The halo...has anyone besides me else noticed....

Mmmmmm...no.

 

The Halo is an abomination.

F1 cars are open cockpit. That is the DNA. Cover the driver it's no longer F1,... it's sport car racing.

IMHO,.. the halo is an ugly mid-step on the road to a closed cockpit. The FIA is waiting for an incident to force a closed cockpit. Mark my words,... it'll happen.

 

Haas do that. As in MAS 20

 

20 MAG

 

Nope, thing glares everytime I see it. Also, the overhead shot has been ruined.

 

You can put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig

 

Anyone notice that Formula E does not have the Halo?

 

i guess it would look ,even more,totally ridiculous especially in the car changes mid 'race' LOL

 

This past weekend I spoke at a racing a safety seminar where one of the other speakers was one of Indy Cars directors who is in charge of their frontal safety program. He gave an excellent talk on what they are doing and I later had a long conversation with him more off the record as to F1's implementation of the halo. While I have always considered open cockpit cars should remain as such I must say that both the presentation and the parameters surrounding the initiative is quite compelling. To recap Indycar is targeting the following parameters:

1. A windscreen that has a minimal frontal area and continues to have an open entry into the car.
2. Driver ingress and egress including emergency extrication cannot be compromised
3. The solution must be cost effective
4. The goal is to be able to protect against a 50lbs wheel & suspension assembly at 180mph (Justin Wilsons fatal accident was from a 10lbs part)

Working closely with PPG and starting off with a reject F16 canopy for initial evaluations, I was really impressed with the meticulous and methodical approach Indycar is taking to resolve this problem. They are spending a significant amount of time working with all of the drivers and taking into account all of the feedback to further improve their product before implementing it. The Scott Dixon test was super encouraging and the visual results are not too bad even for a die hard purist like myself.

F1 has had total transparent access to all of this information and have chosen to ignore it completely and go their own way with the halo. The few windscreen tests that F1 did totally ignored optical distortion information they were provided and unsurprisingly failed miserably. You almost get the feeling that someone high up pre-decided that the halo was the way to go and that no other efforts were made to understand the problem.

I gotta say that from experience the 'greatest engineers in the world' that supposedly occupy F1 have repeatedly shown themselves to be incredibly narrow minded in their ability to solve problems. Case in point are the early hideous integrations of side head protection in the mid 90's (remember the 96 Ferrari F1 car).

It is worth keeping an eye on Indycar as their solution appears to be the most thoroughly considered and engineered.

 

I wonder how can Kubica manage to get in and out with the Halo?

 

Looks like he does have an extra paddle.

 

Maybe if the drivers could make it seem more personal. Pair of baby shoes, fuzzy dice, an air freshener tree..

 

Ahh air freshener ...my own personal favourite was the 'traffic light ' one .. Image Unavailable, Please Login Geez i'm getting old!

 

The extra paddle should be to force flow form the wastegate and improve the rear wing’s efficiency. Borderline legal

 

Like I wrote elsewhere the two accidents, Francois Cevert October 6, 1973, Watkins Glen and Romain yesterday are identical...with 47 years of safety technological improvements making the difference. The guardrails torn up by an acute angle impact in exactly the same way....

 

Thank-you Charlie Whiting and Sid Wadkins for setting the foundations of what was witnessed at Grosjeans crash at Bahrain 2020. Both would have been proud of the amazing split second decision's by everyone involved.

 

See the detailed photos of the halo with severe cuts from the guardrail...That, the Hans device (without which his neck may not have resisted the impact), the carbon fiber tub with anti penetration material...

I visited Ligier at Magny Cours Wednesday and they showed me the LMP2 cars and bare tubs with special anti penetration panels...

 

Perhaps Armco is a poor choice to arrest the energy of high speed, low frontal area vehicles. The incidence of race cars passing through, under or in between sections of Armco barrier has been a problem for 50 years, but it is still used on circuits built today. It works fine for arresting relatively slow, metal vehicles with lots of bearing area, but not race cars.

 

Well portions of the circuits where cars usually crash are far better protected with conveyor belts and many rows of tires in front of the armco or concrete walls along with safer barriers in critical spots, whereas the beginning of a straight where he crashed has a very low impact probability hence the protection is less. Of course he went in at a terrible angle due to his collision with Kvyat rerouting him more to he right.

Single seaters going through guardrails was an unfortunately not so rare occurence in past decades, thankfully much less now. Here the aftermath of the fatal accident of Kesjar Csaba at Norisring in F3, 1988. He has been removed, I would not post it otherwise, you only see the car and guardrail.



More info:

http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/focus.php?db=ct&n=1008

Clay Regazzoni was very lucky in F3 at Monaco in the 60's when half the car including him lifted a barrier going through it! The barrier came down behind the roll bar, the car wedged between two guardrail elements yet he got out unscathed....

 

Regards the Halo like or hate it, 20 drivers came to the race and 20 drivers left the race with their heads intact, enough said.

 

I absolutely hate the halo and how it disturbs the optics of a F1 car. Yet it was crystal clear yesterday that it saved Grosjean. His head would have squeezed against the guardrail. So all things considered the halo is a good thing and will stay with the cars.

That said, I still hate its looks. I do appreciate Sky overimposing interesting graphics onto it from the roll over camera view. That's about the only good thing visually.

Oh well, I'm glad Grosjean is ok.

 

Sky Sports puts a graphic on top of the halo from the in-car shots to cover it up.
I COULD call that graphic lipstick !!

 

IMHO the best is when they overimpose the camera view backwards. G meter is also cool.