Formula 1 hopes to introduce greater cockpit safety in 2014, when the regulations change significantly, in order to protect drivers heads.
The crash at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix has added further support to the calls for closed or higher sided cockpits.
Had Grosjean’s Lotus, which flew over the top of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, been closer to the Spaniard the accident could very well have been far worse.
McLaren’s technical director Paddy Lowe believes some form of protection, be it a closed canopy (see story here), or a roll-cage (see story here), is inevitable and is something that is currently being investigated for 2014.
“It [the crash] once again showed one of F1’s biggest safety exposures is the open cockpit,” said Lowe.
“We’ve had a number of near misses in the last three or four years,” he said in relation to Felipe Massa in Hungary and Michael Schumacher in Abu Dhabi.
“We started the project a year ago,” he added. “We’ll see. Personally, I think something is inevitable because it is the one big exposure we’ve got.
“How many times have you looked at things including today and thought, that was lucky? One day it won’t be lucky and we’ll all be sitting there going: ‘We should have done something about that.'”
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