Time for another poll! The debate continues, and surfaces every time a guy (or girl, RIP Maria) gets bonked on the head. I guess I can argue it both ways, but am genuinely interested in what the great unwashed here feel..... Poll questions coming next..... Cheers, Ian
I think they're inevitable and a few years from now we will look at today's cars without them as kinda weird as it is with planes
Open cockpits and open wheels. They belong to the museum, IMHO. Think at biplanes. I still like the look of them, but I wouldn't be too keen on travelling in one of them!!
You are missing out on a great experience! I guess you would really hate one of these Image Unavailable, Please Login
the correlation here should be with motorcycle racing rather than auto racing a helmet and a good set of leathers compared with a carbon fiber cocoon
There is a difference between flying at 70MPH and 700MPH. Racing aircraft when closed cockpit pretty early.
I like open wheels because it shows you what input the driver is making - I'd like to keep those. The paintwork of individual cars could reflect the driver, perhaps greater freedom with the TV camera area at the top of the car. I think a fighter jet-like canopy would be good. It could be designed in such a way that out would resist external impact but could easily be pushed open from the inside. It is not often at all that an F1 car rolls over and in those instances where it does it's virtually impossible to extract the driver without righting the car anyway, so the canopy makes no difference to escaping. Such a canopy would still provide good view of the driver and would also clean up the airflow around the car, so I don't know why it was rejected. All the best, Andrew.
They're also consodering the risk a canopy would deflect debris into the stands but I guess the rear wing is already no safer. The way I see it is they'll introduce the "tri-pointed" roll bar proposed by mercedes, then successively fill up the two front slots with plexiglass and finally finish the job with the top too. it won't be introduced completely at once IMO and the process already started with removable horse-shoe shaped pad they have around their head.
13 pole positions, 9 wins, 42 podiums, 19 fastest laps, and over a thousand career points. All the best, Andrew.
I'm in both camps on this...no one likes to see someone get serious injury or worse. On the other hand it's so damn rare for anything like this to happen. How many open wheel races per year yet no serious headinjuries occur? I always identify my driver by the colour of his helmet. If jet canopies are the future I guess we can paint the entire top half to reflect the drivers helmet, which would be pretty cool. I don't think force field technology is far enough yet .
Honestly do you imagine something like this: McLaren-Honda Formula 1 Concept with closed cockpit - Album on Imgur http://i.imgur.com/X3JFlDu.jpg I don't! The side air intakes look beautiful though.
I like the looks of the two links posted above, driver safety is the standard today. The open cockpit and injuries/death in just the last few years is enough to close them up. Wrecks will always happen and having the drivers walk away is a good thing.
I'm not against it, per se, if there can be a cogent argument made for how it will improve things, but the reality is that I can only think of two incidents in 20+ years where a closed cockpit MIGHT have changed things for the affected driver. With Massa, it most likely would have saved him from the spring that penetrated his helmet and left him with a nasty injury. For Bianchi, it's quite possible that a closed cockpit still may have resulted in a nasty head/neck compression injury, given his speed and that his car wedged under a tractor. The reality is that F1 doesn't have a real driver safety problem associated with open cockpits. If closed cockpits are somehow more related to advancing the sport (e.g car stability, aero, etc) to a higher degree while maintaining safety, then I would be interested in hearing about that.
