Audi made a pit stop for a slow puncture as heavy rain returned with 90 minutes left and several cars aquaplaned on the saturated circuit. Lapierre's No. 7 Toyota had no grip on the run into the Porsche Curves and veered deep left into the tyre wall at high speed.
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A further excursion occurred when a maneuver on Luca Badoer's Minardi ended with Zanardi crashing out. The wet qualifying for the French Grand Prix saw him qualify 15th after the Williams team misread conditions and aquaplaned during the race. At Silverstone, Zanardi qualified 13th and finished 11th. In Austria, he started 14th.
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But on his out-lap, Zehender aquaplaned off at Indianapolis corner, slamming the front corner. It got repaired and back on the road, but lost four laps. The two Fox & Nicholl Talbots were still running reliably in third and fourth – their only issues were similar to the Aston Martins. Both cars each had one of their headlamp brackets brake.
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Räikkönen overtook Fisichella and Verstappen to return to seventh position and Da Matta passed Frentzen. On the 31st lap, Verstappen aquaplaned on the stream of water at the Curva do Sol corner and retired. The water caught out Button on lap 33: he lost control of his vehicle and crashed heavily against the barrier. Button was unhurt.
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This mistake costed him eight seconds behind Lupberger, but Yoong set five consecutive fastest laps to catch up. Later in the race, while he was in fifth gear at 220 km/h, he aquaplaned and spun after hitting a puddle. But, Yoong miraculously recovered and once again closed on Lupberger. In the end, he finished second, 1.217s behind Lupberger.
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Once again there was rain at the April testing weekend. And once again there was tragedy with a fatal accident. American Walt Hansgen's Ford hit water on the pit straight and aquaplaned. He aimed for the escape road at the end of the straight, not realising it was blocked by a sandbank, which he hit at about 190 km/h (120 mph).
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Michael Schumacher aquaplaned shortly after he exited the pit lane and took fifth. Panis' Toyota was not setup for the wet-weather conditions and took sixth. Villeneuve was seventh; Pizzonia drove the spare Jaguar and took eighth notwithstanding him aquaplaning on the start/finish straight. Alonso elected to be circumspect en route to ninth, as Frentzen in tenth reported an adequate car balance.
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Pizzonia hit the water stream flowing across the circuit at the same corner and aquaplaned. He collided with the wall, ricocheted off it and struck Montoya's car. The accidents elevated Da Matta to fifth and Webber to sixth. By lap 26, Alonso had passed Villeneuve and Fisichella to move to tenth. Michael Schumacher (pictured in 2007) was one of six drivers to be caught out by a stream of water at the Curva do Sol corner Lap 27 saw the third safety car deployment: Michael Schumacher aquaplaned off the stream of water at the Curva do Sol turn and avoided hitting a recovery crane extricating Montoya and Pizzonia's vehicles from the side of the track. He stopped on a run-off area and failed to finish a race for the first time since the 2001 German Grand Prix.
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In Britain Hamilton took his third pole position, going on to finish a distant third behind winner Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso. Europe (Germany) would see Hamilton's run of nine consecutive podiums come to an end. After a large crash in qualifying he started in 10th in the race. On lap 4 he aquaplaned off the circuit in a torrential rainstorm but the race was stopped.
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Valtteri Bottas began the race with a new front wing after damaging one on a reconnaissance lap in which he aquaplaned into a gravel trap. The 56-lap race was held during the afternoon on 24 March. Thunderstorms were forecast, and a 30-minute torrential downpour half an hour before the start made the track wet. The air temperature was , and the track temperature ranged from . 90,000 people were in attendance.
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The track had then began to dry, Alan Jones was the first driver to come into slicks with Nigel Mansell following suit, despite having spun on the previous lap. Jones having aquaplaned off the circuit on his out-lap damaged the rear of his car. Jones returned to the pits as his mechanics were forced to repair his rear wing. Jones would later retire with a loose skirt.
