The FIA’s decision to implement the halo device for 2018 offers an inexhaustible source of bafflement and confusion. It may appear to be the latest step in the triumphant crusade towards safety in F1, a campaign that has cut fatalities and severe injuries from being an accepted byproduct of grand prix racing to a virtually freak occurrence. It may appear the next logical step towards preventing the cockpit incursion incidents that tragically claimed the lives of Henry Surtees, Jules Bianchi and Justin Wilson, and could have claimed Felipe Massa’s life in 2009. However, the halo is not the HANS device or wheel-tethers, it is a step-change, a fundamental alteration to the formula of single-seater racing, and one without any specific linkages to incidences of safety failings.
Many might feel that a similar step-change was felt following the tragic weekend at Imola in 1994, and certainly, the magnitude of the safety programme headed by the reformed Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) is a pivotal juncture in F1’s historical tapestry. But arguably never before has a more tangible revision to the tactile experience of driving and watching an F1 car be made in the name of safety. And yet, despite this, the FIA’s reasoning is largely unclear.
Unlike the virtual safety car (implemented in the wake of the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix to properly enforce the extent of precautionary slowing in double-yellow scenarios) or wheel-tethers, the halo is not an attempt to mitigate a specific scenario, but rather to address an inherent hazard of open-cockpit racing. In departing from the scenario-lead specificity that has characterised the rigour of F1’s safety campaign thus far, the FIA has shown an abject disinterest in engaging with any of the more normative angles of the safety debate.
What is an acceptable level of risk? Why has a formerly acceptable innate level of risk now been deemed unacceptable? Is there an endpoint to this crusade? The FIA nor any of its representatives have even attempted to engage in the finer points of the more philosophical undercurrent to the safety debate, and many paddock sages, not least Martin Brundle, have been troubled by the failure to at least acknowledge that the halo represents a new juncture in a safety campaign with no endpoint in sight. Is the FIA seeking a danger-free sport? Could an accident in the pitlane herald an end to pit-stops? Could an accident off the line herald an end to standing starts?
The halo also tasks the FIA with a very imposing precedent when it comes to future safety measures. The halo not only fails to make sense without being applied to each and every open-cockpit racing car in circulation, both in the junior categories and in the states (something that simply won’t be achievable for 2018 – indeed, in the case of IndyCar it is possible that a halo-style device will never be implemented), but also demands that the FIA fundamentally reappraises the safety formula in response to each and every new safety threat. Do the life-changing injuries suffered by British F4 racer Billy Monger not warrant a review of the frontal impact structures of single-seater racing cars? Or, on this occasion, was Monger’s crash simply a result of the inherent risks of single-seater racing? It is an essential debate that simply cannot continue without the FIA better explicating its position on intrinsic racing risks.
In a more substantive vane, advocates of the halo may argue that sportscar racing has recently undergone a similar reformation in the phased transition from open-cockpit prototype racers to closed-cockpit LMP1 and LMP2 cars with no ill-effects. However sportscar racing arguably has a greater historic affinity with closed-cockpit racing, and one might even argue that the return to covered LMP cars restored a more aesthetically appealing coupe-style body shape.
But with the halo, there are no aesthetic points to be scored, only the visual ruination of a formula that has only just begun to win back fans made uneasy by the initial batch of hybrid cars. Also, fans will probably be less than pleased when they find themselves unable to identify their favourite driver when their helmet is disguised by the inelegant carbon-fibre scaffolding.
Of course, aesthetics and driver identification appear trivial reasons to oppose a device that may be able to mitigate fatal or life-changing injuries, but equally they have not previously been considered trivial enough to warrant a halo-style step-change, and more broadly all will be for nought if F1 cannot start winning some of its ongoing public relations battles. That is why this announcement can only be a starting-gun for a likely heated debate with those tasked with promoting the sport on the public stage, those who will have to explain to the fans why the sport has committed aesthetic desecration. F1’s purportedly audience-led new administration will need to provide its fans with a detailed explanation on why it has allowed the FIA to implement heretical alternations to the formerly sacrosanct single-seater formula.
The FIA will no doubt seek to portray the support of the GPDA as a smoking-gun, the united voice of those actually tasked with putting themselves in harm’s way, an organization that claimed it had a responsibility “to never relent in improving safety” following Bianchi’s death in 2015. Of course, it is not the united voice of those who face the risks of open-cockpit racing, and outside of F1 it is difficult to recall anything other than revile from drivers on the topic of the halo.
Similarly derisive was Lewis Hamilton’s initial reaction to the appearance of the halo, initially saying it was the “worst-looking modification in F1 history”. Only after what Hamilton described as a “great” presentation of the FIA’s halo research findings did he accept the safety advantages of the halo. Perhaps it is time that the FIA made a similar presentation to the teams and the fans, because on current inspection the FIA’s case for imposing the halo against the will of all but one team appears fundamentally inexplicable…well, inexplicable beyond the potential legal consequences of the halo being unimplemented should an accident occur.
