- 22 Jul 12, 15:25#313275The simple answer would be have grass immediately outside the white line and gravel a car's width from the edge of the edge of the track.
Ahhh the days of grass and gravel........ both seem like an endangered species, unfortunately.
As Martin Brundle pointed out, if grass and gravel were as they were, about 2 people would've finished FP in one piece!
Ah, but the driving mentality would have been different; the reason so many cars go off is because they know they can push the limits without penalty!
Yet we should be thankful, no fatalities occurred since Ayrton Senna's one, tho we had some really bad incidents after. like Michael's or Massa's. Martin must be a out of his mind to think of that kind of stupid stuff, the last thing I want to see during a Grand Prix is a fatality, grass and gravel may look good on TV when drivers are stuck in it, but those are also deadly traps for our beloved drivers (imagine a car going 200+km/h on grass or gravel straight into the barriers). There's a good reason why potential "hard" corners have a good asphalt area around it, as asphalt is the best to slow down a car.
Well Brundle is a monumental idiot......
I rate him as highly as I rate Eddie Jordan. 
I would not jump the gun so fast. Both of them raced during a different time, years and years ago, things changed a lot since their prime time. The thing is, drivers safety is first and every circuit should be molded regarding that. So screw green zones, or gravel ones, everything that might contribute to a possible fatality have no place in current formula 1.
In that case, and I agree with you that driver safety should be paramount (though don't agree that having grass and gravel would be a particular problem if there is a tarmac run-off beyond that - but that's another debate) they have to treat all scenarios where a car goes fully 4 wheels off track seriously and extremely harshly with penalties to stop drivers doing it. We can't have any more of these controversial incidents followed by inconsistent penalty / non-penalty. It should be penalty
automatically then argue after whether they should be allowed to keep the place rather than keep the place and penalise after. That might alter the mindset somewhat.
Favourite racing series: F1, Indycar, NASCAR, GP2, F3, Formula E, Trophee Andros, DTM, WTCC, BTCC, World Endurance... etc. etc.