McLaren team principal, Martin Whitmarsh, says more needs to be done to improve rear-visibility following a couple of incidents involving his driver, Lewis Hamilton.
The 2008 champion admitted he couldn’t see much in his mirrors, partly because he sits low in the car, which resulted in him making contact last weekend with Felipe Massa. He also suffered a similar accident in Belgium with Kamui Kobayashi.
Whitmarsh, also chairman of the Formula One Teams’ Association (FOTA), says things could be improved, despite big changes since the 80’s and 90’s.
“By comparison to the old school of 20 years ago, they are big, but in terms of vibration, probably we don’t do enough,” he said.
“If you talk to any driver going along the straight, they are not great. Normally you will see them for picking out colour: ‘there is a piece of colour behind me that means there is another car’. Maybe it is something we have to look at.
“I think Lewis was distracted at the time, he knew he had a puncture, and he knew he was nursing a car, so I think you can always have bigger mirrors, you can always have better mirrors, you can always have better positioned mirrors and you can always be more attentive to using mirrors. But it is one of those things.”
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