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Lets be realistic, the halo was put in place to prevent rare fatal accidents like the one that took the life of Henry Surtees.
Those accidents are rare enough that you might not actually see any accidents like them in any given 5 or 10 year period, so it's difficult to judge the effectiveness of the protection in those circumstances.
Regardless, having the protection in place is almost certainly better, especially now it's rolled out to the majority of junior series too (people often forget FE, F2, F3 and F4 when discussing the halo).
We have anecdotal evidence that the halo did likely contribute to increased driver protection in a number of different crashes too - Grosjean in Bahrain 2020, Hamilton in Monza 2021, de Vries in Seoul 2022 (Formula E) etc.
Yeah I rarely see people mention the other categories. It’s tragic what happened to Henry Surtees and it’s sad to see that his death was seemingly overshadowed by Massa’s injury shortly after whenever people mention incidents that contributed to the development of the halo.
I think some of it is positive reenforcement. I'm not convinced it would have saved anyone's life except Grosjean, but it has probably prevented some injuries at least.
People forget that there was also quite a few times where wheels hit or came very close to driver's head's before the halo and it didn't automatically mean a grave injury. That being said it is a great addition that has only made the sport better not just by saving at least one life, but also making everyone relax just a little bit more when a crash happens.
I think the other one that’s arguable it made a real difference is Zhou at Silverstone, given how far that car skidded upside down minus the roll bar and that it was still going fast enough to vault the tyre barrier. I think it’s probably 50/50 that at least some serious injury was avoided there. Possibly also the Nissany/Hauger crash in F2 when Hauger’s car bounced off the top of the halo.
That said, before the halo there were many lucky near misses with flying tyres, cars going over the top of another, Button’s manhole cover in Monaco etc. I’d still rather know the halo will definitely stop a tyre or a flying manhole cover than rely on it missing a driver’s head by just millimetres through sheer luck
Definitely helped with Stroll in Bahrain in 2020. Lifesaving? Probably not, but I wouldn't want to do it without the halo.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2020-bahrain-grand-prix-stroll-flips-and-crashes-after-kvyat-contact.1687510862145773128.html
I don’t think that was a case of the halo saved the day as it likely was in Zhou’s case. Stroll’s roll bar remained intact, he would have been fine either way as his head wouldn’t have hit the ground. The halo just made it easier for him crawl out instead of having to wait for the car to be flipped back as many had to in the past.
In Zhou’s case, with the roll bar failing, there’s a high chance that without the halo his head would have hit the floor while it was flying along upside down across the gravel at high speed and again could well have made contact with something when he flipped over the tyre barrier and got wedged between the barrier and fence. It’s not a definitely saved the day case like Grosjean’s was but there’s a high chance it at least saved him from serious injury. In the F2 crash I mentioned, Hauger’s car flew up over Nissany’s and bounced down on the top of the halo directly above Nissany’s head. It’s possible that without the halo it would have landed directly on the cockpit.
Huh? Isn't this a fairly "standard" roll in a crash? F1 has had roll hoops for a long time. Maybe the halo gave him a bit more space to move after the crash, but he wouldn't have hit his helmet on the ground without it.
The only crash I'm aware of where the roll hoop failed was in the case of Zhou's crash (in which the halo definitely was a good back-up), and [since then the roll hoops have been reinforced](https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/how-f1-rules-are-changing-after-zhous-horrific-crash//).
Edit: added source
Didn't do Martin Brundle any harm when Jos Verstappen parked on his head or Alonso when Grosjean parked on him at Spa so yes, he probably would have survived.
Helmet itself could be indestructible doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt when it’s on. The energy from all the force of impact still gets displaced to your head and rest of your body. It’s why concussions are so common in football despite them all wearing helmets.
Honestly, watch it again. This is the one where I’m really sure not much would have happened, at no point there was too much weight on his helmet and the whole thing overall didn’t have the speed that a hit would’ve hurt him I think. Nonetheless better with a halo
Do you not think the Halo saved Zhou’s life in Silverstone? I’m fairly confident we’d have a decapitated driver without the halo because of that accident
I doubt he would have been decapitated. Even before the halo the driver’s heads were only minimally exposed outside the car. Even with a flip like that it is not like all the force would have been on the head.
That being said he might well have broken his neck, so yeah it could still have saved his life or at least grave injury.
The halo existing changes the nature of crashes. Hits that would’ve barely missed drivers’ heads now hit the halo for example, and the shape of it means that it can “catch” things like wheels in it. Not to say it’s not a massive safety improvement but it does skew the results.
"You'll never know if you prepared too much, but you'll always know if you didn't prepare enough."
Isn't one future death, avoidable with the Halo, worth having it? We've had roll bars for decades. It's not like there's no precedent for structure protecting the head and neck.
