FIA considering closed cockpit F1 in the future?

[AJ]

People need to stop using this word;

freak accident ‎(plural freak accidents)

1. An incident, especially one that is harmful, occurring under highly unusual and unlikely circumstances.

Getting hit in the head by debris in open cockpit racing is not unusual nor is it unlikely, as proven by the number of life changing incidents and fatalities that have occurred over the last 7 years.

On a side note, what I found most worrying about Vettel's tyre failure (regardless of who was to blame) was this;

 

[TVR27]

Anymore silly ideas from the FIA ?

 

[RacerPaul]

The above discussion is both very interesting and very well presented by all involved, my compliments to you

I can't add anything on the technical side but I firmly believe that at some point, a closed-cockpit F1 car will be tested

 

[TheCracker]

People need to stop using this word;

View attachment 436658


freak accident ‎(plural freak accidents)

1. An incident, especially one that is harmful, occurring under highly unusual and unlikely circumstances.

Getting hit in the head by debris in open cockpit racing is not unusual nor is it unlikely, as proven by the number of life changing incidents and fatalities that have occurred over the last 7 years.

It is unlikely and unusual compared to the tens of thousands of competitors who compete in open single-seater racing, including karting, every single year.

 

[Dotini]

Anymore silly ideas from the FIA ?

A couple of years ago Pirelli suggested a maximum lap standard for its tires, but nobody was interested until Vettel's and Rosberg's tires exploded at Spa.

 

[Spirit]

I agree that there have been enough incidents over the last decade or so to negate the term "freak" from being correct. A NASCAR Stock Car making it OVER the catch fencing at Daytona would be freak, not open-cockpit race drivers being struck by debris. On the other end, I do not think outlawing the idea of open-cockpit cars is the answer. Certainly you could do it, but why even bother when you will have to manipulate these machines so much you might as well consider them Formula-style DeltaWings? Closed canopies over the cockpit, like what you see with the Red Bull X1 race cars on Gran Turismo, pose more safety hazards than the one it eliminates. Hazards which have already been covered in multiple threads.

I like my friend @trobes29's idea, although it may not be the absolute perfect solution. I am convinced there will be no perfect solution without eliminating the fundamentals of open-wheel racing altogether. He suggests a curved windscreen beginning around the front axle of the car and slowly building in height as it gets closer to the cockpit, resulting in it being above the head at the time it ends. The largest issue I could think of with this concept is airflow to the driver. My solution to this was to have thoroughly tested and engineered channels running through the windscreen that channel air to the driver area. Another issue would be the distortion of what is around you, and I may not have all of the answers to that one, but there are similar innovations out there, notably in the aviation industry, and to my knowledge its worked for them.

It's not a perfect idea, and it has room for improvement and more professional research and thought, but in my opinion this is the most reasonable option open-wheel racing has.

As for Vettel's tire expiration, to my knowledge many tire manufacturers have engineered their tires to not tear to shreds and fly off the vehicle, especially shreds of the size demonstrated in the video AJ has linked above. I've seen tires do this in NASCAR competition but I can;t recall myself anywhere else this has happened in the recent past.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Paul Dana's fatal crash is an example of high speeds proving to be too much to overcome. But the march of safety must continue.

Then surely you mist understand that eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns in "the march of safety" - that no matter how far you go in trying to make the sport safer, eventually you will get to a point where you actually make things more dangerous. Sure, a closed canopy might have saved Wilson - but look at Sergio Perez's flip in Hungary. What if he had a closed canopy that jammed shut in the crash?

You have quoted a list of drivers who have died of head injuries in the past twenty years. And I agree, it's too many. But how many crashes have there been in that same time where drivers have been saved because of the safety standards? You are talking about making fundamental changes based on an absolute minority, apparently blind to the way there will always be a set of circumstances that will kill a driver regardless of the safety measures that you take. Every competitor understands that when they get into the car. They accept the risk, and while it might be a poor substitute for the absolute safety standard that you envision, it does a lot more than pretending that there is an easy solution to a problem that can never truly be fixed.

 

[Famine]

Famine, I think if you get a race car hitting a wall at high speed and exploding into pieces that fly everywhere, and you have a pack of cars following, the chances that many of them get hit by flying debris is very high, not even close to "million to one".

I agree, which is why I didn't say that.

Of course the chances that at least ONE piece of said debris hits ONE of these following pack of cars and hits it exactly at the only exposed part of a driver's body is smaller, but then again I wouldn't put it as a "million to one" chance.

Well then, let's look at what the chances are.

