The FIA has made the groundbreaking decision to force through the introduction of the ‘Halo’ cockpit protection device into Formula 1 for 2018 on safety grounds.
It follows a meeting of the Strategy Group, made up of a selection of teams, the governing body and F1 bosses to determine future rule changes, on Wednesday and is in response to the failed trial of the ‘Shield’ by Sebastian Vettel last Friday at Silverstone.
Halo has been around in F1 for over a year having first been run by Ferrari in pre-season testing in 2016, it was then developed and tested with almost every driver having the opportunity to use the device at least once during a practice session.
This year, the Shield was put forward as the favoured option on aesthetic grounds but visibility and other issues from Vettel’s single lap test last week suggested the canopy-style design still required a lot of development before being race-ready.
Rather than delay until 2019, the FIA has decided to revert back to the Halo based on the agreement made last year to introduce some kind of additional cockpit protection deemed suitable next season.
The decision is not popular with nine of the 10 teams believed to have voted against the motion but the FIA would use the reason of safety grounds to bypass the required unanimous agreement to make Halo compulsary. her development of the device will now take place ahead of its implementation.
Now, with a final decision made, the FIA will proceed with development of the device and designers will have time to integrate the wishbone-shaped structure into their 2018 cars.
“With the support of the teams, certain features of its design will be further enhanced,” a statement following the meeting read.
“Having developed and evaluated a large number of devices over the past five years, it had become clear that the Halo presents the best overall safety performance,” it concluded.