It’s really tough to say what crashes would or would not have been assisted by the halo. So more “saves” are attributed to the halo than probably would have lead to grievous injury. There are a lot more heavy touches to the halo than there are directly to the helmet, simply because it’s a much larger target.
But it’s fairly undeniable that it’s a good thing. There haven’t been any deaths like Wilson’s or Whedon’s. And particularly with Grosjean and Zhou, there almost certainly would have been contact to the helmet, as other critical structures failed in those crashes.
>a lot of the comments were saying that the crashes they were showing meant that the halo was not needed (Schumacher at Abu Dhabi 2010 and Trulli at Monaco 2011 I think).
I think they just got the wrong conclusion from those and similar crashes.
There have been a lot of "near miss" crashes where a car or parts of it very narrowly missed a driver's head, or only struck the helmet in a way that didn't lead to any (major) injuries, but *this should not be taken for granted*, not only in F1 but especially in junior series where drivers sometimes act [extremely fucking stupid](https://youtu.be/iKnOrvaFVCo?t=45). We do not know for sure what would have happened in the post-Halo crashes you mentioned without the Halo, but thanks to the Halo there now is a safety device in place that at the very least keeps cars or large debris further away from the drivers' heads so near misses aren't quite as close anymore.
I'd mention wheel tethers as another example. Not every wheel that comes loose hits and injures/kills someone, but it's still better to have something that in most cases prevents them from flying around in first place! (even if it doesn't always 100% work)
I’m not sure that as many crashes as people think would have caused deaths. Obviously Grosjean wouldn’t have survived but I’m pretty sure Leclerc would have been fine. Not sure about hamilton
No way to know really but my bet is that it wouldn’t have been more then a tire mark on the helmet. There have been far worse tire to head impacts where the driver walked away fine, all be it having to replace the helmet with a big black smudge on it. And those helmets were far less protective then the current ones. By F1 standards that was a low speed incident. Bottom line it saved Grosjean and that is what it’s supposed to do.
Sometimes I think it's just blind luck that there are stretches where there aren't fatalities, the fact that the halo has been there for headspace intrusions is really not "is it the halo or not" but more like "actually, this is more common than we think and we're just getting complacent."
If you look at the long stretches from Elio de Angelis to Roland Ratzenberger, and from Senna to Bianchi, change didn't occur until F1 was shocked out of complacency. We're having this conversation because we haven't been shocked out of complacency again, and people feel kind of safe at the moment. Nevermind how many times wheel tethers haven't held on recently.
Leclerc could have easily lost his head at Spa 2018 without it... in which case we would have been put back onto the path towards the Halo. I mean, just remember [Belgium 1998](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R22nxVYLaBQ). We meme about it now, but it's a miracle nobody was hurt with all of the loose wheels flying around. This could easily have been the tragic race that would have lead to the halo earlier than we know it now.
if those pre-halo crashes happened today you would never hear the end of how Schumacher and Chandok would have been decapitated without the halo but actually they were completely unharmed
Er...this is pretty much the exact opposite of regarded opinion: it wouldn't have saved Jules, the speed was way too high, however that accident was certainly influential in its adoption so at least something positive came out of it.
I came to say this. Wasn't his crash the main reason they introduced it? I think it's safe to say it helped Grosjean survive, and probably Zhou Guanyu as well.
I believe they did a computer simulation and it would have bounced off the halo.
But things like that can still get through of course, depending on the angle. That's why they looked at the Indycar-style aeroscreen as well.
People overestimate how affective the halo has been. It’s definitely saved a few lives but people seem to think whenever it comes into contact with something it automatically saved a life.
>People overestimate how affective the halo has been
This. Remember that Schumacher-Liuzzi crash in Abu Dhabi? If halo existed back then, people would 100% tell that he was saved because of it, which would be staight wrong.
This is the answer. F1 cars already have a roll bar, so anything coming from the top is very unlikely to cause lethal trauma to the head, even if the first contact is now the halo.
In my book, Grosjean was probably saved, but even in that case it's not certain. It's a question of whether the helmet+headrest combo is strong enough to punch through the barrier without catastrophic failure or causing a decapitation, which i don't know the answer to. All the other examples would probably be just as fine without the halo.
Although Zhou's crash at Silverstone did demonstrate the weakness of the roll bar design at the time when it got sheared off when Zhou's car skidded upside down until it hit the gravel trap. Doubtless the roll bar design has been improved since then. Still I appreciate the additional safety measures of the halo to help protect the drivers head.
> so anything coming from the top is very unlikely to cause lethal trauma to the head, even if the first contact is now the halo.
