Alex Lynn, driving for Mahindra, escaped a terrifying looking crash in the second race of Formula E’s first round at Diriyah in Saudi Arabia. It was yet another testament to the incredible strength of todays race cars in many series but within minutes of video and images emerging online I found twitter awash with so many comments of “Thank goodness for the halo” and “I’ll never talk about how ugly the halo is on a Formula E car again” which is truly a wonderful sentiment to hear, but it’s misplaced as it has been in a couple of other incidents. William on twitter reworded my rambling tweet perfectly “If everyone and everything becomes ‘saved by the halo’ the importance and significance of an actual ‘saved by the halo’ becomes diluted.” It’s just one of the misconceptions which seems to remain in the motorsport viewing community and it got me thinking, so let’s see if we can get a few things analysed and in the open.
Aesthetically, it’s not the worst option
No, seriously, it isn’t! Back when the halo was introduced in 2018 the main cry from all those who hated it was “It’s so ugly! It ruins the look of a formula One car! It’s the ugliest thing ever in F1!” Is it, is it really?
There were also repeated cries of “But it’s meant to be open cockpit!” which, unless all the naysayers knew something the rest of us didn’t, it is. But the primary complaint was ugliness which makes me absolutely certain that none of these people ever saw the other proposed designs from during the first phase of its development. Just take a look at some of these awful monstrosities, all but one of the them far worse than the halo that was eventually implemented.
Yikes.
I will say however that there was one early design which looked much better than the halo we have now, stylish and aggressive, it looked right. Sadly it was deeply flawed as a wheel striking it could have have some of the debris still reach the drivers helmet as the tyre is penetrated by the horns and would also be highly likely to become lodged in place, costing precious time in the event of an assisted driver extrication after a catastrophic accident. It really does look cool though, in my opinion at least.
Hopefully in time the FIA will decide to go the same route as Indycar and use their aeroscreen solution because, not only does it look fantastic, it completes the requirements for driver head protection. There won’t be any Massa incidents with the aeroscreen. So for now, be happy with the halo that we got, because it could have been a toast rack.
It’s not made from carbon fibre
This is a fairly short one.
It’s amazing how often you still see comments, tweets, posts or whatever where people exclaim about how amazingly strong carbon fibre is to be able to used for this. Well, it isn’t, but titanium is.
Carbon fibre is an incredible material in many ways but it simply isn’t suited to a purpose such as this. The problem is that whilst having supreme strength and stiffness, carbon fibre will not stand up to repeated punishment nor will it retain any strength after it reaches it’s limit, once it’s broken, it’s broken and you might as well have a leather apron for all the good it’ll do during an impact. Carbon fibre as you probably know from various Formula One videos and articles is made from fibres layered in molds along with a resin which is all then baked under high pressure in an autoclave (a giant pressurised oven) fixing it into the mold shape to meet its designed purpose. Like wood however, it can only withstand so much. Grab a stick from a tree and try to bend it, depending on the type of wood and size of stick it’ll probably be stiff but will bend and continue to bend until it breaks, once broken though it’s done, you only have that initial strength. Metals are far better at maintaining their strength in similar situations, some are better than others and titanium is the best. Titanium is, pound for pound, by far the strongest of metals and can withstand extreme amounts of abuse before failing, just look at any YouTube video where people are shooting it and you’ll see just how resilient it is.
The image above is a substrate plate upon which additive manufacturing is performed – 3D printing but with metals and slightly different process. This is made from titanium, is 250mm(9.84in) square and 15mm(0.59in) thick weighing 4.23kgs(9.3lbs). If this were to be made from 304 series stainless steel, a grade commonly used for a huge number of applications such as the aftermarket high performance exhaust you might have on your car, it would weigh 7.42kgs(16.35lbs) whilst still not being as strong as the titanium. That’s an increase of roughly 75% in weight for not as much strength. As you are certainly aware this is absolutely a no-go when it comes to motorsport, weight (or the lack of it) is king. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty in refining titanium it’s also extremely expensive. The plate above, just as raw material value is worth around £250($346 at time of writing) and with the properties, particularly hardness, making it much more difficult to work with around £700($970) with the CNC machining done (this is milled to a flat surface accurate to 0.03mm), the same plate in steel would be around £2($2.77) raw and £20($27.73) machined.
