GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => Pit Pass => Topic started by: Scott on July 19, 2017, 08:44:26 PM
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So it is...the Halo will be standard on all cars starting in 2018. I know there are some fence sitters and some completely opposed. I think they should give it a go and see how it really affects the drivers. I like it better than the windshield anyhow.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/headlines/2017/7/halo-protection-system-to-be-introduced-for-2018.html
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And just last week we were reading that they were going with the windshield.
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Vettel reported that the distortions in the windshield made him dizzy. Not sure if I'll watch Rollcage F1.
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I have to agree its a little nanny state as most of the drivers will not want it and if you look at the likes of Senna and Henry Surtees Halo would not have changed those events.
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Despite a vote from the teams with a majority against, the FIA forced it through.
I thought the shield would at least get an opportunity to be improved to see if they could solve the issues Vettel experienced.
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I have to agree its a little nanny state as most of the drivers will not want it and if you look at the likes of Senna and Henry Surtees Halo would not have changed those events.
Is that so for Senna? You'd imagine that driver
survival from a replication of his accident would be an essential part of any simulation work.
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Last I heard, the FIA was trying to claim Halo had zero bounce-in. This is physically impossible, unless they are suggesting that Halo has no inner surface whatsoever. That attempt to over-claim Halo's safety has left me utterly unconvinced as to the safety element of Halo (what else have they hidden from us?)
The trouble is that the FIA artificially committed to having head protection by 2018 on the basis of flawed research, and by this point they're already three weeks late on the deadline for deciding what that head protection method would be. Now they are effectively forcing themselves to implement the item that will reduce safety least. This is also why even having 10 teams rejecting Halo, Shield and Aeroscreen would not have changed the outcome. I hope nobody gets injured by this farce before Halo is either removed or sufficiently improved to no longer be more dangerous than having no head protection.
Halo is supposed to change the Surtees event, as the one possibly-reliable safety assurance from the FIA is that something of that size would bounce off the rails. That's the only F1 crash this century where Halo is expected to have resulted in better safety.
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In Econ 101 they taught us The Law of Diminishing Returns. It would seem to apply here. Each safety mandate of recent memory is designed to mitigate a smaller and smaller group of threats. When does the cure become worse than the disease? No amount of safety mandates will make racing 100% safe.
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I have to agree its a little nanny state as most of the drivers will not want it and if you look at the likes of Senna and Henry Surtees Halo would not have changed those events.
Is that so for Senna? You'd imagine that driver
survival from a replication of his accident would be an essential part of any simulation work.
Senna was hit in the forehead by the wishbone which had broken away with the wheel so there is no guarantee that Halo would have stopped that happening and for Henry Surtees I was watching the race on TV live when it happened and an accident happened where a wheel broke away and went high in the air Henry came round the corner and the spinning wheel came down from directly above him so I doubt he would have seen it coming. I expect the spinning wheel made contact with the top of his helmet jarring his head and probably breaking his neck as he continued on with no abatement of speed going straight into the crash barrier without attempting to take the turn.
So there is guarantee that Halo is a magic bullet and possibly not stop another event. My opinion is that the driver should have the option as whether they use it or not and sign a disclaimer to that affect.
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I have to agree its a little nanny state as most of the drivers will not want it and if you look at the likes of Senna and Henry Surtees Halo would not have changed those events.
Is that so for Senna? You'd imagine that driver
survival from a replication of his accident would be an essential part of any simulation work.
Senna was hit in the forehead by the wishbone which had broken away with the wheel so there is no guarantee that Halo would have stopped that happening and for Henry Surtees I was watching the race on TV live when it happened and an accident happened where a wheel broke away and went high in the air Henry came round the corner and the spinning wheel came down from directly above him so I doubt he would have seen it coming. I expect the spinning wheel made contact with the top of his helmet jarring his head and probably breaking his neck as he continued on with no abatement of speed going straight into the crash barrier without attempting to take the turn.
So there is guarantee that Halo is a magic bullet and possibly not stop another event. My opinion is that the driver should have the option as whether they use it or not and sign a disclaimer to that affect.
The driver would never get the option. If it was even slightly optional, every team would insist on not carrying it, as it's nigh-on impossible to equalise ballast in that area safely, and having no compensation would make the car better-performing. The teams might pretend that their driver didn't want Halo, but in reality that would be because of performance benefits, not the matter of conscience/risk management that such a safety discussion should be.
Also, if it was optional, the FIA wouldn't have been able to exercise its right to deploy the Halo, as 9 out of the 10 teams were against putting on any safety device at this time. (The FIA referred to a unanimous vote this time last year in its statement; that was to the notion of having some sort of head protection in 2018. However, that assumed that by then, one of the options would have proven to be safer than doing nothing, which as far as I am aware is yet to happen despite the FIA's claims).
The way you describe Henry Surtees' accident, Halo would have prevented it. The wheel would have bounced off the top regardless of whether Henry had known it was there or not, which would have turned a fatal accident into a fairly minor one. The whole at the top is designed to be too small for a wheel (even with a deflated tyre) to pass through.
Senna's accident is a classic case of debris strike. The FIA claims Halo brings a 16% reduction in small-sized debris strike (the simulated pieces were of varying sizes, but I'm not sure they went up to the size of or simulated the entire physics of a wishbone), but they also claimed 0% in-bounce, which is impossible in Newtonian physics. So the real benefit is definitely less. If the FIA felt the need to be economical with the truth here, I can't rule out the possibility of the true debris "benefit" being a minus (that is to say, more harmful in-bounce than beneficial out-bounce) - and it's not clear anyone knows how a wishbone or a Massa-type spring would be processed by the device.
