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Showing category "Musings and opinion" (Show all posts)

The value of preparation and pushing for safety

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, In : Musings and opinion

There is no doubt that Romain Grosjean’s crash at this weekend’s Bahrain F1 GP was anything other than terrifying. That he was able to effectively walk away with no more than burns to his hands and ankles is amazing when you watch the footage of what happened.

His survival is down to two things - the evolution of safety equipment, in particular the Halo device, and the presence of a dedicated medical and rescue response (and the use of the word dedicated is deliberate and two-fold).

As Sir...

Motorsport and the virus

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, April 17, 2020, In : Musings and opinion

Outcomes in motorsport are often determined by little things. A fifty cent bonnet pin. The nut that keeps a wheel in place. An nth of a second in pit lane or through a corner complex. These small things determine championships.

A very small thing has brought our sport almost to a complete halt. The SARS-Cov-2 Coronavirus. So small it can only be indirectly seen using an electron microscope.

In addition to the usual months of planning, strategies for managing the coronavirus at the opening F1 ra...

Bikes, motorsport and life

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Monday, May 1, 2017, In : Musings and opinion

I like to think that I am not totally unfit. I attribute much of that to spending most of my younger years cycling everywhere and swimming a lot. I think it gave me a good base to work from.

I'm getting older and bits of me creak now. What is more noticeable is the longer recovery time. I've become more aware of my physical limitations and how they can impact on how I choose to spend my life. I figure that if I am going to be able to continue doing the things that I enjoy and particularly kee...

Protecting yer noggin'

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, April 1, 2016, In : Musings and opinion

There is a lot made of safety at motorsport events. Competitors sign a waiver acknowledging that motorsport is dangerous and the same statement is printed on every ticket sold. Crashes such as Fernando Alonso's in Melbourne a few weeks ago, Robert Kubica's hand injuring rally crash in 2011 or Simone De Silvestra's 2010 IndyCar inferno amongst many others serve to reinforce that message.

It is not surprising then that safety is emphasized for those officials working at a motorsport event, whet...

Dr. John Hinds

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Monday, July 6, 2015, In : Musings and opinion

John Hinds was an anaesthetist, an intensivist, a prehospitalist and a motorsport doctor in Northern Ireland. He was also a talented educator, a pragmatist and extremely witty. And John was a friend.

I first met John at the SMACCGold conference, after his "Cases from the races" talk and recorded a podcast with him and Brent May. As with many people at SMACC, I had had conversations online with him before I met him in person. My last contact with John was at this year's SMACC conference, in Chi...

Medical response at Formula 1: Insider

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Wednesday, May 21, 2014, In : Musings and opinion

For anyone who doesn't already know, Dr Gary Hartstein, the previous FIA Medical Rescue Co-ordinator who rode shotgun with Alan van der Merwe in the Mercedes AMG C63 station wagon at the back of the grid for each F1 start, has moved on from mere tweeting and now writes his own blog, A Former F1 Doc Writes.

More recently, he has started a series of posts on how a medical response to a racing incident is articulated. The posts give an insight into how the process is managed at the very highest l...

Time for a Registry

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Sunday, January 19, 2014, In : Musings and opinion

Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Friday, October 25, 2013

It’s hard to know that a problem exists if you don’t look for it.

Sometimes you’ll find it because the problem finds you, usually through an adverse outcome. But wouldn’t it be better to know of a potential problem’s existence beforehand and, even better, put something in place to mitigate it. So it makes sense to look out for problems before they cause trouble; that’s just basic survival.

And it is not without ...