The amount of driver's head exposed to the front - where he's most likely to collect oncoming debris - is tiny. It's about half a square foot compared to about 20 square feet of car. So one fortieth. Let's assume, like Wilson or Massa, he didn't see it coming and couldn't avoid it and stick at 1/40.

Sticking to F1, there have been 927 races in total. I can't even begin to guess how many crashes there have been per race in that time, so let's guess at two. I'm sure we can all think of races with more (especially years since) and races with none, but 2 accidents per race feels about right to me. I'd wager that most of these crashes don't produce significant debris onto the circuit - but shall we say that 1 in 4 do?

927 (races) x 4/2 (chance of crash producing debris/number of crashes) x 40 (chances of debris from a crash impacting a driver's head rather than his car) = 74,160.

I can think of two incidents with debris or foreign objects impacting an F1 driver's helmet. Felipe Massa & Tom Pryce - and the former wasn't from a crash and the latter was a marshall's fire extinguisher. Still that makes it 2/74,160 or 1/37,080 - so the chances of an F1 driver entering a race and leaving it with debris in his head are about 40,000:1.

In Indycar I can't even remember one accident where debris has hit a driver other than Justin Wilson, but the number of crashes is higher and the chances of the crash putting debris onto the circuit are higher. I've no idea how many races there's been either, but that form of racing predates F1 by about 40 years.

About costs and coming down the racing ladder, I think you are being too "black or white" in your judgement. As an example, you should take karting out of the equation, as far as I know they don't have seat belts yet, so obviously the requirements for safety rules and devices are measured against the need for them and the need for them is evaluated according to the specifics of each series and how dangerous they may be.

Okay, let's take karts out of the picture and go to entry level motorsport. Anything requiring an MSA National B licence or above will require HANS from 1/1/2016, so let's take that as the start of the motorsports pyramid. The first open wheel cars you'll find are MSA Formula. These are cars you can race aged fifteen and used to be known as Formula Ford (they're still Ford engined Mygale chassis). They look like this:

​

These cars cost £36,000 - a price cap imposed by the FIA. Do you think that dramatically re-engineering these vehicles to include a closed cockpit that would be effective as a crash structure - bearing in mind that they must be able to resist an impact severe enough to kill a driver if they are to be functional rather than aesthetic - will allow Mygale to continue building the cars under the FIA's price cap or not? If not, how can junior drivers progress through open-wheeled ranks without this step or the £100k necessary to race an F3 car?

I don't think the top tiers of open wheel motorsports should neglect the deaths caused by blows to helmets in the last few years. It's not once every 20 years.

Averaged out, the number of foreign body penetrations in F1 is one every 32.5 years.

But why limit it to top tiers? Why do the fifteen year olds above not deserve the protection that F1 drivers do? They already have to buy HANS devices - and that's a grand right there.

Getting hit in the head by debris in open cockpit racing is not unusual nor is it unlikely, as proven by the number of life changing incidents and fatalities that have occurred over the last 7 years.

Driving into a tree is

That particular section of circuit is a tree-lined boulevard and the crash barriers are installed every year for the event. It's the barriers that need looking at, not taking a chainsaw to a 90 year old tree - and that's exactly what they did in response to the freak accident, by moving the barriers 1.5m forward from the trees and increasing the number of elements to it.

 

[MatskiMonk]

The amount of driver's head exposed to the front - where he's most likely to collect oncoming debris - is tiny. It's about half a square foot compared to about 20 square feet of car. So one fortieth. Let's assume, like Wilson or Massa, he didn't see it coming and couldn't avoid it and stick at 1/40.

I was contemplating working on a figure a like this later, but was planning to estimate it based on the area of the drivers head vs a cross-sectional area of a debris hemisphere/tunnel/field. I think in your example it assumes that if there is a crash debris will at least strike the car, whereas in plenty of cases this doesn't happen.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Getting hit in the head by debris in open cockpit racing is not unusual nor is it unlikely, as proven by the number of life changing incidents and fatalities that have occurred over the last 7 years

Yes it is, and yes it is. Debris-to-head injuries, I can think of Justin Wilson, Henry Surtees and Felipe Massa (EDIT: Hinchcliffe, @IforceV8 has added). Let's say there are 7 more than that, just to weight the odds in your favour. How many miles have been cumulatively raced in those series since that time, how many accidents have there been, and how many of those accidents have resulted in significant debris-to-head injuries?

F1 alone has covered a cumulative 280,000 miles in that time (back of a fag-packet, but ball-park correct). No injuries or fatalities of the type you describe. The two F1 deaths, tragic as they were, are not relevant to this discussion.

