Open Wheels, Closed Cockpit?

Following the tragedy at the Pocono round of the 2015 IndyCar season in which, as I am sure you are well aware, Justin Wilson lost his life the suggestion has again been made to enclose the cockpits of modern single seater racing cars. The question is: Is this the way forward?

The answer, In my mind is, Yes, absolutely. In the last year there have been two high profile motorsport deaths as a result of just this, not to mention the incident involving Maria De Villota who would later die in 2013 as a consequence of her 2012 accident or Henry Surtees, hit by an errant wheel in 2009 at Brands Hatch.

Many purists would say that open wheel racing and F1 / Indy Car in particular have always and should always be open top and that the drivers know the risks involved, this is to a certain extent true but in reality should there be as much as possible done to ensure maximum driver protection. When Senna was killed, the sides of the cockpits were raised to protect the driver’s heads from sharp debris from their own cars such as the suspension wishbones but as yet nothing has been done to fully protect a driver from pieces of other cars, yes, wheel tethers have been added and subsequently strengthened over the years but still we see wheels detach after heavy impacts and after the recent spate of high speed tyre failures it’s only a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt by a less than optimum Pirelli!

Let’s take a look at endurance racing for a moment. All LMP1 cars are now closed cockpit, and have been for a number of years now, LMP2 will follow in the near future. Now, sportscar design has evolved greatly over the years, in the early years of Le Mans open top cars ruled, Bentley, Gordini, Bugatti through to the 50s and the C and D Type Jaguars and SLR Mercedes. In the 60s it was the Ford GT40s and Ferrari 250 GTOs before Porsche arrived in the 70s with the 917. All were closed coupes. In the 70s the prototype classes reverted to open cars with entries from Porsche, Renault, Lancia and Matra before reverting once again to closed in the 80s with the 956/962 Porsches, Jaguar XJR9s plus machinery from Nissan, Toyota, Aston Martin and others. BMW produced an open car in the early 90s before Audi adapted their legendary R8 to open spec and beginning their period of domination before the regs dictated a closed car a few season ago and, in my mind saved more than a few lives along the way.

An accident in a prototype is rarely small but the last few years have seen some huge LMP1 shunts which, if they were open cars could have had more serious results, who can forget the two Audi crashes in 2011, Anthony Davidson’s massive moment in 2012 and Loic Duval’s practice shunt last year.  These were all closed prototypes. I fear we may have lost at least one of these drivers if they had been running open cars.

Moving to the states and NASCAR in particular, a few weeks ago at the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona Motor Speedway, Austin Dillon was involved in a huge “wreck” which saw his car roll across several others before smashing into the debris fencing just in front of where the fans were seated. Thankfully only a few fans were injured, none seriously and Dillon emerged from the remnants of his stock car to a huge cheer from the crowd. His car, along with many others was totally destroyed, but he and the fans – for the most part were fine.

The fans have been protected, the drivers in other top level series have much more protection. Watch the videos of the above incidents and tell me that open top cars are a good idea in the name of tradition.