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It stayed all night and well into Sunday morning, with scattered showers right to the finish. Many cars spun or skated off, caught out on their slick tyres. Both the WRs pitted losing time with faulty windscreens, proving again to be fast but fragile. Worse was to follow in the 5th hour when Gonin aquaplaned off at speed and somersaulted at the Mulsanne kink into a big accident.
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The Cortanze/Vinatier Alpine had moved up to 9th ahead of the three Ferrari 275s of David Piper, NART and Scuderia Filipinetti. There were still 30 cars classified as runners. The first two Alfas still led the Index of Performance, narrowly ahead of the Andruet/Nicolas Alpine and the Swiss Porsche. Soon after 5am Sylvain Garant aquaplaned and lost control of the big Corvette at the end of the pit straight in the rain.
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12: Road & Track Sept 1966 As the rain eased, the Fords of Miles and Gurney retook the lead. Just before midnight Robert Buchet aquaplaned coming over the crest at the Dunlop Bridge and crashed the French Porsche. The Chaparral had been running well initially, getting as high as 5th, until a broken alternator stopped them also just before midnight while running in 8th. Another heavy downpour at 12.30 contributed to a big accident in the Esses.
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At the French Grand Prix Button finished 8th, finally earning his and his team's first point of the season. Barrichello finished 9th in the following British Grand Prix, scoring his best result of the season. At the European Grand Prix, Jenson Button had had a strong first lap before the rain arrived and was up to 4th place before he aquaplaned off the circuit at the end of the pit straight, as did five other drivers.
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Japanese driver Tetsuya Ota is notable for surviving a fiery multi-car pileup he was involved in during a JGTC race at Fuji Speedway on May 3, 1998. The accident was initially caused by an oversaturated track. Ota then aquaplaned and left the track which put him directly into an already crashed Porsche. At the time of the accident, the Ferrari Ota was driving had a full cell of fuel which was ignited by the impact.
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Kit Meng's subsequent heavy accident left debris on the track and stopped the session for two minutes. Paolo Montin took his first pole position in his fifth appearance at the Macau Grand Prix. In the second 30 minute practice session, Jouanny set an early lap that was good enough to lead the field until Montin improved it. A short rain shower fell on parts of the circuit and several drivers aquaplaned on the wet surface as they returned to the pit lane.
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Car No. 8, driven by Silvio Moser, went off track due to brake failure and crashed into a Volkswagen bus. Nobody was injured, but the car was a total loss. Later during a very heavy rain storm car No. 9, driven by Mike Gammino, aquaplaned, hit the pedestrian bridge and split in two. The car split right behind the driver and Mike Gammino did not realize how close he came to being killed until he stepped out of the car.
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Daniel Ricciardo of the Toro Rosso team set the fastest lap, a 1-minute, 54.249 seconds, ahead of Sauber's Nico Hülkenberg, Williams driver Pastor Maldonado, Hamilton, Sauber's Esteban Gutiérrez and Maldonado's teammate Valtteri Bottas in positions two to six. Charles Pic lost control of the rear of his Caterham and collided with the barrier at Club turn, removing the front wing. Gutiérrez aquaplaned at the first corner but regained control of his car. Conditions improved as the rain showers eased up.
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AF Corse's No. 51 Ferrari driven by Toni Vilander was the fastest car in LMGTE Pro while Joël Camathias of JWA-Avila helped Porsche to lead in LMGTE Am. During the session, where several cars aquaplaned on the track, Marc Rostan spun the No. 29 Gulf Racing Middle East Lola car on the start/finish straight and Jan Charouz beached the No. 25 ADR-Delta Oreca vehicle in a gravel trap at Dunlop Curve leading to the session being stopped for ten minutes.
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As the track began to dry, Massa switched to the intermediates, but aquaplaned at Turn 4 and made heavy contact with the barrier, which brought his session to an end. In the race, Massa finished in eighteenth. Massa encountered steering rack issues on the way to the grid, with the steering wheel rack being too light on one side and too heavy on the other. The Williams crew worked hard to try and fix it before the start of the race.
