Feature: F1 Adopts a HANS-on Approach

Jacques Villeneuve would like to be HANS off, but Formula One's governing body has decided otherwise.

When the new season starts in Australia on March 9th, all drivers must wear the Head and Neck Protection System (HANS), and some - such as the 1997 World Champion - are not very comfortable with the safety device.

Designed to protect a driver from breaking his neck in a heavy frontal impact, the U-shaped carbon-fibre collar is worn on the upper body under the driver's shoulder straps and connected to the helmet by flexible tethers.

The system, already mandatory in the United States, was tested for the first time in a Grand Prix by Sauber's Brazilian Felipe Massa at Monza in Italy last year and must be tailor-made for each driver.

Critics who find the system a literal pain in the neck have pointed out that while it may be well-suited to US oval racing, it is another matter on a tight and twisty street circuit such as Monaco.

"I don't see how I can physically drive with it," Villeneuve said in the latest edition of BAR's team magazine. "There's some danger in it and I don't think it has been tested enough."

Germany's Nick Heidfeld said last week that he could not race with the system and feared he might crash if forced to.

"I don't know how it will be possible to use it at Melbourne," said the Sauber driver. "At the moment, there's no way. For me personally, I feel it is more dangerous because I couldn't concentrate for a whole race."

Big Accidents

But the system also has staunch defenders.

"I've seen big accidents where it's held the guy's head on, I've also seen crashes where the guy hasn't had HANS on and he hasn't walked away from the accident," said Jordan's engineering head Gary Anderson, who has worked in America. "I've got first-hand evidence of it being successful so I applaud its introduction."

Max Mosley, president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), sounded unsurprised and unimpressed by the grumbling last week.

"There has been a certain amount of discussion but we have been slightly impatient about that because we announced the HANS device two years ago," he said. "It's not as though we've sprung it on them. But suddenly they are beginning to realise that they have problems.

"It's been run in America in all sorts of series and quite successfully. It's been through the safety commission, it's all been approved. They are allowed to modify it, providing the safety commission approves the modifications, so it shouldn't really be a problem."

Mosley recognised that the HANS system is uncomfortable but maintained that the case for it was overwhelming. The Briton reminded reporters that there had been similar complaints before over safety developments.

"If you get the old literature out from when they introduced crash helmets and when they introduced seat belts, all the same arguments are there," he said. "They said 'It's uncomfortable, it's impossible, I can't drive with this, this is ridiculous, I don't need this.'

"A lot of people said 'You need to be thrown clear, you shouldn't have seatbelts in a racing car'. It was cranky (to have seatbelts) in those days. There were two cars in Formula Two races in 1968 that had them. One was mine, one was Jackie Stewart's. So there you are.

"We don't like interfering with anything but it's been pointed out also by a lot of the drivers that if you don't make it compulsory, nobody will wear it."

Possible Solution

McLaren's David Coulthard, who has also found the system uncomfortable, noted that the FIA had changed their position since the drivers aired concerns last year.

"There was a drivers' meeting at the Silverstone Grand Prix," the Scot said. "Every driver told (race director) Charlie (Whiting) that they had a problem with the HANS and they didn't feel it could be raced in its present form.

"Charlie said in front of the stewards and team managers that we would not be forced to wear it if we could not get comfortable with it.

"Fast forward to the end of the season and it's 'We've decided that you are going to be forced to wear it because if we don't enforce it you won't wear it'. The logic's fine but they kind of changed their position."

Coulthard said he had looked into ways of making the system more bearable after finding the basic version impossible to race with and was optimistic that a solution would be found.

The Scot spoke to one of the HANS designers working with Ferrari's World Champion Michael Schumacher at a test in Barcelona and discovered that the system could be modified with a second belt on top.

Coulthard said he had spoken to the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA) and sent Mosley diagrams of a modified system. The response was encouraging.

He said a crash test on the modification would be carried out at the Mercedes facility in Germany on February 23rd, in time for HANS to be helping drivers rather than hindering them in Australia.