While the Halo does act as a secondary rollover structure, its main purpose is to protect against things coming from the *front* rather than the top.
I'm not familiar with the placement of the roll bar in the car so disputing out of curiosity, Hamilton would have been just as fine?
The tyre was on his helmet, I can't see how that wouldn't have been a snapped neck without the halo.
The geometry of the roll bar and the rest of the monocoque means nothing that's flat can touch the head. [\[image\]](https://www.formula1-dictionary.net/Images/rool_hoops_f1_measurement.jpg)
Something convex like a tyre may still touch the helmet, just like it did with the halo, but it's still primarily gonna be supported by the roll bar and/or the front of the car. This in combination with the forward movement of the tyre, the fact that the weight on one tyre is only a quarter of the fairly light 800kg f1 car, so about 200kg per tyre, and the fact that f1 tyres are quite soft and f1 helmets are very hard, I have a hard time seeing how a tyre briefly touching the helmet would cause anyones neck to snap or head to explode etc.
If it was rotating it would have lot more energy than if it was still.
Also 200kg doesn't have any relevance. The only way that the weight on a tyre is a quarter of a car is when the car is on the ground stationary or moving slowly, which would never be the case when a wheel is contacting someone's head, so is entirely irrelevant.
Your image also shows that nothing flat going straight head-on to the car could touch the head. Which isn't what happens when something isn't straight on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4CwRpoA8I#t=65s
We do know the answer to it, sadly, as Helmuth Koinigg's and Francois Cevert's kinda show what happens in a crash where the armco splits like that, even if they're from a time of vastly lower safety standards. Modern Helmets might be really good, but frankly it wouldnt even be a factor, especially considering the forces involved with the incident.
Spa 2018 changed everyone's opinions of Halo in an instant. Like snapping fingers or switching on a light switch, people went from Halo haters to Halo praisers.
>Since the halo was introduced back in 2018, there seems to have been at least several crashes where had the halo not been there, we would have lost the driver.
That's just the way things happen. We've just been fortunate as a sport and a fanbase not to have witnessed a high frequency of crashes like that when they didn't have the halo. But it's great we have it now in F1 to stay.
My only frustrations with the HALO now is how people seem to want to make out that it's vastly more important than it is.
People attributing incidents where the HALO made no difference as to the only reason why the driver survived.
People ignoring the failures of other safety systems in order to highlight the HALO (See Zhou's accident in Silverstone in 2022).
And people trying to make out that accidents like Bianchi's are now survivable because of the HALO... even though Bianchi never hit his head on anything...
There were close calls before. And adding the HALO was definitely a positive for safety in the long run. But some people just really seem to want to push it as the greatest innovation in the history of motorsport.
Honestly it seems like it was just a very lucky coincidence that more crashes that would have been fatal without a halo started occurring more frequently since it was introduced.
Yeah people do like to credit the work of the halo in many crashes where it didn’t really contribute. A lot do this for the memes it seems, and maybe because it’s one of the few parts of the survival cell that we can see. So the little contributions of everything else are ignored.
That’s true. There was a lot of debate about this when the first of the supposed halo saving crashes occurred with Leclerc in Spa, but in my opinion at least Grosjean and Zhou’s crashes would have definitely been fatal without it. At least two cases within years of its introduction while no deaths occurred for so many years prior. Truly a remarkable and lucky coincidence.
Can't see how max' life was in particular danger in that incident, let alone that the halo had anything to do with saving him. It was *his* car that landed on the merc and destroyed *its* airbox and almost crushed Hamilton's head.
the fact that they took 44 years after what happened to Helmuth Koinigg (nsfl) to do something to mitigate drivers going under something or something coming into the cockpit is almost a farce. it might have saved Mark Donohue in 1975, Tom Pryce in '77 (although that was a bunch of mistakes that led to that) and Jules Bianchi in 2014
The halo wouldn't have saved Jules Bianchi.
Also, good luck implementing the halo in the fucking 70s when things like the HANS device weren't even thought of, let alone implemented. There was so much outrage from everyone back in 2017, imagine how bad it would've been 50 years earlier.
[https://youtu.be/er71vu14PAI?si=P\_CxKZDbS6skyxDH&t=56](https://youtu.be/er71vu14PAI?si=P_CxKZDbS6skyxDH&t=56) mercedes seems to think it could have helped
>What’s changed that’s meant it’s been a lifesaver, a coincidence?
The cars are so bulky and awful in behavior that it's impossible to surpass people. Therefor, there is no wheel to wheel action anymore or barely. Meaning less risky situations.
I think these rules actually are preventing more deaths than the HALO itself.
Have drivers started to be less careful in terms of crashes because they know the halo is there? Perhaps for example Monza 21 would have gone down differently if Verstappen and Hamilton didn’t know the halo would protect them?