You should read the definition of "likely" again. Debris-to-head accidents are freak, significant injuries from those are even more so. So, if we have 1 injury per 250,000 miles would you say that you're correct in claiming such injuries are "likely"?

 

[IforceV8]

In Indycar I can't even remember one accident where debris has hit a driver other than Justin Wilson, but the number of crashes is higher and the chances of the crash putting debris onto the circuit are higher. I've no idea how many races there's been either, but that form of racing predates F1 by about 40 years.

Last year Hinchcliffe was hit in the head by a piece of a wing at the Indy GP and suffered a concussion and in 2012 James Jakes drove into accident scene at Fontana and a half-shaft hit the roll hoop above his head. The Jakes hit would have been fatal if the debris was 12" lower. One of the drivers involved in the Dan Wheldon accident Paul Tracy had a tire mark on his helmet. I think there are a couple of other occasion when some type of debris entered the cockpit but I dont remember the specifics of who/when.

 

[TheCracker]

I I think in your example it assumes that if there is a crash debris will at least strike the car, whereas in plenty of cases this doesn't happen.

It also assumes that all debris has the potential to cause a fatality. A wheel? Yes. A small, dense piece of metal from part of the drivetrain or suspension? Yes. But most debris these days tends to be bits of carbon fibre. Enough to shred a tyre, but probably not enough to penetrate a helmet or cause catastrophic blunt force trauma. The nose cone that is believed to have hit Wilson is a very dense part of the body work that is designed to absorb the impact of the car in a frontal impact. It also often contains ballast in Indycars.

 

[AJ]

Yes it is, and yes it is. Debris-to-head injuries, I can think of Justin Wilson, Henry Surtees and Felipe Massa. Let's say there are 7 more than that, just to weight the odds in your favour. How many miles have been cumulatively raced in those series since that time, how many accidents have there been, and how many of those accidents have resulted in significant debris-to-head injuries?

F1 alone has covered a cumulative 280,000 miles in that time (back of a fag-packet, but ball-park correct). No injuries or fatalities of the type you describe. The two F1 deaths, tragic as they were, are not relevant to this discussion.

You should read the definition of "likely" again. Debris-to-head accidents are freak, significant injuries from those are even more so. So, if we have 1 injury per 250,000 miles would you say that you're correct in claiming such injuries are "likely"?

I didn't say likely. I said not highly unlikely.

Again as you say, ball park, we are in the range of 1 per annum.

Compair and contrast with closed top racing, we are in the range, again ball park, of exactly 0 per annum. Making it 100% less likely to suffer a head trauma due to debris than in open top in any given year.

If a driver suffered a head trauma from debris in a closed top car, that would be a freak accident.

 

[TenEightyOne]

I didn't say likely. I said not unlikely.

Oh please, you quote dictionary definitions at people as you instruct them in which words they can't use but then say that "likely" differs from "not unlikely"?

Again as you say, ball park, we are in the range of 1 per annum.

Very very very unlikely then. That's way beyond the test for "freak" in the definition you posted.

Compair and contrast with closed top racing, we are in the range, again ball park, of exactly 0 per annum. Making it 100% less likely to suffer a head trauma due to debris than in open top in any given year. If a driver suffered a head trauma from debris in a closed top car, that would be a freak accident.

Just as it would if a driver suffered a head trauma from debris in an open-top car. It is not likely, it is unlikely, it would be a freak accident given the distance safely covered by such cars per-annum.

 

[Bo]

Compair and contrast with closed top racing, we are in the range, again ball park, of exactly 0 per annum. Making it 100% less likely to suffer a head trauma due to debris than in open top in any given year.

A whole lot of nope.

The open wheel head injuries have been at one per year for several years, but not all have been fatal. Just because they don't occur in big series doesn't mean that fatal accidents don't occur at all in closed roof racing. We get a few per year.

Those guesswork statistics are pretty ridiculous.

 

[AJ]

@TenEightyOne - Would you agree that the current leading cause of death during participating in Motorsport is severe head trauma after contact with debris/foreign object?

 

[Famine]

I was contemplating working on a figure a like this later, but was planning to estimate it based on the area of the drivers head vs a cross-sectional area of a debris hemisphere/tunnel/field. I think in your example it assumes that if there is a crash debris will at least strike the car, whereas in plenty of cases this doesn't happen.

It also assumes that all debris has the potential to cause a fatality. A wheel? Yes. A small, dense piece of metal from part of the drivetrain or suspension? Yes. But most debris these days tends to be bits of carbon fibre. Enough to shred a tyre, but probably not enough to penetrate a helmet or cause catastrophic blunt force trauma. The nose cone that is believed to have hit Wilson is a very dense part of the body work that is designed to absorb the impact of the car in a frontal impact. It also often contains ballast in Indycars.

