Like it or not the Halo is being introduced into Formula 1 in 2018, but Red Bull team boss Christian Horner admits he is concerned just how far the safety drive will go.
The decision was made by the FIA to implement the cockpit protection device on safety grounds after teams voted 9-1 against it at a meeting of the Strategy Group after the British Grand Prix.
Horner has previously stated he believes the governing body was left with little choice but to push it through given the potential for a legal backlash should a driver be seriously injured or killed with the Halo in existence but now he is questioning what this means for those categories where an ‘open’ element cannot be taken away.
“As a purist and a former driver, everything I drove in single seaters was open cockpit racing. You got into the car and you accepted the risks involved with open cockpit racing,” he said.
“The worry is with the introduction of the Halo is it will obviously now incorporate all formulas — what do they do with go-karting now? There are hundreds of thousands of go kart drivers around the world, where does it stop? If you look at MotoGP, they don’t have a roll-bar or stabilisers.”
Though there is solid reasoning for the introduction of Halo and other such safety devices, Horner claims that eventually, if the governing body continues on their current route, there will only be one outcome.
“There comes a point… the worrying thing is if you keep going down this avenue it’s safer to take the driver out and then why do you need the driver? The car can be autonomous,” he said.
“But that’s not what the concept of the sport is, there has to be an element of a driver and the driver is accepting risk whenever they get out of the car. Now, what level is acceptable is something the FIA have the responsibility as the governing body to decide.”
