Should Formula 1 cars have closed cockpits?

[Hampus Andersson]

When people have to mix in African children being hungry you know they are running out of arguments...

Seriously.

 

[Mark Gormley]

People dies every day in crappy jobs they have to do to earn a basic salary. Nobody cares. Much safety could be improved there as well, but is not done because it's not profitable.

Not sure how it is where you are from, but if someone in the UK gets injured at work it can bankrupt the employer with legal fees and fines. It's in a company's best interests financially to protect their workforce.

It's not like people is dying every weekend in F1, I find this paranoia a bit hypocritical.

I suggest you use that online dictionary of yours to look up the word 'hypocritical'. It does not apply to me, as I want to lessen the risk of someone getting hurt, and that's exactly what I have been saying.

Motorsport is dangerous, it's part of the job, I'm 100% to improve security but without destroying the meaning of it, otherwise just stop it and do simracing races with Alonso, Hamilton, etc.

Yes, you could do sim races, if you didn't care about losing aspects such as engineering, the physical fitness required, and teamwork.

Drivers use to die in low categories where the safety measures are 90ish: small rally, national championships, etc.

http://www.touringcartimes.com/article.php?id=7998
And they continue to do so, and it's not something that should just be accepted.

Try to make a green F1 or green motorsports competition is stupid because they have no propose other than to be a show . The most environmental thing motorposts can do is disappear .

The environmental issue is a completely separate one, but motorsports is nowhere near as bad a polluter as a sport like soccer.

Nobody said that, but it's a fact that F1 has the aura it has just because all the epicness, drama, risk, happyness, etc. that was present in it's history.

All of the words I have put in bold are entirely subjective, and depend on what you personally derive from the sport. As such I can't really comment other than to say I also feel these things about Formula 1, but I don't draw them from it's dangerous nature.

 

[Chronus]

Talking about demagogic statements...
[...]
Your insinuation that saying this is like "liking the crashes" it's disgusting and/or paranoid.
[...]
And your "there is always people against moving forward" so pretentious ,

Xosé, this does not become you, given that you're a Moderator. Again: poor taste.

 

[William Levesque]

Yes, you could do sim races, if you didn't care about losing aspects such as engineering, the physical fitness required, and teamwork..

I don't know for you, but simracing at the highest level implies a lot of Teamwork

Engineering could be setups ? As for physical fitness, well, I don't know

But really, the only things separating simracing (at the highest level) and real racing are emotional; "Dancing with death/danger", the sounds (although we're getting there virtually !), the smell and finally physical (The forces/stress applied on the body (G-Forces, Heat...))

So yeah, if you want ultimate safety, build yourself a crazy PC, bring a can of oil and gasoline, aswell as a oven... There. Oh wait, actually the smell and heat can be dangerous, so scratch that... And don't think about G-Forces either you suicidal maniac !

(The last part was light-hearted by the way...)

 

[Xosé Estrada]

Xosé, this does not become you, given that you're a Moderator. Again: poor taste.

Oh come on... I'm not a moderator here, I'm not moderating, I'm discussing with you and you were the one going aggressive.

If you are going to go agressive and then play the "you have to shut up because you are a moderator" card, you are in the wrong place

Again, incredible demagogic exercise

 

[Chronus]

Nice exercise with smoke and mirrors.

Come on. I told you to "shut up"? Quote me where I did.

Look at your own post - and quote my "aggressiveness" please.

As for demagogy...maybe as much as you catering to the mentality "F1 drivers are heroes"?

Baffling.

 

[Xosé Estrada]

Nice exercise with smoke and mirrors.

Come on. I told you to "shut up"? Quote me where I did.

Look at your own post - and quote my "aggressiveness" please.

As for demagogy...maybe as much as you catering to the mentality "F1 drivers are heroes"?

Baffling.

Indeed, you went against my critics to your accisations and avoided to enter any reasoning about my last post

You went aggressive in insinuating that the people who wants to preserve F1 essence, want to see deaths. Then you came with the poor taste thing

F1 its safe enough, nobody died or was seriously injuried in the last 20 year, except for Maria, but not on track but in an airfield surrounded by trucks and things that shouldn't be there.

Can be safer? Yes. Can be safer and remain being F1? To a certain degree yes, but all of us complain sometimes how actual super safe tracks provide worse racing, how super safe regulations made corners like eau rouge less special and challenging, etc. That is a fact, and I don't see the need to completelly change F1 at this moment when the chances of somebody injuried are proved to be really low, and still many things can be improved without change the basics of the sport.

Like I said, the worse accidents happen in categories were safety measures are 90ish, and there where its needed nobody is doing anything. You can't mix it because F1 its in a different league in terms of security.

 

[Xosé Estrada]

Want to say also that in that small rally and hill climbing, even if there is tragedy often (a guy from my area died one month ago), the same competitors use to be against New safety measures because they are expensive, and for many it will mean to be forced to quit racing, and they have passion (irrational) for it, so they prefer to assume the risks.

Reminds early ages of F1, don't you think?

 

[Shane Butler]

I am quite surprised that more people have voted for no than yes. It is wrong in my opinion, to put the tradition of open wheel racing in F1 ahead of driver safety. The addition of a small cockpit cover would improve safety aswell as improve performance. So really its a win-win situation if you think about it.

However, there is a danger of a driver being trapped inside a car that is on fire. But if there was a cover that could somehow eject just like a fighter jet ejection precedure I think it would be a better solution.

Of course Formula One will never be 100% safe, just like every motorsport. But I think its important to weigh up the effect of a closed cockpit over an open one.

