TBK-Light.com

Seems about right. But I think the Halo needs to be clad in Styrofoam padding.

Nah, to be safe they need to reduce the speeds and also make it more environment-friendly. The solution:

Vettel looked pretty young back in 2015.

To be honest it's the same in all companies/organisation.

They'll save every penny on safety as long as it is undercover, then when someone dies and word gets out that an action needs to be done, nobody wants to have the balls to say it's ridiculous and be the one who signed to stop the feature. Because someone will still die (that's what people do. they die all the time, for millions of reasons), and in that case they'll be the easy designated culprit that the organisation/company can cut just the head off and get away with it.

We're all whining and being sarcastic, but it's only something you do when you've got nothing to lose. Nobody here would sign the fucking paper that says "HALO to not be applied to F1 for aesthetic reasons" if they were in charge, then face jailtime/prosecution/lifetime career repercussions when someone ends up banging their hand on a pigeon. Even if the HALO wouldn't have prevented it, good luck proving a negative.

Yeah, sometimes I feel like punching some executives in right in the fucking face, slap some sense into them, and stitch on some balls on them where they're missing. But no, the world is made in such a way that nobody thinks any further than covering their ass as soon as they have the slightest accountability or responsibility in anything.

I don't really agree. I think it's more of a mentality issue.

When Senna died everyone panicked and they made some silly decision like putting up makeshift chicanes with tyrewalls and cutting holes in the airbox to slow the cars down. They had no idea what had to be done and just tried whatever someone shat out of their ass.

When Earnhart died NASCAR didn't panic but investigated the accident and worked accordingly. From my memory this has always been the case in American racing series.

It seems in the USA they still accept the fact that racing has its risk and therefor are less shocked when it does go wrong and as a result of that they're capable of action rational.

IMHO the very first step to make F1 (and lower series) saver is by teaching everyone involved, from occasional viewer to racer, that the sport has it's risk.
Give them false sense of safety and they'll think nothing can happen to them and they drive around like its need for speed.

follow-up in the Thong-man saga.

are they gonna throw 5 lbs springs onto cars to check the safety of halo?

one funny thing is that they didn't showed a proper report made by an engineer or specialist saying that is something really appropriate and accurate for safety like they do with other safety devices like crash helmets, fireproof clothing, construction gear and so

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Gary Anderson has a typically dispassionate take on the whole thing, in answer to the question of why F1 is pushing this when IndyCar seems not to be. I do like how reasonably he puts things.



Two things I took from this:

1. The aeroscreen was definitely the best of the options we have seen.
2. If TBK existed in 1995, we would all by lamenting the end of F1 with its weedy engines, weedy downforce, and the upcoming hideous cockpit sides which will stop us from seeing the drivers and wouldn't have saved Senna or Ratzenberger anyway.

Those two points I am still arguing about.

I have always believed that the FIA should just say with the front wings that they can only have 4-5 elements on them. They would still be able to come up with some complex elements but it wouldn't be as excessive. Something like the early to mid 2000's would be my preferred option. Clean but still pretty useful.

The 2005 McLaren (sans the bull horns) is I think one of the best modern looking F1 cars of all time and I just love the elegant clean swoops of the front wing on that thing. Then look at this years cars and they look like cobbled together primary school art projects.

It's not like they haven't tried. Who's to say that a lower number of wing elements = less downforce and dirty air = better racing? What's to stop Adrian Newey developing a single piece of carbon fibre shaped like a vienetta layer that does all the same things but just drives the cost of F1 up?

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I really, really don't like when current situations are compared to historical events. It always gets in the way of a factual, rational analysis of the situation.

History, as well as safety, or any progress in any domain, is not linear. It flattens out with time, and new developments only bring a small added benefit for a lot of effort/cost and inconvenience.

Seat belts were a HUGE improvement in safety. They save from injury/death in EVERY accident at any speed.

The HANS device was a smaller improvement than seat belts. It only saves from injury/death in a small sub-set of accidents: high-speed frontal sudden stops against rock-hard obstacles.

The HALO is an even smaller improvement. It saves from injury/death in an even smaller sub-set of accidents - stray big debris hitting the driver's head.

So, no, Gary Anderson, it is perfectly normal for people to be more vocal about the latest improvements, because they deem the risk very low compared to the constant inconvenience they'll deal with in terms of aesthetics, visual field, and access to the cockpit. Comparing this to historical developments is intellectually dishonest. You have to draw a line somewhere, but I'm hopeless that anybody still knows how to draw a line and stick to it in this madness.

Instead of getting further into this rabbit hole, just see the larger picture and state the obvious: the only reason we have single-seater racing is because the design evolved from the early 20th century car models, and the racing roadsters of the middle of the century. They added roll hoops, etc... and we ended up with this. Just state it, FIA. Open-cockpit is considered too dangerous for our time? Then outright ban all racing using this design and come back to all prototype or tin-top.

Tobias Gruner (AMuS) has reported that the FIA cockpit escape time will be raised from 5 to at least 8 seconds next year.

An admission that with the halo it will take longer to escape the car. If it's going to take quite a bit longer to escape the car in 'normal' circumstances, how much longer will it take if, say, the car is upside down?

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

I may just be hopeful but I EXPECT the FIA to go back to the drawing board after 1 or 2 races or until the halo proves itself to be a safety hazard.

well they can use the halo as support to escape, unless they got the feet or legs stuck, otherwise would be a painful experience

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Depends if the halo is made of carbon fibre or steel or aluminum. If it's from carbon, it might fracture as easily as a wing and creates more problems then it does good. And what happens if there is a dent in the halo, will the fia/stewards finally throw a meatball flag or will they wait as long as the teams themselves call it in?

In other news, Renault's keeping it's stupid decision by not wanting to replace Palmer with Kubica this year. Palmer must pay a fortune to Renault i guess. There was not a single reason to keep Palmer over Magnussen for this year, and keeping him in that car makes even less sense.

I remember there was some discussion about this particular case after Alonso's accident in Melbourne last year. And basically the FIA said: "the driver should stay in the car and wait for assistance to get out"...

I will have a hard time spending two hours watching these hideous things. The racing will have to be very, very good.

Lol, they did? I can vaguely remember that the 'help' te marshalls gave to flipped cars actually made injuries (worse), instead of helping. Simply flipping the car over. Although that would have probably been in F3 and other lower categories. Not to mention if a fire were to break out. "Please stay in the car."

I hope they will release some video of the drivers training to even get out in 8 seconds with the halo. Will the halo be fixed or an add-on like the head rest?

I would laugh my fucking balls of if either the 9 teams against it simply refuse to put it on the car and show up without it in Melbourne or 95% of the fans simply boycot going to races and watch it on tv.

But neither wont happen. I'm almost willing to get a full body wax if either does happen (and I'm a hairy man except for the top of my head).

Sauber calls off Honda deal. Lol

Someone made them a better deal.

I doubt they would have paid a whole lot (if any) for the Honda engines as Honda is in no position to ask top dollar for it.