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That allowed the sister No. 7 Toyota to reduce the gap to Buemi as the Audis got ahead of both Porsches. With four hours and 41 minutes left, light rain was reported as falling in turn 11, and it then turned to a monsoon that flooded the track. Although drivers were circumspect en route to having wet- weather tyres installed in the pit lane, five of the six LMP1-H cars and several other vehicles from the other three categories aquaplaned off the track.
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A heavy thunderstorm in the second hour stopped the race after Lapierre and Conway aquaplaned off the circuit. This put Lapierre a lap behind the leaders, and Conway was beached in the gravel trap. They restarted in fourth and seventh overall; Buemi drove the No. 8 car to third place, and Wurz finished sixth in No. 7. Lapierre missed the 6 Hours of Fuji due to "personal circumstances"; Toyota did not replace him with Conway, leaving Davidson and Buemi to drive the No. 8 TS040.
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On the same lap, Sutil aquaplaned into the outside tyre barrier at the top of the hill at Dunlop Curve. Double yellow flags were waved at the corner to warn drivers about the incident, and Whiting did not use the safety car. Sutil's car was extracted from the track by a tractor crane that lap and turned backwards toward a gap in the barrier. Then, on lap 43, Bianchi lost control of his Marussia at , veering right towards the run-off area outside the Dunlop Curve.
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Coulthard overtook Montoya for second. As the circuit began to dry, except for turn three which continued to have water stream across it, Coulthard began to close up to his teammate Räikkönen, as Michael Schumacher overtook Webber on the inside for fourth on lap 15 leaving Arquibancdas turn. On the 16th lap, Michael Schumacher moved into third position with a pass on the slower Montoya around the outside at the Bico de Pato corner. Wilson drove through a river at the Curva do Sol turn and aquaplaned off another on the following lap.
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The rain returned with two hours to go and created havoc. Cevert, de Adamich and Craft were on slick tyres and all aquaplaned off the track approaching the waterlogged Esses. The Duckhams had the heaviest damage and fell to 12th before getting back on the track for the final lap. As a final twist, the third-placed Jabouille/Hobbs Matra 660 was stopped by gearbox problems with less than 90 minutes remaining, and the Spanish Porsche running 8th was stopped by a wheel-bearing failure in the final minutes.
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On the same lap, drivers started to change back to wet tyres as rain had started falling again. Courtney led until lap 36, when he aquaplaned going into Turn 8 and hit the wall, damaging the car and forcing him to return to the pits for repairs. The safety car was deployed due to the worsening conditions, with McLaughlin leading Davison and Lowndes. As the conditions continued to deteriorate, and a marshal was affected by lightning, the race was suspended on lap 42, with all cars returning to the pit lane.
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Piquet's gamble failed to pay off as he aquaplaned off the track at the Ostkurve chicane and hit the barriers, limping back to the pits to retire. Prost re-passed Nannini on lap 8, while on lap 9 Philippe Alliot, who had pitted for slick tyres, spun his Lola off at the Ostkurve while allowing Senna to lap him. Prost overtook Berger for second on lap 12, but by then Senna was 12 seconds ahead. Senna and Prost maintained their 1-2 until the chequered flag, despite a late spin by the Frenchman coming out of the Ostkurve.
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The TS040 was shown to the press for the first time at the 26 March preseason test session at Circuit Paul Ricard, and was driven before the start of the 2014 season. Toyota supplied two cars, driven by six drivers, for the season. Nicolas Lapierre, Anthony Davidson and Sébastien Buemi won the season's opening two races in the No. 8 car; Lapierre aquaplaned, crashing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans before recovering to finish third. After the crash, Lapierre was dropped and Buemi and Nakajima won two more races and had another podium finish to win the 2014 World Endurance Drivers' Championship.