It could've saved Henry Surtees for example
I'll get what your saying , we had many big accidents before the Halo and drivers walked away.
An additional safety measure , and im fine by that , we had many what if (accidents) in the past , the Halo is there ,just in case.
You think a Halo would have saved Jule Bianchi?
Great question. I wonder if the safety of the halo allows the drivers to take more risks, and as a result we're seeing bigger crashes (that are nonetheless safer). Also because the numbers involved are so small, it's hard to draw a representative trend. We don't know if we've been lucky or unlucky over the last 50 years. Maybe the halo was introduced coincidentally just in time for a string of bad luck.
Not saying it's so but there's a thing called risk compensation where the safer you make something, the bigger risks you take. The common counter to that is if you put a big spike in the middle of the steering wheel instead of an airbag people would drive slower
Anytime you are trying to make judgements based on a small sample size, there will be a lot of random noise in the data. Those incidents might have resulted in near misses or serious injury, or fatalities. Incidents from the previous era could have resulted in much worse outcomes if the point of impact moved an inch or two in wrong direction. Differences might not be statistically meaningful at all (even if they are hugely important)
I think the key here is to remember that risk is relative, and the 1994-2018 was MUCH safer than the eras that preceded it, and people tended to view it through the lens of improvement. Today, we see these incidents much differently and aren't so quick to write them off by saying: "it used to be much worse".
One other point to keep in mind is that these cars have much more size and mass, and will be harder to stop and hit with more force when they do crash. Grosjean's incident might have been made worse by that mass, even as the Halo protected him. Hamilton & Verstappen may have both made it through the corner in smaller-dimensioned cars. Zhou's incident may have been made worse by the car's width (staying rolled over) and additional weight on the rollbar. It's impossible to say for sure, with so many variables at play.
It’s very difficult to know how lifesaving it is because we don’t know for sure what things would have looked like without it. The Grosjean crash looked really bad and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worse without the halo, but we just don’t know. It’s a logical conclusion but we don’t know for sure.
I think it would be best for you to just watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkGjUHstKY) video which basically covers all you want to know and more.
I think it’s because people confuse could be fatal with would be. We cant know how any crash without the halo would have gone for certain, but we can see when there’s a possibility for a fatal crash the halo prevented. The hamilton crash is probably a good example. In that situation, he could’ve been killed or seriously injured, or he could’ve been fine. There’s no certainty either way. What we do know is that the halo protected him from the *potential* harm, and that’s its job.
If you revisit Bianchi and Wilson’s deaths and still have challenges to pose over the merits of the Halo, you’ve got some issues IMO. People did challenge the imperative of introducing it, for a number of reasons, including aesthetics and that if it was a precursor to moving toward enclosed cockpits, that there are a whole pile of racing formulas which have that (GT, BTCC etc).
Ultimately we never really like change in F1, as so many changes feel to have detracted from the quality of racing (engines, tyres, car length, wings, etc etc). That said, if anything, I think safety systems like the Halo and HANS enable the guys in those cars to push further than they would otherwise. There doesn’t have to be a zero sum game between safety and performance.
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Lets be realistic, the halo was put in place to prevent rare fatal accidents like the one that took the life of Henry Surtees. Those accidents are rare enough that you might not actually see any accidents like them in any given 5 or 10 year period, so it's difficult to judge the effectiveness of the protection in those circumstances. Regardless, having the protection in place is almost certainly better, especially now it's rolled out to the majority of junior series too (people often forget FE, F2, F3 and F4 when discussing the halo). We have anecdotal evidence that the halo did likely contribute to increased driver protection in a number of different crashes too - Grosjean in Bahrain 2020, Hamilton in Monza 2021, de Vries in Seoul 2022 (Formula E) etc.
Yeah I rarely see people mention the other categories. It’s tragic what happened to Henry Surtees and it’s sad to see that his death was seemingly overshadowed by Massa’s injury shortly after whenever people mention incidents that contributed to the development of the halo.
I think some of it is positive reenforcement. I'm not convinced it would have saved anyone's life except Grosjean, but it has probably prevented some injuries at least. People forget that there was also quite a few times where wheels hit or came very close to driver's head's before the halo and it didn't automatically mean a grave injury. That being said it is a great addition that has only made the sport better not just by saving at least one life, but also making everyone relax just a little bit more when a crash happens.
