Barrichello to Try New HANS Device

Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello will use a new type of HANS head and neck protection system in Sunday's Malaysian Formula One Grand Prix after blaming the device for a crash in Australia.

The Brazilian was first to go out of the season-opening race in Melbourne on March 9, losing control of his car on lap seven on a damp track after an air cushion under the carbon fibre collar around his neck deflated.

The HANS safety device, protecting against the effects of a frontal collision, is mandatory for the first time in Formula One this season and several drivers have said they are struggling to adapt to it.

Barrichello said there had been a combination of circumstances and he had made an error but he said the discomfort, after two trouble-free days using the system in Australia, had affected his concentration.

"I lost the air from my airbag below the HANS device so the carbon fibre was sitting on my collarbone. It was just really hurting with the bumps and kerbs," he told a Ferrari news conference today.

"I didn't know if I could have finished the race with that thing fitted on my neck. There is a new type of HANS for me here, something a little bit more wide so it doesn't really sit on top of the collarbone. We made some changes to the airbag as well."

Barrichello said his personal opinion was that 80 percent of drivers would ditch the device if given the choice.

"But, having said that, I feel that we must all understand that it is for our benefit. It is something that is better for ourselves and we should get used to it."

Five of six drivers at a later news conference at the circuit said they would rather not use the system. The exception was Colombian Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya, who said he had problems with it in tests last year but now felt ill at ease in the car without it.

Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher, one of three representatives for the Grand Prix Drivers Association (GPDA), was torn between that body's campaigning for safety and his personal experience.

"To go against a safety system will be obviously not the GPDA's position," he said. "My opinion is simply that it is a safer system, that whoever can get on with it should use it and whoever maybe cannot get on with it shouldn't be obliged to use it.

"Everyone has a different shape so maybe it is not possible to make it right for all. It is only from the first test of this year that I had a system properly adapted to my body."