What Leclerc’s Spa crash findings mean for the future of halo

Charles Leclerc's Belgian GP crash with Fernando Alonso ended some of the debate surrounding the halo. The FIA's findings proves it was right to implement it, and dissenting voices have been made irrelevant.

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The revelation that Charles Leclerc's visor would have been hit by Fernando Alonso's front-wing endplate in their Belgian Grand Prix crash without the halo's intervention has provided proof of why the FIA was right to push against critics and implement the cockpit protection system.

Although the results of the investigation into the Spa crash cannot rule definitively on what injuries Leclerc may have suffered from such a visor strike, the fact we are left speculating over how bad it could have been speaks volumes about the current safety climate.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.