Fog prevents all Friday running at Nurburgring

The Formula 1 field will go into Eifel Grand Prix qualifying day with no running at all as heavy fog prevented the second practice at the Nurburgring getting underway on Friday.

The Nurburgring kicks off a spell of four races that weren’t initially due to be on the F1 calendar, and an October date in that region of Germany always carried a risk of bad weather.

Heavy fog clouded the entire morning, forcing the grounding of the medical helicopter. The distance to the nearest hospital by road is too long for track running to take place without medical helicopter back-up under F1 regulations.

In a repeat of the morning pattern, the FIA gave half-hourly updates on the situation before confirming at what should’ve been the practice session’s hour-mark that no running would take place.

The Race says

– Edd Straw

While it’s standard practice to complain about Formula 1 when the cars don’t run in wet weather, any such criticisms don’t stand today given this was about the medical helicopter.

If the medical helicopter can’t fly – and that means not just get airborne at the circuit but also get to the hospital – and there isn’t an option to get there by road in 20 minutes, it means no session.

This might seem a fatuous rule, until of course you have a situation where somebody needs emergency medical treatment. Then, quite rightly questions would be asked if there wasn’t adequate provision for getting an injured person – and while that’s always most likely to be drivers it could also mean marshals or other personnel if the worst happens – to hospital for treatment quickly.

If it was just a question of driver safety, perhaps you could argue it’s at their own risk, but it’s not that simple.

Such rules exist as hard lines to stop chances being taken – the kinds of risk that are always justifiably questioned in hindsight – and it’s very rare that they prove to be a problem.

Disappointing as it is for there to be no running, we should also be thankful that we live at a time when motorsport doesn’t gamble to the same extent with human life as it once did.