You can't prevent such accidents: Karthikeyan

NEW DELHI: For racing drivers, there's one inescapable truth. Accidents. It's a reality that stares them in the face every single time they sit in a car or on a racing bike. And that certainty was forcefully realized on Saturday at the Nurburgring when a metal spring that escaped from Ruben Barrichello's crash hit Felipe Massa on the head, causing the Ferrari driver to lose consciousness and plough straight into the barrier. Narain Karthikeyan, India's only Formula One driver, has had his fair share of racing accidents and even ended his debut season with a massive smash up that left his yellow Jordan good for nothing else but the junkyard at the Shanghai International Circuit in October 2005. Karthikeyan fortunately escaped with just a badly sore neck. "No matter however safe you make racing, accidents will happen. The element of risk will always remain. What happened this Saturday at the Nurburgring was 'freakish'. I don't think you can prevent or control such accidents," said Karthikeyan, who has also suffered a few mean turns and spills in A1GP recently. At the same time, he backed the FIA decision to ban Renault for willingly putting the drivers in danger by allowing Fernando Alonso to race with a loose wheel. "That was just plain stupid and they've been rightly punished. The ban is appropriate. The team definitely knew that the wheel wasn't fastened properly and they could've prevented it from bouncing all over the track. What if it had struck another car or driver?" he asked. When asked about his Shanghai shunt, Karthikeyan was understandably a little hazy about details. He lost control of the car on Turn 13 and the smouldering wreckage of the Jordan sat in the middle of the track. "All I remember is losing control of the car. I don't know what I hit but I felt the air come out of my lungs," Karthikeyan said, trying to recall the events of his last Sunday in F1. "When I opened my eyes, I was sitting in the middle of the track with some car coming straight at me. Your instinct is to run. The car was also on fire." Safety measures in F1 have come a long way since Ayrton Senna's horrific crash at Imola in 1994. Massa's survival underlines how well protected drivers are and Karthikeyan agrees with that point. "The equipment, the rules all have made F1 very, very safe. Safety has gone up ten-fold since 1994. The sport today is the safest that it has ever been. We haven't lost a driver since Senna's death. Safety is a huge issue and it comes up at all driver meetings. There's no stone left unturned when it comes to safety," Karthikeyan explained. "I actually wonder what they could possibly do to make single-seater cars safer." SAFETY MEASURES

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