Time to take action on nose rules

It's a cliche, but the back of the ticket really does say 'motor-racing is dangerous' - and it does so for a very good reason.

As Carlos Sainz Jr reminded us on Saturday morning during the Russian Grand Prix weekend, accidents will always happen.

But what concerns me is when the regulations dictate that you have to drive something that is more dangerous than it needs to be. When that happens, someone needs to step up and do something.

Recently, we have seen too many fatal accidents in open-cockpit cars. I have been among the first to say that something needs to be and can be done about this.

But this week, Sainz's accident has thrown the attention onto low noses. In my opinion, they are too low.

F1 noses were higher until the end of 2013 © LAT

As I often say, I have been around motorsport for over 40 years - and whether that is a good or a bad thing, it is true! During that time, I have seen many changes in safety regulations.

Some have been for the better and some for the worse. In the old days when it was discovered that a change had been made in the wrong direction, something was done about it.

But the politics that grip F1 are now the dominant force, so that ability to apply common sense seems to have disappeared.

Many people will probably argue that what I am about to say is said in hindsight. But I can assure you that it isn't - my concerns about low noses stretch back to the introduction of the current rules ahead of 2014.

I did an interview with Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey during pre-season testing last year. During that interview, both of us were convinced that lowering the nose as much as the rules dictated was a retrograde step in safety.

Sainz's accident, in which the low front of his Toro Rosso pushed the Tecpro barriers over the top of the car and allowed him to suffer a 46g impact with the Armco is proof of that.

So why were the noses lowered to such an extent?

Webber went flying over Kovalainen in Valencia five years ago © LAT

It was in the aftermath of several accidents - the key one being Mark Webber's in the European Grand Prix in Valencia in 2010, when he became a member of the Red Bull flying team after being launched over the back of Heikki Kovalainen's Lotus.

The FIA, along with Cranfield University, looked at ways of reducing the risk of cars riding over the top of others after a nose-to-rear wheel contact.

To reduce this risk, the low nose was born. But, and this is a big but, that tackled just one type of accident in isolation. So let's have a look at the potential risks of a different type of accident, starting from the moment the lights go out.

There are many of them, but I am going to list four:

1) The cars are all sitting on the grid, engines revving. The red lights go out and someone near the front fails to launch. One of the cars coming from behind is unsighted and runs underneath the rear of the stationary car.

Because of the diffuser angle of current cars, this just invites anything with a 'snowplough' design to go underneath.

If this happens, and the closing driver hits his head on the rear crash structure of the stationary car, the consequences are unthinkable.

2) The type of accident that happened to Fernando Alonso at Spa in 2012 when Roman Grosjean went over the top of him. If he had been a few centimetres further rearward he could very easily have taken Alonso's head off.

Grosjean's car came across the top of Alonso's in the 2012 Spa crash © LAT

The side structure of the headrest is a compromise between safety and the driver's need for vision. But this accident just shows what I am talking about in the first point above.

The fortunate thing for Grosjean was that we didn't have these very low noses then, otherwise he could have gone straight underneath Alonso's car.

This accident has also added to the need for a low nose to stop cars flying over each other, as that is what happened in that instance.

3) One driver loses control of his car and spins. The following driver either runs into the side of the now-stationary car, or, as we have seen on a couple of occasions, they nosedive under or ride up over the top of the stationary car.

Side-impact safety has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years. As Grosjean's accident at Turn 3 in Sochi shows, the driver basically just steps out of the car in such crashes.

The more worrying thing is again the risk of riding over or going underneath the stationary car.

As long as the driver who is closing on the stationary car still has control, then their reactions are second to none and they very quickly switch into survival mode, not just for themselves but to make sure if at all possible they can continue racing.

A good example of this is the picture below from the first lap at Sochi. Ericsson had nowhere to go, and he managed to miss hitting Hulkenberg's head but still rode up over the top of Force India's sidepods. It shows how the most vulnerable part of the body - the head - is at the greatest risk.

4) Probably the worst type of accident to befall any driver is when he has a car failure of any sort. When this happens, all of your driving skills go out the window and you might as well be a 90-year-old granny. You are basically a passenger.

It wasn't a car failure that sent Sainz into the barriers at Sochi, it was driver error, which the team suspects was caused by a change to the harder compound of tyres (with less grip) and a brake balance shift.

The worrying thing is what happened after that. He had damaged the front and rear suspension and, as a consequence, had no brakes or steering so he very quickly became that 90-year-old granny.

So what can be done? I accept you cannot prevent accidents, you can only modify and control them. You will never account for every possible set of circumstances, but you must react to experience.

What we currently know is the most vulnerable part of the package is the driver's head sticking out of the cockpit. They need better head protection and I believe steps could be made in this direction for 2017.

But the most urgent thing is to address the rule changes that have made this situation worse: those dictating low noses.

They do not have to be as low as they are, and raising them by a small amount would address most of my worries above.

I will start with the height of the impact area of the rear crash structure. It is more or less the height of the centre line of the wheels - so if a driver does go into another stationary car, he will be reducing the ultimate impact force with the deceleration of the suspension members of the stationary car collapsing.

So my argument is why can't the height of the nose impact area be at this same height as the rear impact area?

If you had this, it would mean that if you run into the back of a stationary car on the grid at least you stand a chance of not submarining underneath it.

Also, if you are unlucky enough to run into a stationary spun car on the track, then again the initial impact will be at wheel centre height. So a lot of other components will decelerate the final impact.

It is also not a big enough change in height to be detrimental to a chassis-side impact between the wheels.

It's a win-win situation and this rule change should be implemented for 2016.

Designers would love it, since they could claw back some of the downforce they lost with the low noses and no one can argue against it.

After all, the planned regulation changes for 2017 aim to make the cars six seconds faster. So this amount of extra downforce is only a small percentage of the way to achieving that.

But this all hinges on F1 learning from what happened to Sainz at Sochi. It's no longer a foregone conclusion that action will be taken when it needs to be.