Having titanium as the main structure for the halo is essential as it’s small size to minimise restrictions in drivers vision makes carbon fibre not a viable solution. In a Racecar Engineering article looking at how the halo is constructed it’s stated that “Many believe the Halo is made from carbon fibre, but although carbon fibre is strong it isn’t able to deal with impacts very well.” which is true. Just to highlight this point (admittedly in an extreme example) in the images below you’ll see two gun rounds – .380 ACP and .50 BMG along with two guns which fire them – I’m sure you can appreciate the colossal difference in power. What might sound like madness is that the titanium substrate will stop the .50 caliber round whilst the same thickness of carbon fibre will struggle to stop the .380. Now of course this is taking the comparison to a ridiculous degree but it does highlight the difference between the materials with regard to point impacts very well.
It’s perfectly understandable that people will get the impression that F1 halos are made from carbon fibre as the teams use CF fairings to minimise their aerodynamic impact but if you look closer at Formula 2 and 3 cars, you will see that their halos are simply painted, the feeder series simply cannot afford to be making aero coverings for them.
Ok, before we get into the next incident let me say this, as all or most of you probably know (or certainly know if you’ve read my other articles) I am one of the biggest safety advocates around. When you’ve done the work that I have in construction and engineering it becomes second nature and when you study it out of a desire to understand more and maybe one day even help improve it (I wish) you really start to see things differently and analyse incidents with greater scrutiny. I have been, and will continue to be, one of the first to praise safety innovations and procedures like the halo when they make a big difference to the possible outcome of an incident. Charles Leclerc at Spa in 2018, Lewis Hamilton at Suzuka in 2019, both Sean Gelael and Jordan King were protected from flying debris during the horrific accident which tragically took Anthoine Hubert from us and of course, Romain Grosjean’s escape from an inferno at Bahrain. Irrefutable proof that the halo has done it’s job and without it at least two drivers would be dead and several others potentially suffering severe injury.
I must also say that what comes during the next and following two sections is not to preach at anyone, put anyone down or even change anyone’s opinion. If anything I hope to make motorsport viewing a little less stressful for people who become anxious when a big incident happens. There have been a number of times when I’ve received messages from followers who struggle to cope with seeing such scary things, even when the driver emerges unscathed and it’s perfectly normal, I try my best to alleviate such worries by referencing various safety devices and protocols and looking at what’s happened to help people worry less. Hopefully, by putting all of these things down here it will allow people to see things from a different perspective and save them from such worries. This will not always be the case of course, sometimes we really have no idea what has happened and what the outcome might be, Grosjean was a prime example of this and I myself was extremely anxious, but most of the time I see great concern where a driver is almost certain to be safe and I hate to see people suffer such anxiety needlessly. So with that, let’s continue.
It didn’t save Tadasuke Makino
One thing that is vitally important when talking about safety measures is being sure not to attribute success of a device or procedure incorrectly. Attributing a positive outcome to the wrong changes can, in a very worst case scenario, lead to even more disastrous outcomes down the line as a result of complacency. “Oh this kind of crash is fine, thing X,Y or Z is there now so it’s perfectly safe.” This is the kind of thinking which has killed many drivers already, “This hasn’t happened so obviously it’s not going to, right?” No, wrong. Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna are examples here, no energy reduction barriers of any kind at the highest speed points of Imola despite Gerhard Berger and Ricardo Patrese barely escaping from horrendous crashes into the concrete with their lives.
