Ross Brawn has admitted there are measures possible to further protect the
exposed heads of Formula One drivers.
Following the recent accidents caused by debris striking the helmets of
Henry Surtees (F2) and Ferrari's Felipe Massa, F1 chief executive Bernie
Ecclestone has commissioned Prof. Sid Watkins to investigate possible
reactions to the situation.
Since stepping down as F1's long time travelling doctor in 2005, Watkins
is now president of the FIA institute for motor sport safety.
It was the 800 gram damper spring that came loose from the rear suspension
of Rubens Barrichello's Brawn car four seconds before it struck Massa on
the front of his carbon-fibre Schuberth helmet.
Barrichello's team boss Ross Brawn, head of the technical committee of the
F1 teams association FOTA, told reporters late Saturday that there are
things that can be done to try to prevent repeats of the Surtees and Massa
accidents.
"There are -- but we need to keep perspective on this," said the Briton.
"From what's been seen last weekend and this weekend we need to have a
proper study and see if something needs to be done."
It is said that despite the huge advances in Formula One safety since the
last fatalities in 1994, it is the open-nature of the cockpits that expose
the greatest risk to the drivers.
It has been suggested in the past that cages or enclosed cockpits may be
one remedy, especially now that the risk of a driver needing to quickly
escape in the event of a fire is reduced.
"You can have covers and you can have canopies, but you also have to be
able to get at a driver to extract him. You don't want a structure that
collapses down on a driver. There are a lot of secondary considerations,"
Brawn added.
He also warned against knee-jerk reactions, choosing to see the proximity
of the Surtees and Massa crashes as freak coincidence rather than the
beginning of a trend.
"In the history of F1 this is a rare occurrence. The sides are very high
now and we have all the headrests, so it's pretty rare, but we have to
look at it seriously and see if there is something we can do," he said.
Brawn said he believes it is the advances in helmet technology, with
Massa's Schuberth model made of carbon fibre and the visor bullet-proof,
that prevented the impact causing even more damage on Saturday.
"As you know the helmets have been improved quite a lot over the last few
years," he said. "So the work that's been done there is a great credit
to the people who initiated that and pushed it through."
