Soldato
Will you please stop thinking that this is exclusive to F1. This will be used in other series too, FIA and otherwise. Maybe not all at once and maybe not the same design, but they'll all have something in the coming years.
And you can't possibly know whether that spring would have hit Massa because while there is a gap above and below the Halo, it was also a whacking great big anti-roll bar spring and there would also be a whacking great big 'V' shape just above the driver's eye line, not far from where the spring hit - all it needed was a glancing blow and it would have knocked it out of the way. The only angle we have of Massa's spring doesn't show if the halo would have stopped it, but why not have a solution which might have stopped it should something similar happen again?
The only way a wheel can possibly hit a driver with the halo is from directly above and to an extent from a 90 degree angle (and I've only seen one wheel go at such an angle at massive speed - the one which killed Paolo Gislimberti). The hit from above is only realistically possible when the car is stationary or at a very low speed - or somehow the wheel is travelling in a similar direction of the car at a similar speed - now that would be freakish.
They covered the Haas car under the Virtual Safety Car, the single most effective contribution introduced as direct response to Bianchi's crash.
I think we're all in agreement that the likelihood of any of the suggested methods saving Bianchi was slim to none, but this wasn't a reaction just to Bianchi, it was a reaction to Bianchi, Massa, Surtees, Wheldon and Wilson (and you can now add a very lucky Castroneves, who took a car to the head, to the list too, and less serious Max Chilton was also hit by a rogue tyre, thankfully without the wheel). Head injuries and near escapes from so-called "freak accidents" are becoming so common that a solution (to at the very least give the driver some hope) is now deemed necessary.
I know you class them as freak accidents, but whatever the reasons people choose (bad luck, fate, a religious entity smiting them, whatever) the fact remains that these incidents, particularly objects striking the head, have been much more common and serious in the past decade or so.
F1 safety has improved immeasurably over the years - heck in the 60s the drivers had huge pods of fuel either side of them with just a couple of sheets of metal separating them to the point where not wearing seatbelts and hoping to be thrown clear of the car was preferable to being trapped under it in an almost inevitable fire. Why wouldn't you want that progress to continue?
Did you have similar complaints about the HANS system, the raised cockpit sides, etc and the ever-increasing strengthening of the cars and helmets, or is it just this because it looks ****?