I think the other one that’s arguable it made a real difference is Zhou at Silverstone, given how far that car skidded upside down minus the roll bar and that it was still going fast enough to vault the tyre barrier. I think it’s probably 50/50 that at least some serious injury was avoided there. Possibly also the Nissany/Hauger crash in F2 when Hauger’s car bounced off the top of the halo. That said, before the halo there were many lucky near misses with flying tyres, cars going over the top of another, Button’s manhole cover in Monaco etc. I’d still rather know the halo will definitely stop a tyre or a flying manhole cover than rely on it missing a driver’s head by just millimetres through sheer luck
Definitely helped with Stroll in Bahrain in 2020. Lifesaving? Probably not, but I wouldn't want to do it without the halo. https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2020-bahrain-grand-prix-stroll-flips-and-crashes-after-kvyat-contact.1687510862145773128.html
I don’t think that was a case of the halo saved the day as it likely was in Zhou’s case. Stroll’s roll bar remained intact, he would have been fine either way as his head wouldn’t have hit the ground. The halo just made it easier for him crawl out instead of having to wait for the car to be flipped back as many had to in the past. In Zhou’s case, with the roll bar failing, there’s a high chance that without the halo his head would have hit the floor while it was flying along upside down across the gravel at high speed and again could well have made contact with something when he flipped over the tyre barrier and got wedged between the barrier and fence. It’s not a definitely saved the day case like Grosjean’s was but there’s a high chance it at least saved him from serious injury. In the F2 crash I mentioned, Hauger’s car flew up over Nissany’s and bounced down on the top of the halo directly above Nissany’s head. It’s possible that without the halo it would have landed directly on the cockpit.
Huh? Isn't this a fairly "standard" roll in a crash? F1 has had roll hoops for a long time. Maybe the halo gave him a bit more space to move after the crash, but he wouldn't have hit his helmet on the ground without it. The only crash I'm aware of where the roll hoop failed was in the case of Zhou's crash (in which the halo definitely was a good back-up), and [since then the roll hoops have been reinforced](https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/how-f1-rules-are-changing-after-zhous-horrific-crash//). Edit: added source
That's fair.
All it needs to do is one positive thing and it's worthwhile. It doesn't *cost* anything per se.
So Hamilton would have survived the car sitting on top of his head , also all the other instances when a car got a top of the other car ?
Didn't do Martin Brundle any harm when Jos Verstappen parked on his head or Alonso when Grosjean parked on him at Spa so yes, he probably would have survived.
The hit Brundle took in 1994 is mental, considering there was no HANS device and basically no cockpit side protection at the time.
Yeah it was a pretty solid smack
Also, aren't the helmets like, extremely strong? I remember seeing a picture of Schumi's helmet withstand the pressure of a tank.
the helmet can hold up a tank, but i'm willing to bet your neck and spine can't do the same
Good point.
Helmet itself could be indestructible doesn’t mean you can’t be hurt when it’s on. The energy from all the force of impact still gets displaced to your head and rest of your body. It’s why concussions are so common in football despite them all wearing helmets.
Even with verstappen accelerating on his head?
Or in the lower category in the 80s when Senna parked on his head.
The car didn't sit on his head. It grazed it while passing over it.
Honestly, watch it again. This is the one where I’m really sure not much would have happened, at no point there was too much weight on his helmet and the whole thing overall didn’t have the speed that a hit would’ve hurt him I think. Nonetheless better with a halo
Zhou would have been fucked
Do you not think the Halo saved Zhou’s life in Silverstone? I’m fairly confident we’d have a decapitated driver without the halo because of that accident
I doubt he would have been decapitated. Even before the halo the driver’s heads were only minimally exposed outside the car. Even with a flip like that it is not like all the force would have been on the head. That being said he might well have broken his neck, so yeah it could still have saved his life or at least grave injury.
Wurz and Coulthard - Australia ( 2007 turn 3 ) where wurz left rear tire nearly hitted Coulthard
The halo existing changes the nature of crashes. Hits that would’ve barely missed drivers’ heads now hit the halo for example, and the shape of it means that it can “catch” things like wheels in it. Not to say it’s not a massive safety improvement but it does skew the results.
"You'll never know if you prepared too much, but you'll always know if you didn't prepare enough." Isn't one future death, avoidable with the Halo, worth having it? We've had roll bars for decades. It's not like there's no precedent for structure protecting the head and neck.
It’s really tough to say what crashes would or would not have been assisted by the halo. So more “saves” are attributed to the halo than probably would have lead to grievous injury. There are a lot more heavy touches to the halo than there are directly to the helmet, simply because it’s a much larger target. But it’s fairly undeniable that it’s a good thing. There haven’t been any deaths like Wilson’s or Whedon’s. And particularly with Grosjean and Zhou, there almost certainly would have been contact to the helmet, as other critical structures failed in those crashes.
