Richard Millener and Jari-Matti Latvala believe that FIA should find a solution to the fire regulations considering what happened with Dani Sordo at the season finale in Japan.
The fire on Sordo's i20N started from the rear of the car and immediately was spread. Gus Greensmith was the next WRC driver, who started the stage after the Hyundai driver, and stopped to help his rival by giving to him the fire extinguisher that had to his Puma. The car No.6 was burned down and Julien Moncet stated that it is impossible for Hyundai to find the real cause of the fire.
However, FIA regulations are reporting that each car must carry one fire extinguisher which means that, in the case of Sordo, it was impossible for him to extinguish the fire by using only two fire extinguishers which came from his i20N and Greensmith's Puma.
"There’s probably some things we can improve on, and I had a few people contacting me straight away afterwards about some other fire extinguisher devices you can get because I think the problem was the carbon fiber’s caught fire and if Dani could have got that under control we might be in a very different situation", Richard Millener said.
"So there’s some things called fire sticks that I’ve seen people use before.
"We’ve just looked at it on the television, you get some that burn for 55s or 100s and an extinguisher bottle like we have is there to suppress a fire, not put it out.
"Suppress means put it out enough so you can get away from danger, but we need to put it out.
"I think as part of the follow-up to this we need to look at those.
"They’re not very heavy.
"I think my suggestion within the team is to have a debrief on that afterwards and maybe with us, because if you can put a fire out, regardless of budgets, they’ve just lost a whole load of budget in one car and it’s not what anyone wants to see in the championship.
"I think we just need to be proactive and try from here to tighten up and learn from this example and in future we’re even more robust and prepared.
"Let’s take advantage of a bad situation to learn and make sure the sport gets better going forward".
Finally, Jari-Matti Latvala said: "I have said this already some years ago.
"In my view, what I would do is I would assemble two hand-held fire extinguishers in the car – one on the co-driver’s side and one on the driver’s side.
"So then in this kind of situation you would have two, and then the next car you would have had another two, so then you would have four.
"OK, I don’t know if we’d manage to put the fire down but at least you do quite a lot more with four compared to two.
"From the experience I have got with the fires, two is always better because there’s two people who can try to stop the fire".
Source: DirtFish.com
Photo Credits: Red Bull Content Pool
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