In an era of intense F1 driver/FIA angst, an important step has just landed

Formula 1 heads to Las Vegas this week under yet another cloud of bizarre FIA decision-making.

The championship’s race director, Niels Wittich, is gone three races from the end of a season that is still mathematically alive for the drivers’ championship and has the potential for a whopping-sized portion of controversy should any of the remaining players – McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull – bet big on something novel in Sin City.

The track, with its 1.4-mile-long straight down the city’s Strip, is perfect territory for a cunning understanding of aeroelasticity…

The pressure this week is amped up by Formula One Management too. As the race promoter, it understandably wants this event to grab attention – although that came at a cost of alienating some fans last year.

But as the championship rights holder owner’s most important race, one that took in embarrassing scenes of the track breaking and fans being hauled out of the venue for its inaugural running, F1 executives really don’t want anything else going wrong on the sporting side. This is the one area it cannot control.

There’s no suggestion Rui Marques – as Wittich’s replacement – will not be able to handle things effectively. He has recent experience from Formula 2 and Formula 3, plus the on-track chaos of last weekend’s Macau GP. And the Vegas organisers have made a point of saying the water valve covers – one of which wrecked Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari just eight minutes into Vegas FP1 last year – have undergone special treatment to try and avoid a repeat.

The sudden departure of FIA race director Niels Wittich was another unwelcome distraction in the lead up to Vegas

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The timing of the change is the needless problem here. And it chimes with so many other things that the FIA has got wrong this year.

On Wittich’s exit, communications again have gone awry. The governing body’s statement released post-Brazil says he “stepped down” to “pursue new opportunities”, yet he claims he was fired.

Messaging has been a consistent issue under Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s FIA presidency.

At least the FIA has made one important step in a very difficult year, that covers the irreproachable realm of driver safety

Poor explanations damaged a laudable push – with some sources saying this mainly came from Wittich and his experience of working with junior drivers before getting the F1 race director role full-time in 2022 – on wearing jewellery in race cars.

The sensible effort to try and make drivers aware how their words can unleash a torrent of social media abuse towards officials in our polarised societies and their turbocharging of nonsense on internet platforms was likewise knocked off course.

Here, Ben Sulayem has no one else to blame given it was his comments on driver swearing on F1 broadcasts that meant the initiative got incorrectly recast as a clampdown on competitor expression.

The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association’s letter regarding Ben Sulayem’s recent messages and tone makes their position starkly clear. And, overall, the drivers feel they’re not being listened to as important F1 stakeholders.

Ben Sulayem's comments earned a short shrift from the GPDA

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

But as they and hundreds of other F1 staff head into another exhausting triple-header, at least the FIA has made one important step in a very difficult year. And, although there’s inevitable snarking from some quarters about power steering and cruise control, it’s one that covers the irreproachable realm of driver safety.

After the F1 Commission meeting last week, the FIA announced that, from 2025, driver cooling kits the governing body has been developing over the last year will be mandatory to use when extreme heat temperatures are reached.

This point hasn’t yet been codified in the rules but, given the 2023 Qatar GP ran through 31-32C (with cockpit temperatures in such heat quickly reaching north of 50C) this is a logical expectation for the rule to kick in.

In that event, then Williams driver Logan Sargeant withdrew with heatstroke, Alpine driver Esteban Ocon vomited in his helmet and Aston Martin racer Lance Stroll briefly passed out. The temperature issue was compounded there with the track’s high-speed and technical layout, with what little respite the drivers can grab at Singapore missing.

When the new rule does apply, the teams will be required to fit the new cooling devices to each car. Autosport understands that, as things currently stands, they will be able to produce their own versions of an FIA prototype that was tested at last month’s Mexico City race.

That system involved a block of ice providing a heat exchange to fluid that was sent to a vest in a so-far-unnamed driver’s overalls via a piping system during Mexico FP1, with the cooled liquid then pumped around their vest.

The teams appear to have the option of running this device, or developing alternative methods of the same result via a refrigeration tank containing an already cooled substance that is pumped through pipes to a driver’s cooling vest, instead of using the ice block method already tested. Or they could instead feed cooled air into a driver’s race suit via a fan system.

Steps to aid driver cooling is a positive development from the governing body

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Whichever method is chosen, the device will have to be placed in either the cockpit side structure and bodywork or in the cockpit itself. The FIA expects it to weigh no more than 5kg and F1’s rule on car and driver weight will be upped accordingly when the extreme heat rule is in force.

Further tests over the remaining 2024 F1 events are planned, although any would be wasted in the cool night climes of the Nevada desert. But the fact that the word “freezing” has come up from Autosport sources after the Mexico test suggests the device works in principle.

Its unveiling doesn’t ease the pressure on the FIA, but it shows it can work to solve awkward F1 problems. Much more is now needed elsewhere.

The FIA has been under fire in recent weeks, but has reminded critics that it can have a positive impact

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images