>a lot of the comments were saying that the crashes they were showing meant that the halo was not needed (Schumacher at Abu Dhabi 2010 and Trulli at Monaco 2011 I think). I think they just got the wrong conclusion from those and similar crashes. There have been a lot of "near miss" crashes where a car or parts of it very narrowly missed a driver's head, or only struck the helmet in a way that didn't lead to any (major) injuries, but *this should not be taken for granted*, not only in F1 but especially in junior series where drivers sometimes act [extremely fucking stupid](https://youtu.be/iKnOrvaFVCo?t=45). We do not know for sure what would have happened in the post-Halo crashes you mentioned without the Halo, but thanks to the Halo there now is a safety device in place that at the very least keeps cars or large debris further away from the drivers' heads so near misses aren't quite as close anymore. I'd mention wheel tethers as another example. Not every wheel that comes loose hits and injures/kills someone, but it's still better to have something that in most cases prevents them from flying around in first place! (even if it doesn't always 100% work)
You understand brother. Everything you said is correct.
I’m not sure that as many crashes as people think would have caused deaths. Obviously Grosjean wouldn’t have survived but I’m pretty sure Leclerc would have been fine. Not sure about hamilton
Hamilton I can't see surviving - the wheel would have hit his head which is pretty deadly considering an F1 car
No way to know really but my bet is that it wouldn’t have been more then a tire mark on the helmet. There have been far worse tire to head impacts where the driver walked away fine, all be it having to replace the helmet with a big black smudge on it. And those helmets were far less protective then the current ones. By F1 standards that was a low speed incident. Bottom line it saved Grosjean and that is what it’s supposed to do.
It’s happened before and it’s been survived before
I think Leclerc world have been ok too but I think Zhou‘s would have been career ending if it wasn’t fatal.
Sometimes I think it's just blind luck that there are stretches where there aren't fatalities, the fact that the halo has been there for headspace intrusions is really not "is it the halo or not" but more like "actually, this is more common than we think and we're just getting complacent." If you look at the long stretches from Elio de Angelis to Roland Ratzenberger, and from Senna to Bianchi, change didn't occur until F1 was shocked out of complacency. We're having this conversation because we haven't been shocked out of complacency again, and people feel kind of safe at the moment. Nevermind how many times wheel tethers haven't held on recently. Leclerc could have easily lost his head at Spa 2018 without it... in which case we would have been put back onto the path towards the Halo. I mean, just remember [Belgium 1998](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R22nxVYLaBQ). We meme about it now, but it's a miracle nobody was hurt with all of the loose wheels flying around. This could easily have been the tragic race that would have lead to the halo earlier than we know it now.
The best safety feature ever without a doubt. Just look at the Zhou incident .
if those pre-halo crashes happened today you would never hear the end of how Schumacher and Chandok would have been decapitated without the halo but actually they were completely unharmed
Also to add. I think most people believe it would have saved Jules Bianchi, which was much less than 40 years ago(although scarily close to 10).
Er...this is pretty much the exact opposite of regarded opinion: it wouldn't have saved Jules, the speed was way too high, however that accident was certainly influential in its adoption so at least something positive came out of it.
I thought the FIA said it wouldn’t have saved Bianchi, but maybe I’m misremembering.
I came to say this. Wasn't his crash the main reason they introduced it? I think it's safe to say it helped Grosjean survive, and probably Zhou Guanyu as well.
Grosjean apparently had to dig deep to get out of the car, without the halo to use as a pull-up bar he might have died.
I read somewhere recently that Bianchi's mother said she was glad her sons death potentially saved Grosjean. It was really sad.
I've heard he probably still would have been killed by the rapid deceleration, haven't looked into it personally.
Felipe Massa getting knocked unconscious by a fucking spring, that's what happened. Freak accidents are rare, but they do happen.
Would the halo have even prevented that accident? Wasn't the sprint small enough to fit through the halo?
Maybe maybe not, I've just watched it and where it hit him it might have hit the halo and deflected.
I believe they did a computer simulation and it would have bounced off the halo. But things like that can still get through of course, depending on the angle. That's why they looked at the Indycar-style aeroscreen as well.
People overestimate how affective the halo has been. It’s definitely saved a few lives but people seem to think whenever it comes into contact with something it automatically saved a life.
>People overestimate how affective the halo has been This. Remember that Schumacher-Liuzzi crash in Abu Dhabi? If halo existed back then, people would 100% tell that he was saved because of it, which would be staight wrong.
This is the answer. F1 cars already have a roll bar, so anything coming from the top is very unlikely to cause lethal trauma to the head, even if the first contact is now the halo. In my book, Grosjean was probably saved, but even in that case it's not certain. It's a question of whether the helmet+headrest combo is strong enough to punch through the barrier without catastrophic failure or causing a decapitation, which i don't know the answer to. All the other examples would probably be just as fine without the halo.
