A Halo Fit For A Devil

With the Formula 1 teams starting to unveil their 2018 challengers this week I thought I might express my own opinion on the biggest change to the current crop of cars, the halo cockpit safety device. The Halo as I'm sure you know was supposed to be implemented last season but moved back a year to make sure the device was race ready and fit for purpose. Since the 2014 Bianchi accident at Suzuka, the FIA and F1 have made it their mission to create a frontal cockpit protection solution. The FIA deiced that the halo was the best solution available for its cockpit safety mission. The FIA conducted its own press conference which you can watch below explaining the benefits and some drawbacks that come with the halo. An interesting chapter to the presentation was a study looking into existing crashes and how the halo would have performed in those crashes. Most of the accidents saw an improved survival chance or threat of injury decline. The investigation concluded that the halo would offer a 17% deflection increase compared to an open cockpit.

I am firmly against the halo and any sort of frontal cockpit protection being implemented into F1. I believe single-seater racing is and should always bee open cockpit and open wheel. This is what gives the category its DNA and cockpit safety devices like the halo are threatening the tradition of the sport. I believe there are far more dangerous sports than F1 both in the motorsport world and outside of it. Motorcycle riders die far more than F1 drivers and yet still motorcycle racing stays true to what sets it apart from everything else because the Fans and participants of the sport understand and respect the traditions that the sport was founded on. The skeleton event during the winter Olympics is another inherently dangerous sport where participants have died but the sport is still identifiable to its traditions and uniqueness because again the participant knows the risks and chooses to take them. Even though the halo in terms of its safety factor is a positive i believe that it causes far more problems than it fixes. Starting off from a safety aspect I believe if front cockpit safety needs to implemented then a full jet fighter-style canopy is the best solution. From a ballistic protection point of view every angle of attack is covered so there is no chance of a tyre or small pieces of debris hitting the driver. The issue that is always attached to this solution is driver extraction problems but I think that this issue can be resolved. I don't understand why survival cells like lmp1 cars have cannot be looked at so in the event of a crash the driver is protected from a fire so that marshals can get to the car quickly and eventually make it upright again. A good example of this would be Alan McNish's leman 2011 crash at Circuit de la Sarthe. The halo I think provides very little protection from small debris and can even the escalate the issues of flying debris thanks to the creation of ricocheting. This issue was talked down during the FIA presentation but I still take their findings with a pinch of salt.

F1's traditions are something that as fans we are seeing diminished year on year. As a millennial, if you were to ask people of my generation what do associate with F1 a believe a majority would say speed, cool looking cars, amazingly loud sound and the best drivers. I grew up watching the Schumacher years when F1 like now is dominated by one team but the difference is that F1 at that time was getting more and more popular which is completely the opposite of today. Now I agree the racing being good is an attraction as well but it's not everything in my era of the early to mid-2000's are tainted as being boring but I can tell you as a viewer that there were some amazing races at the time maybe not frequent but nowhere near as bad as some remember the period.

Since F1's decline starting in 2008 we have seen F1 move further and further away from its traditions starting by creating the ugly 2009 cars and in my opinion, the aesthetics of the cars have not been right since those regulations and those after having been introduced. Who would have thought that petrol heads care about the looks of a car and when they see an ugly machine that it turns off their passion. This is something that F1 in the modern day still doesn't seem to understand. Since 2012 the noses situation has been a joke and 6 years later still hasn't been rectified. The halo is just another poor aesthetical decision that adds to the previous pile of poor regulation design. But what makes the halo even worse is that it attacks the USP and attraction of single-seater racing. With F1 cars now becoming closed cockpit, they move closer and closer to LMP cars and whats even worse I've seen some motorsport journalists calling for closed wheels as well since the introduction of the Formula E gen 2 car, which strikes me as being a weird name for the machine as it isn't a formula car.

The sound is another issue that leaves me shocked that F1 bosses are confused to why viewership is in decline. When the V6 turbos were introduced back in 2014 I have never been a fan of them and yes before you ask me have heard them live when attending the 2016 and 2017 British Grand Prix also I can compare them to the proper screaming F1 engines of yesteryear as with the 2011 British Grand Prix being my first ever. I remember that day vividly the first time I ever saw an F1 car in the flesh was Sergio Perez in his Sauber exiting past the loop blasting down Wellington straight and the noise that car produced is something I will never forget you could even feel those engines as they shook your rib cage. Something that pisses me off to the core is when F1 journalists and personnel say how they like the new engines because they're quiet. This remark makes my blood boil because the engine noise isn't designed for them it's designed for a fan to experience for the first time like I did and I'm sorry but the uniqueness of a naturally aspirated f1 engine is something that F1 needs back if it wants to attract new fans because at the moment the sound is the biggest thing missing from F1 as a differentiator.

The argument we fans get given to us to justify the V6 turbos is that they are road relevant which I'm telling you now is BS. The only road relevance seen from these engines is the Mercedes project 1 hypercar and they will spend their lives in millionaires garages instead of the road. Everytime Ferrari ,Mercedes and Mclaren release a new supercar it's a V8 an engine that they regard in F1 as dinosaur technology. Even the hybrid element isn't road relevant because the real world is bypassing hybrid technology and going straight to fully electric transportation. Since the inception of the F1 V6 era, I haven't heard or read one single article from a journalist countering the V6 T hybrid arguement instead we just get told that a quiet race track is nice for them while they write up articles about how being a vegan will make Lewis Hamilton slower.

Now I know that safety in F1 is important but through reading this blog post I hope you will understand that F1 remaining true to its traditions is as equally important as well. You may think I'm arrogant for not wanting the halo but I see the attractions that made me love F1 dying quicker and quicker every season and just when you think it cant get worse it does. I just don't see why F1 needs to change it's identity when other series can provide the safety that some drivers want.

Thanks for reading

Adam Flynn