F1 can't keep its head in the sand on safety

Last Sunday's Russian Grand Prix was the first time in 22 years that a Formula 1 World Championship race has actually been held on the anniversary of the day Ayrton Senna lost his life at Imola - May 1.

The San Marino Grand Prix weekend of 1994 was a tragic one, with the first bad accident suffered by my driver at Jordan, Rubens Barrichello, during the Friday afternoon qualifying session.

Luckily, he escaped with only a few minor injuries but it was only the immediate attention of Professor Sid Watkins that actually saved his life. Rubens had swallowed his tongue in the crash and was basically choking when Sid got there.

Rubens called me his second father and to see that accident happening in front of me and to a driver I was very close to made me think very deeply about car safety.

If I wanted to continue designing cars for these young guys to go off and potentially kill themselves in, I decided that I must put as much effort into safety as any other technical director, if not more, and that the drivers would be at least as safe in one of my cars as in someone else's.

Friday at Imola '94 was nothing compared to what happened on Saturday, when the very likeable Roland Ratzenberger (pictured following Senna that weekend) lost his life. But to the F1 world, Sunday was the day that rocked not only grand prix racing, but the whole planet, which felt the pain of Senna's death.

I was at the airport in Bologna when we got the news that he had passed away and there were grown men, including my great friend Brian Hart, who passed away a short time ago and knew Ayrton fairly well from his Toleman days, were publicly in tears. Nobody hid their emotions that evening.

Where I am heading with all this is that, after that weekend the FIA, led by Max Mosley and with the full support of Bernie Ecclestone, imposed safety changes that many of the teams fought. Only because of the continued insistence of the authorities, the teams eventually accepted them.

The changes Max and Bernie fought tooth and nail to drive through have meant drivers currently enjoy a level of safety that is second to none.

Drivers like Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber, Heikki Kovalainen, Carlos Sainz Jr, Romain Grosjean, Felipe Massa and Jos Verstappen have all had massive accidents since then and escaped with their lives, often without any injuries.

But if you look at where we are currently, the injuries that still happen and can unfortunately still take drivers' lives are to the head.

We had Massa's accident in Hungary when he was hit on the helnet with a lateral damper spring from Rubens' Brawn, Jules Bianchi's accident at Suzuka (where I don't think any safety device would have saved him given the forces involved), Cristiano da Matta's Champ Car crash when he hit a deer at Road America.

There are many more who have survived, but there have some that didn't. Justin Wilson in IndyCar and Henry Surtees in Formula 2 both lost their lives to impacts to the head in recent years.

Some people that should know better have raised questions about whether F1 should go down the head protection route. I'm sure if you asked a driver from the 1980s if he had to re-live a major accident from his career in a car to the same safety levels of that period or one to today's safety standards, he would choose the latter.

Those changes are all thanks to the FIA reacting to Senna and Ratzenberger losing their lives on that dreadful weekend at Imola.

And perhaps these people should sit down with John Surtees to talk about safety. Surtees is a legend of motorsport who has taken more life threatening risks than most but ask him about losing his son Henry from a head injury and if he thinks anything that could be done, should be done.

If, as some fans and high profile drivers are saying, Formula 1 should all be about the risk and that is why people watch it, then they need to be reminded that viewing numbers are diminishing and if people really wanted to watch a blood-thirsty sport they can go to see a bullfight in Pamplona.

The head injuries we have experienced are very different from normal accidents. If you are driving on the limit and go slightly over it, you as the driver are the first to know about it and can take avoiding action or prepare yourself for the impact. If you are dicing with another driver, you are also prepared for contact

But in the case of Surtees and Wilson, they were doing nothing wrong and had no control of the situations. If - and it's a big if - they even knew about it they were powerless to do anything about it.

I'm not saying that either the halo Ferrari briefly tried or the Red Bull aeroscreen is best, or that either of them is aesthetically pleasing, but no one should just sit back and do nothing when they know there is the potential for something to be done.

If I was pursuing a concept, it would be the aeroscreen. The reason for this is it will be much better at reducing the risk of being hit on the head by smaller objects. With a little tiding up, I am sure we would get used to it fairly quickly.

Will the current system be as responsive as the FIA was back in 1994? I doubt it very much, as too many people are lined up to stick their oars in - although there does at least appear to be a reasonable resolve to introduce some kind of head protection.

In my opinion, F1 needs to go back to what it was a few years ago when it had a dictator leading it. Bernie would be the first to agree with me, as since he lost that control F1 has had its head in the sand.

MAKE F1 SIMPLER FOR FANS

While I'm having moan - and this is more for the enthusiast - there is all this talk about making F1 more understandable to the viewer. But with the new tyre regulations allowing three different compounds making the racing better it has still made it more confusing at times. This is particularly the case during practice and qualifying.

The first question I want answered when I look at the screen is what tyre each driver set their time on. At the moment, the answer is not there.

It's very simple to do. The times on the left hand side of the screen need to show what tyre was on that car when the time was set. A coloured dot after the time would suffice.

Some questions, such as how best to implement head protection, can be difficult to answer. But ones about how to make the viewer's experience better like this one are so simple it's ridiculous that they even have to be asked.