The post race images of Makino’s car are terrifying it’s true, the tyre marks on the engine cover and the halo itself suggest that it’s been instrumental in preventing injury but when you look at the incident you can see from the position of the cars that his head was not going to be in danger. After the initial contact, as Nirei Fukuzumi’s car climbs over the rear wheels of Makino’s it takes on a clockwise rotation and the engine cover and roll hoop structure deflect the car away as the rear comes around. Visually it looks even more precarious as the rear wing chops off the T-Cam atop the roll hoop but when you look at the car afterwards you can see marks along the already raised sides of the cockpit, the original, and since the introduction of the halo frankly laughable, attempt at drivers head protection.
The roll hoop structure is incredibly strong and more than capable of preventing Fukuzumi’s car from getting any closer to the head of Makino. There are similarities to the incident with Alonso and Leclerc at Spa but the difference, crucially in this case, is that the rotation is taking the car away from where the driver is in danger as opposed to towards it. Had there not have been a halo on the Sauber then the front right wheel of the McLaren would have carried on directly into the helmet of Leclerc with a force that we saw was enough to break the suspension.
Now before you all go off at me in comments and tweets let me say that I am 100% happy that it was there, I will take the debate of “Did it really save them?” over “Would it have saved them?” every time and Tadasuke says himself that he believes the halo saved his life which, under the circumstances, I think is more than understandable, I’m sure all of us would be saying exactly the same thing in his position but from the outside we can afford to look more objectively.
It’s also possible I’m completely wrong about this one, of course it is, but I am one of those people who struggle to let an accident go. I have to understand what happened and why, sometimes I think it’s a part of my health anxiety problems that I have some obsessive need to comprehend why people die in various situations, this isn’t a disgusting death obsession it’s a life obsession. I analyse accidents in motorsport just as in the workplace in order to find solutions to prevent them, or at least prevent the outcomes, from happening again and whilst I’m sure this one would have unfolded safely without the halo there, I reiterate I am far, far happier it was there, just in case.
It does nothing in a rollover
Here we get to what inspired this piece. As I mentioned in the introduction Alex Lynn escaped unhurt from a scary looking incident during Formula E’s second race of the seasons opening round in Saudi Arabia. So many people, including double FE champion Jean Eric Vergne and Mahindra Team Principle, Dilbagh Gill, talked about how “The halo did it’s job” and “..contributed considerably to his [Lynn’s] safety.”. I’m sorry folks, but it did nothing. Honestly my biggest worry for Lynn was sliding into the barriers backwards at high speed, that’s always extremely painful for a driver and carries injury risks all of it’s own, but I digress.
I can hear you already. “Look at Ericsson’s crash at Monza!”, “There was damage on Stroll’s halo in Bahrain!” and “Lynn slid along on it!” and yes, there was clearly visible damage to all of the halo’s in these incidents, but it’s not from the halo having anything to do with keeping the driver safe.
There is a rule that has been in place in open cockpit motorsport for a very long time stating that there must be clearance (the amount varies) between the drivers helmet and a line drawn from the top of the roll hoop to the front of the cockpit opening (in later years this point become the secondary, cockpit rollover hoop).
In years gone by they didn’t bother with measurements and numbers as such, they simply tested it physically with a stick. You can see it being done below in the opening scene of Rush and this is factually accurate, they literally did this. I’m sure if you looked long enough you’d see it in old footage of F1 races.
Talk to the more venerable people in the paddocks and they’ll probably tell you it’s known as the ‘broomstick test’ and if you google that, you’ll instantly see images of it being done on amateur racing MX-5’s and similar vehicles. I have no idea if they still call it that in F1 or if they still physically test it with a stick but the rule still stands.
The reason I talk about this rule is that the halo itself protrudes above this line, it wouldn’t be much use for head protection if it didn’t. It’s also wider than the cockpit opening meaning that in any ground contacting rollover situation it is guaranteed to be making contact with the floor. For a car coming to rest perfectly upside down, see Hulkenberg in Abu Dhabi 2018, or some other awkward position, such as if Alonso’s car had featured a halo in Australia 2016 it could actually cause extrication issues but that’s another area of safety study we can address another time.
For now, even if you see scrapes and damage all over the halo after a rollover you have to trust that it was the harnesses and roll hoop doing the work to protect the driver and if you’re still not sure, there’s a few images below featuring rolls.