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The safety car was withdrawn at the end of lap 22 and Räikkönen closed the field up to maintain the lead from Coulthard, Michael Schumacher and the yet-to-stop Da Matta. On the Reta Oposta straight, Barrichello overtook Da Matta for fourth on lap 23, as a driver error dropped Frentzen from eighth to sixteenth and Ralf Schumacher passed Verstappen for eleventh. Montoya overtook Da Matta for fifth and Ralf Schumacher moved past Button for ninth during lap 24. On the 25th lap, Montoya aquaplaned at the Curva do Sol and crashed into a right-hand side barrier.
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Gasly in 12th went deep into Sainte Dévote but did not damage his car. Artem Markelov followed in 13th, ahead of Stanaway whose front wing was damaged in a collision with the Mirabeau barrier, requiring him to enter the pit lane for a replacement nose cone. Negrão placed 15th, with Zoël Amberg in 16th who aquaplaned off the circuit because of an oversteer and struck the exit Tabac corner barrier, removing his right-rear wheel. The two were followed by Lynn and Evans; the latter overshot the entry of Sainte Dévote but avoided damaging his vehicle.
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The second session ended without the track drying again and no times were improved in any category. All four Aston Martins chose not to set lap times in the session as they changed their engines. The third qualifying session began an hour later under a light rain that changed to a deluge within ten minutes, prompting race officials to stop qualifying for nearly an hour as several cars aquaplaned. When the rain tapered off and qualifying resumed, many teams chose not to participate or set a large number of lap times as no improvements could be made to qualifying lap times.
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At the 1999 Indianapolis 500, a collision on the formation lap eliminated three cars. At the 1996 French Grand Prix the Ferrari of pole position qualifier Michael Schumacher stopped with an engine fault. At the 1991 San Marino Grand Prix, Alain Prost and Gerhard Berger both went off the track in wet conditions; Berger rejoined and retook his grid position, but Prost stalled and was immediately out of the race. At the 1998 Japanese Grand Touring Championship at Fuji Speedway, the Ferrari driven by Tetsuya Ota aquaplaned while braking during the parade lap and collided with another car, with both vehicles exploding into a fireball on impact.
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In the 1982 Finnish Grand Prix, held in Imatra under very wet conditions, Taylor and Johansson's bike aquaplaned and slid off the road and collided with a telephone pole along the closed public road course that was used once a year for the Finnish GP. The emergency services were removing him from the wreckage when a second sidecar team slid off into them. Taylor was sadly killed in the second accident. He was buried in the local cemetery at Pencaitland, and a memorial to him has been erected in the village in December 2006. A memorial also stands in Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, overlooking Railway Bend on the old motorcycle racing circuit.
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Forrest's Elbow – named after Jack Forrest, a motorcycle racer who scraped his elbow away after laying down his bike – is a slow, descending left-hand turn that leads on to the long Conrod Straight. The corner's line drifts towards the outside wall on exit and drivers have to be careful of getting too close. It was on the exit of the corner that Dick Johnson clipped a tyre barrier during the top ten shootout for the 1983 James Hardie 1000, which broke the car's steering and sent Johnson off into a grove of trees and demolishing the car. This is also where Craig Lowndes aquaplaned into the tyre wall in 2001.
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The race was delayed and shortened from 56 to 55 laps because Giancarlo Fisichella of the Benetton team was out of position on the starting grid. When it did start, Michael Schumacher led the first two laps until he and Barrichello skidded on oil left by Olivier Panis' British American Racing (BAR) car, as a tropical monsoon begin to fall. They ran into a gravel trap and Jordan driver Jarno Trulli took the lead for one lap until he and several drivers aquaplaned in the deteriorating weather. Coulthard led for 11 laps after a phase of pit stops for wet-weather tyres before Michael Schumacher passed him on lap 16.
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Renault did nothing to quell the rumours, publicly urging him to improve after the Turkish Grand Prix and suggesting after Monaco that he lacked confidence. Despite the pressure, Piquet scored his first points in F1 with a 7th-place finish at the 2008 French Grand Prix passing his twice-World Champion teammate Fernando Alonso in the last few laps. In the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Piquet was at one point lying in fourth place, having passed his teammate who was on old tyres. Piquet aquaplaned and spun out on lap 36 along with several other top runners as the wet conditions reached their worst.