Coulthard / Wurz in Australia 2007, Massa at Hungary 2009, De Villota's accident, Henry Surtees in Brands Hatch, Schumacher / Liuzzi Abu Dhabi 2010, Chandok / Trulli Monaco 2010, and the start crash at Spa last week are all example's of very close calls, serious injury or death that could have been prevented by having a cockpit cover. It needs to be introduced soon in my opinion.To people who say that its not the "real" Formula One if cockpit covers are introduced, well I'm sorry but thats just wrong.
I think if you were starting with a blank sheet of paper and you wanted to design a racing car without rules then you could close the cockpit both for safety and because it gives much better aero efficiency. The idea of leaving the cockpit open wouldn’t even come into it. F1 cars are constantly evolving and I'm sure its only a matter of time before a closed cockpit becomes mandatory. I just hope that it is introduced before another driver gets seriously injured or killed.

 

[Rupe Wilson]

I understand why there is a call for a safety device but why just f1 are drivers of the lower levels of open wheelers less important... very few crashes happen at flat out speed and and will a canopy at that speed make much difference ...the cars disintegrate to absorb the impact
and if they have a safety cell which covers the whole body like in the f1 power boats. That will bounce and roll maybe causing more harm to the driver... why not a big airbag system to enclose the drivers head upon impact. From the front and both sides.. this can be implemented right across the open wheel motorsport like the Hans device...
i don't want to see anybody get hurt or die also..

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

Simply put, costs. In lower open wheeler classes, there's just not enough money to keep them in the same level of safety than Formula 1. But it can't be made into a "everybody or nobody" case. If you start by putting it in Formula 1, then maybe you'll find a way to put it in other open wheeler series while keeping the costs reasonable.

As for Formula 1 being safe enough, in 1994 they said that. They had gone through 9 years without any death in F1, if I remember correctly, and look how that ended. The point is, F1 will never be safe enough, but if we don't make it any safer, then we'd be like in the 50s, when it was rare if there weren't any driver deaths in a season.

Right now, there aren't any deaths, but it just takes a freak accident and then you've just lost a driver that you probably admire.

As for making racing safer by making it "unsafer", it won't work. Boxing, (American) Football involve intentional physical contact. As it gets safer, they hit harder, and the safety doesn't actually reduce the damage of the impacts. That doesn't apply to Formula 1, and for a proof, you have the history of Formula 1. As it gets safer, drivers get injured/die less often.

And finally, I don't think of this as losing aspects of Formula 1. Formula 1 is meant to be the pinnacle of racing motorsports, and that means evolving. Everything changes. Wings, tyres, engines, ground effects, driver aids, tracks, driver's equipment, etc.

And to end with, this is just my personal opinion. I admit I'm a fairly new motorsports follower, and I clearly don't have the experience of some of the people here.

 

[Adam Hartwell]

I dont think we'll see canopies/rollcages over the open cockpit in the next ten years to be honest, the car's are incredibly safe and I do agree that one of these days we may live to regret not having the canopies but I don't like the idea and alot could go wrong with it, it's easy for us to say oh yeah put it in, what if there's a fire and the driver needs to get out, 'explosive cockpit ejector thingy-m-bob' crash could of caused substancial damage and jammed it closed, I just don't see it happening because there's two sides.

In my opinion F1 will see a driver killed again because motorsport may be safer but it's always going to be incredibly dangerous, I don't think Canopies are the solution personally, but I'm not the one to judge on people's safety. I think a canopy could be just as unsafe as it is safe if it was to jam during an accident where the driver's injured/knocked unconcious/fire then we could have another added problem on our hands.

 

[Carlos Luna]

The only way I see canopies becoming standard in F1 is if someone comes up with a sure-fire way that the part covering the driver has a 100% chance of releasing in the case of an emergency. If by having a canopy drivers are put in even more danger in the case of a crash, then doesn't that nullify the point of a canopy in the first place?

Sure, perhaps it would be safer to start including some sort of closed cockpit, but driving with an open cockpit is one of the dangers that has been present in F1 since day one and the drivers know it. If the drivers, who are the only ones that this will affect, wanted closed cockpits then they would have let the FIA know.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

How long does it take to get used to quite radical changes in F1? About a year... Those platypus noses look just awful at beginning of the season, now i don't even notice them anymore... Same has happened everytime the look changes, i'll bet some were complaining about how stupid wings looked compared to those streamlined cigarshaped beautiful mechanical wonders... It's one, two seasons at most until it starts look like it always was there..

If the canopy comes, i'm sure it's in style with F1-boat survival cell that detaches from the wreckage or is easily retrieved.. Airtight, stupendously strong cocoon with everything else in the car designed to crumble or shed away to decrease inertia...

 

[Xosé Estrada]

FYI they just showed Alonso in Spanish TV one minute ago saying:

"The car is perfectly safe, that doesn't need to be changed, just some driving standards need to change, its the GP2 culture".

Nothing else to say.

 

[Ejike Wodu]

and ejection system, like a jet fighter. perhaps.

If the car was upside down, the driver would be ejected into the tarmac.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

If the car was upside down, the driver would be ejected into the tarmac.

then the track marshalls would have to use some of these to get the driver away from the track
Like a pancake

 

[Jax Humanhater]

Closed cockpits are much cooler even though you don't see the drivers' heads.

They should start to take that route if engineers can manufacture parts that absorb more impact once F1 cars regularly drive at 400 km/h.

 

[Diego Lopez]

close cockpits are for sissies

is that bad

I even feel terrible for having a closed cockpit in my car...not even a convertible makes up for it..

makes me wanna rip the whole hood, windshield etc from my car.

 

[John Robertson]

close cockpits are for sissies

is that bad

I even feel terrible for having a closed cockpit in my car...not even a convertible makes up for it..

makes me wanna rip the whole hood, windshield etc from my car.

that's reasonable.

I would like to see canopied cars though. as well as other aerodynamic improvements.

I wanna see someone actually drive an f1 car upside down some time soon.