See any helmets impacting the ground? Me neither, they’re perfectly safe I assure you. In the crashes of Lynn, Stroll, Ericsson and whoever else you care to mention the roll hoop is more than sufficient. This is literally not the halos job.
There is, however, a small side note to this. The halo does provide additional surface area to prevent a car from digging down into gravel or soft/wet grass, this has historically been the only real weakness of the roll structures and the main reason for moves towards large tarmac run off areas instead of gravel traps. With the halo now in place I do think a lot of the removed gravel and/or grass areas can return as the potential risks are now acceptably mitigated. I’m pretty sure Derek Warwick would have preferred to have a halo stopping the car from digging in at Hockenheim in 1993.
It would not have saved Jules Bianchi
This is going to be tough for some to accept, I see it talked about frequently, but it needs to be put to bed.
The halo would not have saved Jules, nor was Jules the reason for the halo being developed. Work on developing some kind of additional driver head protection began as far back as 2011 after the accidents resulting in the injuries to Felipe Massa at Hungary in 2009 and the death of Henry Surtees at Brands Hatch also in 2009. The crash of Binachi certainly brought the need for greater protection firmly back into the spotlight, as did the death of Justin Wilson in IndyCar the following year but work had already been started.
For the crash of Jules Bianchi, the only thing which would have saved him is the tractor not being there, it’s literally the only way. During development for the halo the FIA investigated 21 different incidents and accidents from various series in three categories – car to car, car to environment and external object – where drivers were either severely injured or killed as well as being at extreme risk of injury but escaping unharmed. For example the crash involving Alexander Wurz and David Coulthard at Albert Park in 2007 is a terrifyingly close call as you can see below or maybe remember; even knowing they both got out without a scratch I still find it hard to watch without flinching.
The results of these investigations were overwhelmingly positive or ‘positive on balance’ with positive on balance, an odd turn of phrase admittedly, to mean that it gives a much higher probability of a survivable incident compared to not having it without a clear conclusion being able to be drawn. If we take Felipe Massa as a working example here, with the halo there’s a very high chance that it would have deflected the spring away safely but conversely there’s also a small chance that it could have deflected the spring downwards into his chest. It’s such an improbable event to begin with that any number of ‘what if’ scenarios have to be considered, if he had arrived one thousandth of a second later the spring might have gone directly through his visor, one hundreth of a second earlier and it might not have even hit the car at all and as such a clear ‘positive’ outcome can’t, in good faith, be claimed. All of the investigated incidents are listed below, I do not recommend looking them up.
Out of all of the 21 scenarios only two neutral results were returned. Michael Schumacher and Antonio Liuzzi at Abu Dhabi in 2010 I can only assume is deemed neutral as the car of Liuzzi appears to have been deflected to the side before the point at which a halo would have come into play thus rendering the question moot and the crash of Jules Bianchi is stated as neutral with a footnote stating quote “Beyond the halos capabilities”. In truth, I believe that not even a fully enclosed LMP1 car would have have offered sufficient protection to result in a survivable accident, like I said earlier, only not hitting the tractor unit would have made any difference and I think I made my feelings about that situation very clear in an earlier article.
I hope some of you will be able to see what, at first glance, are extremely scary and worrying incidents with a calmer outlook and know that, things really are as safe as they have ever been and the halo is a superb and vital addition to the safety without replacing anything we already had. If you choose to still believe that it helps tumbling cars protect their drivers or that the feisty Makino is still racing because of it, that’s completely up to you, of course it is and it would be incongruous of me to suggest otherwise, I just want you to be a little more confident and less stressed than I know many are when such alarming images appear on the TV during race day 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to read, I hope you read some other piece of mine on this site and if you’ve enjoyed what I’ve written or think that it has some value for the motorsport community to hear please share and retweet and leave a comment, I’d very like to hear feedback about these articles. If you really liked it then you could even buy me a coffee or leave a small tip, I don’t do this writing professionally so anything would be greatly appreciated but absolutely is not required.
Jonty's Corner 