It is no exaggeration in terms to say that the FIA is trying to impose the halo device on F1. During this month’s meeting of the F1 Strategy Group in which the FIA confirmed its plans to introduce the halo in 2018, it is reported that just one of the 10 teams supported the FIA’s proposal and that subsequently the FIA had to enact its safety measures veto. More broadly, it has suffered widespread derision from fans and senior paddock faces, with Niki Lauda most prominently contending that initiatives to reengage with the fans had been “destroyed by an over-reaction”.
The seismic backlash that has been felt over the announcement from both inside the sport and out is no surprise: juxtaposed against cars newly restored to historic levels of aesthetic indulgence, the halo is unspeakably repellent and misplaced; like a roof-rack on a Ferrari Daytona. When fitted to a car capable of untold violence and spectacle, the halo jars like a caution sticker on a nuclear warhead. And yet, that is no argument against a device that has the potential to save a driver’s life. But enter into the equation the sport’s popular profile, which despite looking set to make positive strides under Liberty Media’s apparent emphasis on fan engagement, will likely be dealt a blow by the halo. There are unquestionably tangible consequences to implementing the halo; the sport will lose fans.
The onus therein is not on the apparently superficial nature of the case against the halo, but on the FIA’s ability to justify its decision. Thus far the FIA’s case has been couched in terms of the halo not only being a safety device, but one with the essential endorsement of those whose safety is in apparent jeopardy. Indeed, the FIA’s statement made reference to “the repeated support of the drivers”. However a brief review of the major quotes on the matter over the past year proves that that simply isn’t the case. Indeed, far from receiving consistent, united support, it is difficult to recall anything that has caused greater division amongst drivers.
Some, like Vettel, Massa, Rosberg and Button have, as the FIA claim, been repeated supporters of the halo. Others, like Hamilton, expressed initial distain but came to acknowledge the safety trade-offs as the FIA explicated some of its reasoning. However, many, like Magnussen, Palmer, Kvyat and Hulkenberg have been dependably ardent critics. Interesting, newly elected Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) director Romain Grosjean has been among the staunchest detractors: speaking to Autosport following’s Vettel’s Silverstone run with shield, the Frenchman said “we don’t need anything. I am against every Halo or Shield or whatever, it is not F1. I tried the halo last year, I hated it, it made me sick, so we haven’t yet found a good solution.”
When the FIA has sought to posit the support of the GPDA as a smoking-gun, such explicit opposition from one of the GPDA’s most senior representatives is almost comically absurd. Therein, to suggest that the drivers’ support is the primary motive to pursue the halo verges on being unashamedly misleading.
However, no amount of the political altercation habitual to the paddock is a reason to overlook hard evidence. Unfortunately, even after the halo’s announcement, very few specifics from the FIA’s halo research findings have been made public. The most comprehensive, publically-available blurb on the halo’s safety credentials came in the form of a press briefing from FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting during last year’s German Grand Prix (link to transcript). On the halo versus larger objects, Whiting said “it will stop a wheel and it will protect the driver against incursion from another car, walls, interaction with tyre barriers, all those things.” However, it is worth remembering that an FIA report following Jules Bianchi’s accident concluded that “it is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered” with cockpit protection.
Not being an LMP1-style windscreen, the halo’s ability to protect from smaller airborne objects is greatly reduced. “When you look at the small objects coming towards it, we’ve done a paper study to theoretically throw over a million angles and different scenarios,” explained Whiting. “We conclude that 17 per cent of the time it will deflect something from the driver.” Given the fact that the FIA has already made significant progress with tethering larger components, as was starkly apparent in the success of the wheel-tethers during Alonso’s monster crash in Melbourne last year, then surely a provision for smaller, often faster moving projectiles would have been a major objective of the cockpit protection initiative. To embark on what I described last week as a step-change, a fundamental alteration to F1’s DNA without significantly advancing a fundamental index of driver safety is indicative of the broader illogicality of the FIA’s position.
Also, last week’s news that the FIA is set to increase the safe cockpit extrication time from five to at least eight seconds, and in doing so arbitrarily bending an accepted norm of motorsport safety to suit the halo, together with confirmation that the junior series will not receive the halo until at least 2019, are all further symptoms of the FIA’s utterly baffling rationale.
Moreover, cockpit protection is a debate that the FIA is yet to properly engage with. Not only have the FIA whitewashed genuine driver reservations, there has never been any attempt to address highly pertinent hypotheticals, such as whether cockpit protection would be better addressed as part of a wider, ground-up redesign of the cars (McLaren’s MP4-X concept, below, is certainly the most appealing form of cockpit protection shown yet), or whether the FIA can accept any level of innate risk. It is also a debate that the FIA is not winning: not only are the fans more ardent in their opposition to the halo than ever, but the fact that all but one team opposed the halo as recently as this month shows that even those on the inside of the F1 bubble are unconvinced by the FIA’s argument.
However, there is a level of naivety in viewing the halo as a purely safety-minded proposal from the FIA. If the halo was a means of mitigating a specific, impending risk to driver safety there would have been the will and the means to have twenty halos ready for last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, and twenty more ready for the F2 drivers just as vulnerable to airborne debris as their better-paid colleagues. Instead, the unspoken but widely acknowledged spectre of legal consequences is a better matrix for understanding the FIA’s decision. Had the FIA not chosen to implement the halo and a driver suffered a life-changing or fatal injury, the sport’s governing body could face prosecution. Legal action routinely follows fatalities in F1, as was the case with Senna and Bianchi, and any lawyer would quickly point out an unexploited device that could have theoretically saved the driver’s life.
The prospect of the indisputably hideous halo, the most widely reviled of the three cockpit solutions proffered, as a means to provoke the drivers to sign a disclaimer protecting the FIA from prosecution should they suffer injuries is the only equation in which the FIA’s proposal makes any sense. Clearly cockpit protections have an inevitable role in F1’s future, but they will never look like anything other than an afterthought before they are included in a more general redesign of the fundamental architecture of a F1 car. In the meantime the drivers may have to legally substantiate the same tacit acceptance of the risks they reconcile every time they climb over the side of a F1 car. Otherwise the FIA risks overwhelming the sport with a venomous backlash from the fans, a flavour of which was vociferously vented during the weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
