Mark Megahan
What happens when you lose consciousness behind the wheel at 190 mph? Lance Stroll almost found out at this year’s Qatar Grand Prix. The Formula One race turned into an endurance event as the mercury climbed near 100 degrees in the Arabian desert. He did it just for fun because he missed the money. While he lived to drive another day and didn’t kill any of his competitors, his ninth-place finish had penalty points tacked to the time. Ones related to nearly passing out in the cockpit.
Losing consciousness at high speed
Losing consciousness behind the wheel of a moving car is never a good thing. Having that happen when you’re in the cockpit of a Formula One race car, moving somewhere close to 190 miles an hour, spells fatal catastrophe.
Thankfully, there weren’t any fireworks. The annual Qatar Grand Prix is more of an airshow because those guys don’t drive fast, they fly low. The cars don’t have air conditioning because it weighs them down.
As soon as Lance Stroll got out of the car he yelled for a medic and a big bucket of ice water to pour over his head. The “heat was so severe inside the cockpit,” he relates, “that he was losing consciousness.” Pundits note that “conditions at the Lusail International Circuit have been blistering hot all weekend, with the temperature often peaking well above the 35 degrees Celsius mark.”
That’s 95 for those of us here in America who learned the metric system from our drug dealers. We have volume figured out from soda bottles but temperature conversions still require Google. It’s a good thing they didn’t run the race in Arizona. Temperatures in Phoenix hovered just under 120 for most of the summer.
Drivers in the event were well prepared for the racing challenges of the course. “The track is renowned for its high, sustained levels of G-force, peaking around 5g for drivers.” They expect high temperatures at the Arabian oasis but not ones high enough to make them lose consciousness.
Officials note the “high air temperatures coupled with a flat-out pace after the FIA imposed an 18-lap maximum stint length amid concerns over the Pirelli tires” is what really did the drivers in.
All the drivers affected
Stroll wasn’t the only driver affected. Max Verstappen won the race but admits he “struggled” with the heat while Logan Sargeant dropped out from dehydration.
Esteban Ocon “vomited after 15 laps of the Qatar Grand Prix but refused to give up as he battled on to finish seventh at the end of the 57-lap race.” They don’t report any near losses of consciousness.
While Lance was the ninth driver to cross the finish line, he got demoted “out of the points after being handed a duo of five-second time penalties for track limit infringements.”
The whole reason for driving over the edge was loss of consciousness. He’s still smoldering over that. “I was passing out in the car, and they painted the curbs and made the track narrower so you can’t even feel the curbs.”
Luckily, he didn’t go flying through those paint lines in a ball of exploding fire. “You’re just trying to see it. But the problem is, you can’t see where you’re going because you’re passing out.”
“I was fully fading out.” He was nowhere near the finish line when he almost fully lost consciousness. “It was with 20 laps to go.“
