Have Your Say: Formula One 'Halo' - Good, Bad or Just Ugly?

[DND]

Introduce mandatory halo for spectators and marshalls?

Standard issued gear for F1 fans in 2020

 

[Tbear]

A over reaction to a failed root cause analysis in my opinion.

Isn't that a summation of F1 over the last 20+ years?

F1 is made up of a sanctioning body which is a red rubber nose and a pair of real long shoes short of a full blown clown suit, butt ugly cars, and pissy-whiney rich kids for drivers.

... and now substituting grid kids for grid girls.


Hopefully it will go the way of American Football and die, choked on stupidity, self-aggrandizement and greed.

 

[ltcars]

I have a question:

Imagine that scenario:

A wheel goes loose on the circuit, and collides with the halo. Where does the wheel bounce? Against a marshall? To the crowd?

Not the drivers head I suppose

 

[wombat999]

I doubt the Halo is the best solution but my enthusiasm for F1 has declined to the point where I care nothing for it.
It certainly won't stop small 'missiles' like the piece of flint that punched through Marko's visor decades ago and put out his eye.
Full canopies are not a solution either, as far back as the 1966 or 1967 IIRC Brabham (a very conservative man) tested a full fighter style canopy at Monza,
It was dumped after one practice session due to terrible visibility problems.
Martin Brundle not only survived a massive accident at Albert Park in 1996 (similar to Alonso), he ran the length of pit lane, received an OK from Sid Watkins and restarted in the spare Jordan.
Safety is not really compatible with Motor Sport, and badly designed measures do nothing to contribute to 'Safe Racing'.

 

[Tume]

One word: Ridiculous.

 

[Matthew327]

Water-repellent sounds good. Peel-offs sound scary (access for one, massive bits of plastic sucked into brake ducts or engine intakes for another).

Would be pit-stop only anyway

 

[Tbear]

It's not good, its not bad, it's not ugly, it's functional. That is enough for it to be there, and the sooner it saves a life, the sooner everyone can shut up about it.

Using that logic, why don't they don't just put envelope bodies on these things, change the name to LMP1 and be done with it.

 

[Lesley Buurlage]

On the new formula e car it actually looks pretty good imo

Thing is though that the car was designed with the halo implemented in the scheme. In f1 cars it just looks like teams designed their cars, and afterwards put the halo on top of it.

I also doubt how much it will actually protect against, the 2009 massa spring would had gone through, the sewer thingy which button flicked up in monaco 2016? Probably not.
The halo is tested by shooting tyres at it with a sudden angle, but as mentioned the wheels are thethered so what is the chance you will see a loose wheel on track? Only thing halo would be actually helpful would be start crashes like spa in 2012, but even then small bits of wing would go through.

All in all i don't see the halo as hideous when i saw it for the first time. But we gotta see how it influences in racing conditions, the tv camera on top, and the starting procedures (can people actually see the start lights?) before it has proven it's usefullness to me

 

[ltcars]

Using that logic, why don't they don't just put envelope bodies on these things, change the name to LMP1 and be done with it.

I like the idea

 

[reynaldo luna jr]

Stupid And Dangerous, how SAD that this is considered safe for driving. They could have come up with a system that deploys like an airbag on impact or when the car flips. F1 in 2018 will be a wreck fest.

 

[ltcars]

Stupid And Dangerous, how SAD that this is considered safe for driving. They could have come up with a system that deploys like an airbag on impact or when the car flips. F1 in 2018 will be a wreck fest.

Why is it dangerous?

 

[stbreaker]

Aesthetically, I wish they would have gone with the aeroscreen instead. However, I think the halo stands out a lot less than I was expecting.

In terms of safety, I’m trusting that the FIA found it accomplishes whatever goals they set. An excerpt from the FIA statement:

in the case of external objects the Halo was found to successfully deflect large objects away from the cockpit environment and also demonstrated an increased net level of protection against small debris.

I was recently reading about Prospect Theory and our collective reaction to the halo is a perfect example. We put so much extra weight on proposed failures (Massa) than we do on proposed successes (Surtees). Just because we speculate it wouldn’t have helped specific freak cases doesn’t invalidate its safety utility. It very well may have stopped the spring from hitting Massa. There IS a center pylon after all.

 

[Tbear]

Question though, is it Ugly enough to stop you watching F1?

F1 didn't need a halo device to get ugly ... it's been ugly since Bernie Ecclestone became chief executive of FOCA in 1978.

 

[MaXKiLLz911]

Halo + No Umbrella Girls = Goodbye F1

 

[SnappyDEe]

It looks awful and doesn't seem safer at all. They should just enclose the cockpit already. Like on a fighter jet. Something like this:

 

[JaimeDK]

Well, next step is to have a room with the pilots driving remotely the cars, then 100% true no driver will get hurt.
No seriously, this things should be just decided by the pilots, is their lives on risk so they should decide on this things, and if all the drivers are agree so let's do it.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

The whale tail, once considered out of fashion by 2004, lives on in F1 at least - whoever allowed that must've been to too many strip clubs

 

[Filip Carlén]

I don't really care. It's a safety feature, i don't complain about the way the helmets are shaped or made either. If it is a good safety feature may be up for discussion, but I think FIA engineers knows more than I.

 

[Kevin Bradley]

This is clearly an emotive subject.

Safety for the drivers, marshals and spectators should always be a priority for the FIA, but in my view the halo is a knee jerk reaction to the tragic death of Bianchi. I am left with the feeling that it is a solution that has been rushed through and personally I do not believe that alternatives have been looked at in enough detail. Like many i'm also sceptical that halo would have helped in the case of any of the serious accidents going back over the last 30 years.

Also there is no getting around it, the halo in it's current form is very ugly in terms of car aesthetics. It just looks ridiculous, like a giant inverted flip flop.

I'm all for protecting the participants of every sport, but you've got to make sure that safety 'improvements' don't take away from the core spectacle or change the underlying dna. Stats prove that F1 is safer now than it has ever been. Is this feature really needed and is it honestly going to improve F1 moving forward? Surely the drivers know the risks when they sign up? Imagine health and safety imposing 125cc rules at the Isle of Man TT or ski racers having to go through a 'stop zone' on the fastest part of a downhill section! No one likes to see serious injury, but speed sports are always going to be dangerous and the halo is not miraculously just going to eradicate the risks. The next serious crash could well be caused by something totally unrelated to the circumstances that caused the halo to be introduced, and who knows, the halo may even make things worse under certain conditions such as deflection of a piece of debris into a driver's chest for example.

If it absolutely has to be something, then surely more research into successfully developing some kind of screen is going to achieve the same thing and look better at the same time.

I remain highly sceptical about how halo is going to impact in terms of safety, practicality and the overall image of F1.

 

[Nick Gregory]

My opinion is the same as I saw Mercedes's original concept. It's ugly, and it's implementation seems rushed.