Williams car performance boss Rob Smedley says that Formula 1 teams won’t find it difficult to fit closed cockpits onto cars should the sport head in that direction in terms of car design.
Jules Bianchi sustained severe head injuries having crashed his Marussia into a recovery vehicle towards the end of the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend and follows accidents involving the openness of a driver’s cockpit being exposed in recent years, namely the first-corner pileup at the start of the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix and Felipe Massa’s life-threatening accident during qualifying for the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix after being hit by a wayward spring.
The possibility of introducing closed-cockpit cars in F1 have been brought up in multiple discussions by the FIA as a result of the near misses for drivers and Smedley says that the technicalities behind integrating closed-cockpits wouldn’t be complicated.
“From a technical point of view it’s something very easy to implement,” said Smedley. “It’s something that we’ve looked at in lots of the technical working group meetings and we’ve been back and forwards.
“Whether that would have made a difference to the accident that Jules had, I’ve got no idea.
“We don’t know how strong anyone’s car is in that type of accident. It is a freak accident.”
Smedley recognises that a move to closed-cockpit machinery in the future will evidently change the appearance of F1 cars and questioning car aesthetics and F1’s status as an open-wheel formula is not appealing to him.
“It would change the look of Formula 1 cars, which I guess there is an argument for – they are [currently] open-wheel, open-cockpit racers,” he added.
“Does that change the formula a bit? I think if you compare the cars in 2014 to the cars in 1950, when the world championship started, they don’t look very similar. So whether aesthetics is an argument or not, it’s certainly not one for me; maybe for other people.”
