Overweight Stumbling Marshall

[Willy]

Stay off the track you fool.
That guy should not have jumped over to try to clear debris.

[Dare]

[F1fanaticBD]

They are suppose to be the person responsible for safety, and they made it unsafe for everybody. Could have got worse, lucky it didn't happen.

If drivers are being penalized for unsafe driving, i guess the safety marshal should be treated the same.

[Willy]

I am being critical as  have worked as a marshall and know that you never step onto a track with cars approaching. There is no way in hell you can outrace them as they are coming way faster then you can adjust to.
These guys did not receive the proper training or just plain forgot in the heat of the moment. But they were just plain unsafe. For themselves as well as the drivers.

[Dare]

 look at the marshall in the dark  pants and white
 shirt skipping back across the track.Thank God
 we didn't see that in chat.looks like he's trying
 not to step on the cracks in the course 

[Canada Darrell™]

All seriousness aside for second.....that was the funniest thing I've seen for a while. I hope he dropped a dookie while out there!

I couldn't believe it when that happened during the race.

[Scott]

Scary, but funny...Sam and I were laughing our a$$es off.  Send it off to funniest videos.

All those guys were morons though.  It was a SC period, and the SC had just gone through with only 5-6 cars trailing it.  Logic will tell you that the rest of the field is screaming around to catch up quickly, yellow flags or not.  NOBODY should step on the track until the last car is through.  There is still most of a minute to clean up stuff then.

[F1fanaticBD]

They will be blushing like strawberry, if they could see how much concerned and angry we are, for their safety as well as for being so funny in the track....

[Ian]

I thought it was Dare at first.     

[Dare]

 

[Alianora La Canta]

I'm not 100% convinced that the guy who fell over was actually a marshal. He wasn't wearing a bib, which all marshals are supposed to do for identification and visibility purposes (not that a F1 driver is going to spot a bibbed practising speed bump better than a black one).

If he's genuine, he'll probably be struck off the list of circuit marshals, whether formal action is taken against him or not. If not... ...there are trespassing laws for a reason.

Like Willy and F1 Scott, I was also quite concerned that these people forgot that the point of a Safety Car (as opposed to just using delta times for everyone) is to make sure there's a period of time when no cars are passing through an area. This isn't USA 2005 or Monaco 1996 and there were more than 6 cars left in the race. Poor Pedro must have got the fright of his life. I think these people's brains were between Hamilton's and Sutil's in the hotel "brain luggage" storage rack.

[Dare]

It was a serious moment Ali and if he wasn't a marshall what
was he doing out there?

                      but

like Darrell on the serious side,in all my years watching sporting
events that's the funniest thing I ever saw   just thinking
about it makes me still laugh

[Wats-on]

When I saw that Sauber approach, first thing I thought of was Tom Pryce, Kyalami 1977...

OMG what was he thinking he was doing? Stupid! 

[John S]

I think the fault lies with the person who gave permission for the guys to go on track, it took a while for the safety car to pick up even some of the pack so just who thought it was safe to let people go on track at that moment?

The incident obviously is funny to view in retrospect and I bet a couple of those guys wish their marshalls uniforms were brown. 

Track marshalls have a tough job, often with long periods of inactivity so when they have to burst into action it's not suprising they sometimes end up looking less than perfect. It's pretty difficult to rehearse for incidents that motor races can throw up,  they vary so enormously even in F1, especially when there is very little racing at all on that track.

 
 

[Alianora La Canta]

It was a serious moment Ali and if he wasn't a marshall what
was he doing out there?

My personal theory is that he was a track invader who wanted to know what it was like to get close to the cars, but because he genuinely cared about motor racing, didn't want to spoil the race (or get rugby-tackled) like Mr Foolish at Britain 2003. Only he found out that impersonating a marshal is more difficult than it looks...