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The way I understood what happened to Senna, the wheel and wishbone were still joined together.
I know they fitted tethers which in most cases stop the wheel becoming detached from the car, but it has happened on occasions since.
I imagined the strike point of the front of the halo would take account for the wishbone still being attached when the wheel hits it and make sure it stayed clear of the driver.
Perhaps I am too optimistic about such things!
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It might well have saved Jules Bianchi. Cevert, Koinigg and others might have lived to race another day.
Seat belts, Armco barriers and even helmets were initially decried as excessive. It was said that they wouldn't save everybody in every situation. The point is, will they save some drivers. No safety measure will ever be perfect. I think this one will be an improvement.
I remember how much stick Jackie Stewart got for trying to introduce safety measures to F1. Today, we couldn't imagine the sport without them.
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In Econ 101 they taught us The Law of Diminishing Returns. It would seem to apply here. Each safety mandate of recent memory is designed to mitigate a smaller and smaller group of threats. When does the cure become worse than the disease? No amount of safety mandates will make racing 100% safe.
Drone F1 cars.
I'm not advocating them per se, but it would be a hell of a lot safer if the car wasn't loaded down with ways to keep drivers safe. The cars would be faster, they would be far more fuel efficient, and the risk would transfer mostly to the course workers and pit crew. The FIA can make the cars 'easy' or 'difficult' to drive simply by deciding which systems can be automated and which ones are 100% under driver (remote) control.
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That would drastically change the sport. I can tell you from personal experience, driving an RC car is very different from actually sitting in a car and driving it.
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That would drastically change the sport. I can tell you from personal experience, driving an RC car is very different from actually sitting in a car and driving it.
In this fake future I've made up, the 'drivers' would sit in a simulator, not use a little control box.
You're right, it's still not the same (I'm the worst video game driver, but I'm very safe on the road). I'm just discussing ways to make the sport safer, not 'better'.
Although, if the simulators are lined up side by side, the drivers could get into a really good fight after a crash...
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Going off topic here, but there is an unmanned race car series on the horizon. I think the cars run off AI, they had the car (if that's what it's called) briefly on Top Gear.
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Just when I thought driverless cars were the stupidest idea possible, they come up with driverless race cars. :sick:
Seriously, without a driver in the car, there is no way it could legitimately be called a sport. How often have we talked about the need to bring back more driver input in the races? Without drivers, the whole thing is pointless.
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Just when I thought driverless cars were the stupidest idea possible, they come up with driverless race cars. :sick:
Seriously, without a driver in the car, there is no way it could legitimately be called a sport. How often have we talked about the need to bring back more driver input in the races? Without drivers, the whole thing is pointless.
I don't see it as a replacement for F1, but personally, I'd find it fascinating. A showdown between mechanical, electrical and computer engineering all in one package. Throw in a robo-pit crew for changing tires and repairing damaged bodywork.
Calling it a 'sport' would certainly push the definition of what 'sport' is. However, camel racing has already moved on from human jockeys to robo-jockeys. I don't follow the sport closely (indeed, at all), but that's something that robo-autoracing could at least look at.
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We have already been pretty close to this with the cars that had computer suspension giving ride height control they changed gear at the right time and even braking so the driver was left to steer and they thought then that they could do it without the driver!
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Alex Wirz, Chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers Association & former F1 driver, likes them.
“With regards to the introduction of additional head protection, as stated various times, us drivers respect the FIA's stand on safety and support their ongoing quest to make racing safer.
“Over recent decades, we have seen increasing speeds and ever faster lap times, and this ultimate racing quest is solely possible due to increasing safety. Equally, over the same period of time we have seen an increase in popularity of our sport.
“F1 is a role model for ever-increasing safety without jeopardizing performance. While the Halo solution might not be the most aesthetically pleasing for everyone, us drivers will nevertheless race and push as hard as we can on track, which is the key for F1 to continue its growth and popularity.”
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Alex Wirz, Chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers Association & former F1 driver, likes them.
“With regards to the introduction of additional head protection, as stated various times, us drivers respect the FIA's stand on safety and support their ongoing quest to make racing safer.
“Over recent decades, we have seen increasing speeds and ever faster lap times, and this ultimate racing quest is solely possible due to increasing safety. Equally, over the same period of time we have seen an increase in popularity of our sport.
“F1 is a role model for ever-increasing safety without jeopardizing performance. While the Halo solution might not be the most aesthetically pleasing for everyone, us drivers will nevertheless race and push as hard as we can on track, which is the key for F1 to continue its growth and popularity.”
A very good way to put things into context.
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During NBC's FP2 broadcast from the Hungaroring, they talked about the FIA wanting to have the halo filter down through the lower series. No surprise but the first time I've heard it said.
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During NBC's FP2 broadcast from the Hungaroring, they talked about the FIA wanting to have the halo filter down through the lower series. No surprise but the first time I've heard it said.
If it's good enough to protect the multimillionaire drivers with massive insurance polices, it's good enough to protect the kids who are going to need to get real jobs for the rest of their lives.
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Each team will be able to design their own halo. It will be interesting to see what the teams can come up with. I wonder what the FIA will do when Adrian Newey figures out how to use it to generate downforce.
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Each team will be able to design their own halo. It will be interesting to see what the teams can come up with. I wonder what the FIA will do when Adrian Newey figures out how to use it to generate downforce.
No kidding... :DD
Why on earth would they allow that?