Halo has become a topic of discussion after Kevin Magnussen managed to escape his Renault with relative ease when it caught fire on Friday at Sepang.
The FIA have assured us drivers can see past the central pillar and people have shouted down those who complain about the aesthetics of the device with ‘safety over beauty’. However, the fact that halo makes it harder to get out of the car still hasn’t been properly answered by fans of the device.
The fire last weekend proved that this isn’t just something that should be ignored. In fact, some of the drivers that watched the flames in Malaysia believe it’s definitely something that needs to be addressed.
“My first thought was it was dangerous, and safety because of the halo,” Carlos Sainz told reporters at the track. “What would have happened there? When you have to jump out that quickly, it could be tricky, so what could we do to protect the head without getting ourselves out of the car slower because the way Kevin jumped out of the car was pretty fast.”
Sainz certainly believes the halo would have been an issue if it had been in place. The Spaniard has run an extraction test with the halo before and said he was slower getting out of the car with the head device in place.
The surge of support for something like the halo, following recent injuries and deaths caused by the very incidents the halo is designed to prevent, is understandable, but the FIA need to be careful not to rush into something that could have potential problems as an emotional response to such incidents.
Whilst nobody, least of all the Renault team who lost out on a fair bit of testing due to the fire, was happy to see Magnussen’s car go up in flames, it did have the benefit of drawing the public’s attention to the extraction issue.
Sainz said: “It’s a good example for the FIA to analyse, and one more to improve and to think about, so another good example.
“It’s about getting examples and situations for them to get the whole picture and see what we can do better.”
The halo was due to be introduced next season but was delayed until 2018 for further tests. Hopefully, in that time the halo will be adjusted so that the extraction issue is properly addressed and drivers are confident they won’t be trapped in a burning car.
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