Yep - I was being as kind as possible to make the odds as close to evens as possible.

Last year Hinchcliffe was hit in the head by a piece of a wing at the Indy GP and suffered a concussion and in 2012 James Jakes drove into accident scene at Fontana and a half-shaft hit the roll hoop above his head. The Jakes hit would have been fatal if the debris was 12" lower. One of the drivers involved in the Dan Wheldon accident Paul Tracy had a tire mark on his helmet. I think there are a couple of other occasion when some type of debris entered the cockpit but I dont remember the specifics of who/when.

If we include Hinchcliffe and Tracy, that's 3 since 1911 - so I think those generous 1:40,000 odds are still looking generous.

The odds of dying in a car crash in your lifetime in the USA are about 100:1 (around 250:1 in the UK, bizarrely), with an annual chance of about 6,000:1 (nearer 17,000:1 in the UK). The lifetime chances of being killed by an asteroid are closer at 50,000:1 than being a racing driver hit by a foreign object.

 

[Liquid]

@TenEightyOne - Would you agree that the current leading cause of death during participating in Motorsport is severe head trauma after contact with debris/foreign object?

I wouldn't be surprised if that was true and I wouldn't be surprised if the most common cause of death for professional footballers during a game was a heart attack; they're still going to run around the pitch.

Doesn't change how rare an occurance it is even if it is the most frequent.

 

[TenEightyOne]

@TenEightyOne - Would you agree that the current leading cause of death during participating in Motorsport is severe head trauma after contact with debris/foreign object?

If I agreed then how would that help. The leading cause of death is crashes. Not heart attacks, meningitis or aneurisms. Crashes by definition involve hitting something else. Spreading your net is irrelevant.

 

[catamount39]

Putting this here because it fits the subject.
http://www.racer.com/f1/item/120696-whiting-protected-cockpits-will-happen#add1

 

[sk8er913]

No, it's because it would need to affect ALL tiers that use open cockpits and this would utterly destroy motorsports as anything other than a plaything for rich kids.

As for your examples, Bianchi's injury came from sustaining a ludicrous deceleration, Senna's death could have been prevented with HANS and a higher cockpit (which is why modern cars have this), Campos's car rode a concrete wall upside down and it's unlikely a lid would have saved him and Krossnoff's crash was an absolute plane crash that nothing could have prevented - the car and the driver were utterly obliterated. I dare anyone to watch that and come back with "a closed cockpit would have saved him".

From what I read yesterday Senna's was caused by a suspension piece piercing the helmet. Modern Helmets would have possibly prevented that.

 

[ClydeYellow]

You know, there was a similar debate around HANS devices, or seatbelts and helmets for that matter.

You keep talking about closed cockpits, and that's why I deemed appropriate to discuss the necessity of introducing some form of protection from debris in open-wheel cars separatedly.

You don't need a futuristic jet-fighter style enclosed cockpit to avoid debris hitting drivers in the head and killing them. We all know they would be highly unpratical and highly expensive, thus exclusive to F1. Let's imagine, for a moment, a windshield tall enough to protect the head of the driver would suffice. Would that require extensive re-engineering of current cars? No. Just a drill, some bolts, and a sheet of Lexan. Would that prevent the driver from speedingly leaving the cockpit of their cars should the need arise? No. It wouldn't add any obstacle if properly designed. Would it add any other risks in the case of a crash? I doubt it. Would it be effective? Yes. It's working in NASCAR, GT and LMP racing, and many other fields.

Of course there are other safety measures that need to be implemented post-haste - the idea of fitting ballast in the nosecone of a car is possibly the most idiotic ever produced by the ruling body of a racing formula, for starters. And of course there are actual freak accidents which would've been harder to prevent - Dan Wheldon's possibly being one such case. But the death of Justin Wilson was preventable, and it shouldn't be considered an inevitability just becase motorsport fans are too fixated with tradition and what-have-you.

 

[Panoz]

Auto Motor und Sport did a article back in March showing a Mercedes with a unqiuely designed cockpit covering.

Thoughts?

 

[Dotini]

Thoughts?

It might accomplish 80% of what a roll cage would do, but it's far more elegant. I like it!

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

I agree that there have been enough incidents over the last decade or so to negate the term "freak" from being correct. A NASCAR Stock Car making it OVER the catch fencing at Daytona would be freak, not open-cockpit race drivers being struck by debris. On the other end, I do not think outlawing the idea of open-cockpit cars is the answer. Certainly you could do it, but why even bother when you will have to manipulate these machines so much you might as well consider them Formula-style DeltaWings? Closed canopies over the cockpit, like what you see with the Red Bull X1 race cars on Gran Turismo, pose more safety hazards than the one it eliminates. Hazards which have already been covered in multiple threads.