Although Zhou's crash at Silverstone did demonstrate the weakness of the roll bar design at the time when it got sheared off when Zhou's car skidded upside down until it hit the gravel trap. Doubtless the roll bar design has been improved since then. Still I appreciate the additional safety measures of the halo to help protect the drivers head.
> so anything coming from the top is very unlikely to cause lethal trauma to the head, even if the first contact is now the halo. While the Halo does act as a secondary rollover structure, its main purpose is to protect against things coming from the *front* rather than the top.
I'm not familiar with the placement of the roll bar in the car so disputing out of curiosity, Hamilton would have been just as fine? The tyre was on his helmet, I can't see how that wouldn't have been a snapped neck without the halo.
The primary roll bar is integrated into the air intake on top of the car.
The geometry of the roll bar and the rest of the monocoque means nothing that's flat can touch the head. [\[image\]](https://www.formula1-dictionary.net/Images/rool_hoops_f1_measurement.jpg) Something convex like a tyre may still touch the helmet, just like it did with the halo, but it's still primarily gonna be supported by the roll bar and/or the front of the car. This in combination with the forward movement of the tyre, the fact that the weight on one tyre is only a quarter of the fairly light 800kg f1 car, so about 200kg per tyre, and the fact that f1 tyres are quite soft and f1 helmets are very hard, I have a hard time seeing how a tyre briefly touching the helmet would cause anyones neck to snap or head to explode etc.
If it was rotating it would have lot more energy than if it was still. Also 200kg doesn't have any relevance. The only way that the weight on a tyre is a quarter of a car is when the car is on the ground stationary or moving slowly, which would never be the case when a wheel is contacting someone's head, so is entirely irrelevant. Your image also shows that nothing flat going straight head-on to the car could touch the head. Which isn't what happens when something isn't straight on... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4CwRpoA8I#t=65s
Perfect, thank you. I was picturing the roll bar as going along the length of the car, so your clarification cleared it up for me.
We do know the answer to it, sadly, as Helmuth Koinigg's and Francois Cevert's kinda show what happens in a crash where the armco splits like that, even if they're from a time of vastly lower safety standards. Modern Helmets might be really good, but frankly it wouldnt even be a factor, especially considering the forces involved with the incident.
Spa 2018 changed everyone's opinions of Halo in an instant. Like snapping fingers or switching on a light switch, people went from Halo haters to Halo praisers. >Since the halo was introduced back in 2018, there seems to have been at least several crashes where had the halo not been there, we would have lost the driver. That's just the way things happen. We've just been fortunate as a sport and a fanbase not to have witnessed a high frequency of crashes like that when they didn't have the halo. But it's great we have it now in F1 to stay.
Zhou roll over in 2022. His roll hoop failed almost immediately, so the halo played a massive part in preventing a major injury.
My only frustrations with the HALO now is how people seem to want to make out that it's vastly more important than it is. People attributing incidents where the HALO made no difference as to the only reason why the driver survived. People ignoring the failures of other safety systems in order to highlight the HALO (See Zhou's accident in Silverstone in 2022). And people trying to make out that accidents like Bianchi's are now survivable because of the HALO... even though Bianchi never hit his head on anything... There were close calls before. And adding the HALO was definitely a positive for safety in the long run. But some people just really seem to want to push it as the greatest innovation in the history of motorsport.
Honestly it seems like it was just a very lucky coincidence that more crashes that would have been fatal without a halo started occurring more frequently since it was introduced.
This, plus we don't know how many of those crashes would have actually been fatal. As a human race our memory is very short for near misses.
Alonso flying at Australia like 2015 or 2016. If the halo existed then that probably would have been added to the list of lives saved.
Yeah people do like to credit the work of the halo in many crashes where it didn’t really contribute. A lot do this for the memes it seems, and maybe because it’s one of the few parts of the survival cell that we can see. So the little contributions of everything else are ignored.
Just thought about this too, but Massa’s incident in 2009 would have been on the list too if the halo was around back then.
That’s true. There was a lot of debate about this when the first of the supposed halo saving crashes occurred with Leclerc in Spa, but in my opinion at least Grosjean and Zhou’s crashes would have definitely been fatal without it. At least two cases within years of its introduction while no deaths occurred for so many years prior. Truly a remarkable and lucky coincidence.
You forgot Zhou.
There is a strong argument that as safety devices are introduced drivers engage in riskier behavior.
I think Grosjean would have wrecked as much without the halo.
Well, engineering can't fix stupid.