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It was the first race to be stopped since the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix, when a crash by Fernando Alonso halted the race, and the first race to be red-flagged and then restarted since the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix.Autosport magazine, 26 July 2007, page 10 [sidebar] At about 2:20 p.m. local time the rain stopped and the drivers were pushed on to the starting grid, in the order that they were one lap before the red flag. Jenson Button, Adrian Sutil, Nico Rosberg, Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi did not take the restart as they all aquaplaned off the track at turn one on lap three, causing the red flag.
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Behind them, Hideki Mutoh hit Vítor Meira which saw his retirement from the race, and Wheldon hit the back of Tagliani which sent him into Kanaan, resulting in the retirement of the Canadian driver. Rain started falling once again, more heavily than before and much of the field pitted to change from dry-weather tyres to wet-weather ones. Alex Lloyd aquaplaned into the wall in the second Dale Coyne car, bringing out the caution for the third time, and with rain falling relentlessly, series officials brought out the red flag to allow the weather conditions to pass. After a 36-minute red flag delay, cars returned to the circuit with slicks being the choice of tyre for the track, despite a few wet patches remaining on the circuit.
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Sunday was cool and overcast with rain being forecast for later in the day. After the morning warm-up session, the rain arrived just before the second Group A touring car support race of the weekend, and an extra 30-minute session (already organised for such an occasion) was arranged for the teams to set their cars up for what would be a wet race as the weather forecast had the rain staying around all day. During the extra session a lot of drivers aquaplaned off the circuit, some on their out lap, notably Prost and Berger. Senna spun his car a full 360° over the high curb on the outside of Brewery Bend, his car emerged pointing in the right direction and he continued undamaged down the Brabham Straight.
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At the last three corners Kubica and Felipe Massa ran side by side in a battle for 6th, while Fernando Alonso aquaplaned and crashed on lap 41 of 67. In China, Hamilton won his 6th pole of the season and led up to lap 28 when he was overtaken by Räikkönen and he then spun off entering the pitlane. The season finale marked the first time since that three drivers had a chance of becoming World Champion at the season finale, and the first time since the inaugural season in that the man who stood in third before the final race went on to win the championship (the driver in 1950 being Giuseppe Farina). Hamilton was the favourite with 107 points followed by Alonso with 103 points and Räikkönen with 100 points.
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An incorrect setup put Da Matta 11th. The wet-weather conditions restricted Trulli to 12th and an unbalanced car in corners taken at a slow speed left Ralf Schumacher in 13th. An oversteer and lack of grip restricted Fisichella to 14th as Verstappen extracted additional performance from his car to finish in 15th. Heidfeld was circumspect through the Arquibancdas turn en route to 16th. Montoya in 17th lost control of the rear of his Williams under braking and went onto a concrete run-off area at Ferradura corner. Firman in 18th drove with the rear of Jordan's spare car attached to his race vehicle. Wilson avoided a spin on the start/finish straight and was 19th. Button was the only driver not to set a lap time: he had a sudden oversteer when he ran onto a damp white line denoting the track boundaries, and aquaplaned at almost .
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Mansell had to abandon his line and rejoin the racing line behind Senna, who had also had to avoid Jean Alesi's stricken Ferrari, which had also crashed yards after Larini on the other side of the road, as did Schumacher's Benetton who also spun off on the side of the road. Pierluigi Martini's Minardi car aquaplaned on the Brabham Straight on lap 10, which sent his car straight into the right hand wall and rebounded to the other side of the track before eventually stopping out of the drivers' way. This indicated that the rain was beginning to fall even harder, and more torrential than before. On lap 14, Mauricio Gugelmin's Leyton House was involved in a heavy crash trying to pass the Tyrrell of Stefano Modena going through turn 15. He lost control in the right hand turn and hit the inside wall of the pit lane entrance at the turn 16 hairpin with such speed, he became airborne.
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