I like my friend @trobes29's idea, although it may not be the absolute perfect solution. I am convinced there will be no perfect solution without eliminating the fundamentals of open-wheel racing altogether. He suggests a curved windscreen beginning around the front axle of the car and slowly building in height as it gets closer to the cockpit, resulting in it being above the head at the time it ends. The largest issue I could think of with this concept is airflow to the driver. My solution to this was to have thoroughly tested and engineered channels running through the windscreen that channel air to the driver area. Another issue would be the distortion of what is around you, and I may not have all of the answers to that one, but there are similar innovations out there, notably in the aviation industry, and to my knowledge its worked for them.

It's not a perfect idea, and it has room for improvement and more professional research and thought, but in my opinion this is the most reasonable option open-wheel racing has.

As for Vettel's tire expiration, to my knowledge many tire manufacturers have engineered their tires to not tear to shreds and fly off the vehicle, especially shreds of the size demonstrated in the video AJ has linked above. I've seen tires do this in NASCAR competition but I can;t recall myself anywhere else this has happened in the recent past.

This is exactly what I was thinking too. Not a fully enclosed cockpit, just some sort of windshied / windscreen in front of the driver that could deflect an object traveling around 200mph. Any little bit will help as opposed to having just a helmet or helmet shield blocking the drivers face and head. Even if the windshield reduced the velocity by 50% that would still be an improvement from when it makes contact with the helmet.

I am surprised no one else responded to @Whitetail reply.


Granted, stopping a tire or larger object would still be difficult, but again, every little bit will help. Something would be better than nothing.

Auto Motor und Sport did a article back in March showing a Mercedes with a unqiuely designed cockpit covering.

Thoughts?

That is 100% directly in the line of sight. Have you ever driven with a cracked windshield and the crack is directly in your line of sight, it is incredibly difficult to drive like that and maintain focus on the objects in front of you.

Perfect test. Just put your finger in front of your face and try to look around it. You will see it almost instantly doubles your vision. 1 finger will instantly look like 2 fingers.

 

[Tired Tyres]

windscreens are nothing new you know. There's no reason why something like this can't be done. This is an AC game image, but the real car looked the same, as did other cars of that era.

 

[Liquid]

When the windscreen thing comes up there's usually a link to that video of a tyre being launched by an air cannon at a reinforced perspex windscreen.

It'd be a matter for the aero designs of, and regulations for, the cars. I'm positive Formula One cars still have a minimal windscreen on them at the moment. They definitely used to as of the V10 era.

 

[GTPorsche]

Very minimum. They've only got a few mm windscreen on most of the cars. Certainly not enough to provide any protection to the driver.

 

[Wardez]

To me, saying we should run closed cockpit cars is like saying we should make free solo climbers wear parachutes so we feel better about rooting them on. It is a style of climbing (like open cockpit is a style of racing) that people choose to take part in. Everyone is more than aware, a lot of them actually like the fact that the series they race in has open cockpit cars, crazy right? It's an aspect a lot of drivers are drawn to.

What are you going to suggest next, that MotoGP riders should reconsider what they're doing too? How about a soldier, wanna let them know how dangerous their job is? Base jumpers sure do die a lot, should we make them jump over huge nets?

Look, this isn't about wanting things to stay "bad ass or else" or whatever. It's about not lying to yourself and realizing what you're watching too, just like the drivers know. Otherwise you have plenty of other things to watch and follow, just like the drivers have other places or series to race in.

Why should we make the sport change for our sake? Let the organizers change it according to what the drivers want and need, not what we as fans think it needs. We have no place to demand change or dictate what's right when we aren't directly involved in the sport.

I apologize in advance for the horrible metaphor below.

I mean, would you listen to your neighbor from across the street, armed only with cartoonish binoculars to tell you how to fix your leaky roof and that you should really think about changing your smoke alarm batteries?

The drivers decide to take on the risk, but it ultimately comes down to luck. Like @AJ said, the odds go from very unlikely to expected depending on whether you have a windshield or not. But this is never taken for granted by those involved.

 

[ukfan758]

Auto Motor und Sport did a article back in March showing a Mercedes with a unqiuely designed cockpit covering.

Thoughts?

Neat idea, but one concern in my mind: If a car is upside down and on fire, wouldn't that covering leave less of a space for the driver to crawl out and harder for the marshals to extract the driver? This type of cover would in my view be like a prison bar and would be right around or above the helmet in this shot.