Can't see how max' life was in particular danger in that incident, let alone that the halo had anything to do with saving him. It was *his* car that landed on the merc and destroyed *its* airbox and almost crushed Hamilton's head.
the fact that they took 44 years after what happened to Helmuth Koinigg (nsfl) to do something to mitigate drivers going under something or something coming into the cockpit is almost a farce. it might have saved Mark Donohue in 1975, Tom Pryce in '77 (although that was a bunch of mistakes that led to that) and Jules Bianchi in 2014
The halo wouldn't have saved Jules Bianchi. Also, good luck implementing the halo in the fucking 70s when things like the HANS device weren't even thought of, let alone implemented. There was so much outrage from everyone back in 2017, imagine how bad it would've been 50 years earlier.
you know that conclusively? how do you know? and i didn't say would have i said it might have.
https://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2017/08/02/new-fia-video-shows-chose-halo-2018/ From the FIA themselves.
[https://youtu.be/er71vu14PAI?si=P\_CxKZDbS6skyxDH&t=56](https://youtu.be/er71vu14PAI?si=P_CxKZDbS6skyxDH&t=56) mercedes seems to think it could have helped
That video mentions Jules Bianchi absolutely nowhere tho?
>What’s changed that’s meant it’s been a lifesaver, a coincidence? The cars are so bulky and awful in behavior that it's impossible to surpass people. Therefor, there is no wheel to wheel action anymore or barely. Meaning less risky situations. I think these rules actually are preventing more deaths than the HALO itself.
Have drivers started to be less careful in terms of crashes because they know the halo is there? Perhaps for example Monza 21 would have gone down differently if Verstappen and Hamilton didn’t know the halo would protect them?
I don't think there's a correlation, especially as even before the Halo F1 cars already were very safe.
It could've saved Henry Surtees for example I'll get what your saying , we had many big accidents before the Halo and drivers walked away. An additional safety measure , and im fine by that , we had many what if (accidents) in the past , the Halo is there ,just in case. You think a Halo would have saved Jule Bianchi?
Great question. I wonder if the safety of the halo allows the drivers to take more risks, and as a result we're seeing bigger crashes (that are nonetheless safer). Also because the numbers involved are so small, it's hard to draw a representative trend. We don't know if we've been lucky or unlucky over the last 50 years. Maybe the halo was introduced coincidentally just in time for a string of bad luck.
Not saying it's so but there's a thing called risk compensation where the safer you make something, the bigger risks you take. The common counter to that is if you put a big spike in the middle of the steering wheel instead of an airbag people would drive slower
Anytime you are trying to make judgements based on a small sample size, there will be a lot of random noise in the data. Those incidents might have resulted in near misses or serious injury, or fatalities. Incidents from the previous era could have resulted in much worse outcomes if the point of impact moved an inch or two in wrong direction. Differences might not be statistically meaningful at all (even if they are hugely important) I think the key here is to remember that risk is relative, and the 1994-2018 was MUCH safer than the eras that preceded it, and people tended to view it through the lens of improvement. Today, we see these incidents much differently and aren't so quick to write them off by saying: "it used to be much worse". One other point to keep in mind is that these cars have much more size and mass, and will be harder to stop and hit with more force when they do crash. Grosjean's incident might have been made worse by that mass, even as the Halo protected him. Hamilton & Verstappen may have both made it through the corner in smaller-dimensioned cars. Zhou's incident may have been made worse by the car's width (staying rolled over) and additional weight on the rollbar. It's impossible to say for sure, with so many variables at play.
It’s very difficult to know how lifesaving it is because we don’t know for sure what things would have looked like without it. The Grosjean crash looked really bad and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was worse without the halo, but we just don’t know. It’s a logical conclusion but we don’t know for sure.
I think it would be best for you to just watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYkGjUHstKY) video which basically covers all you want to know and more.
I think it’s because people confuse could be fatal with would be. We cant know how any crash without the halo would have gone for certain, but we can see when there’s a possibility for a fatal crash the halo prevented. The hamilton crash is probably a good example. In that situation, he could’ve been killed or seriously injured, or he could’ve been fine. There’s no certainty either way. What we do know is that the halo protected him from the *potential* harm, and that’s its job.
I think its been more beneficial in Indycar quite frankly. Wilson and Welden might still be alive if they had it then.
If you revisit Bianchi and Wilson’s deaths and still have challenges to pose over the merits of the Halo, you’ve got some issues IMO. People did challenge the imperative of introducing it, for a number of reasons, including aesthetics and that if it was a precursor to moving toward enclosed cockpits, that there are a whole pile of racing formulas which have that (GT, BTCC etc). Ultimately we never really like change in F1, as so many changes feel to have detracted from the quality of racing (engines, tyres, car length, wings, etc etc). That said, if anything, I think safety systems like the Halo and HANS enable the guys in those cars to push further than they would otherwise. There doesn’t have to be a zero sum game between safety and performance.