FIA seeks cooling solution to stop drivers overheating
The FIA has confirmed that it is looking for ways to tackle soaring cockpit temperatures arising from changes to venues and race times to accommodate an expanding Formula 1 calendar.
Despite more races than ever being held in the Middle East and Asia, the schedule has always endeavoured to avoid the hottest venues and times of day for key sessions such as qualifying or the race.
Singapore was seen as one of the most physically demanding Grand Prix weekends because of the high humidity even late into the evening. But this year, the race in Qatar raised the stakes even further.
Temperatures in the cockpit led to a number of drivers suffering from dehydration and heat stroke, having to be helped out of their cars and dispatched ot the medical centre as a precaution.
Worst hit of all was Williams' Logan Sargeant, who was forced to retire from the race before the chequered flag on health and safety grounds.
The concern among teams meant the issue was raised at this week's World Motor Sport Council, and an agreement reached to look into changes to the regulations to allow for driver cooling systems to be introduced in the future.
“That will improve the cooling in the cockpit,” the FIA's head of single seater affairs, Nikolas Tombazis, told the media. “That was a rejected idea from the teams previously that has now been approved.”
He said that the issue wasn't just about heat and humidity but also how demanding the track was. That's why it's possible to run in Hungary in full sunshine in the middle of the day, but Qatar after dark proved such a problem.
"It’s never been as bad as we had in Qatar," said Tombazis. "[It depends] whether it’s a track with very heavy g-loading like Qatar, or a circuit with generally speaking slower corners like Hungary, even though sometimes it can be very hot."
Driver cooling aids are already used in GT and saloon car racing but have been rejected by F1 because of concerns about the extra weight. The FIA is considering ways of addressing those worries.
"When the weather conditions exceed a certain level, the FIA [could] declare that in those conditions the race [director would] give an extra bit of weight for the cars – something like probably two kilos – which will be mandatory."
“That will enable solutions such as cooling vests and these sorts of things to be fully investigated," adding that he didn't expect the governing body to go to the extent of mandating a specific way of cooling drivers.
"We feel that if we start trying to standardise a system, the addendum and all of that would be quite a slow process," he argued, adding that he also didn't want teams to find clever ways of using cooling systems as ballast.
“We feel if we give the teams, ‘You have two kilos, you must use it for this purpose’, it will be in their interest to do that because that will keep the drivers cool and focused and not lose any performance.”
Tombazis also indicated that the FIA would move toward implementing a standard 'plank' to F1 cars, after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified from the United States GP for excessive wear to the underside of their cars.
Only specific teams and drivers had their cars examined after the race. There were complaints that the bumpy nature of the circuit together with parc ferme rules for sprint race weekends had led to the inadvertent breach.
“We do need to make sure circuits, generally speaking, avoid features which may cause [cars to bottom out over bumps]," Tombazis acknowledged. “We obviously will try to fix these areas with the circuits.
“It’s a thin line between when it may be the responsibility of a circuit to sort out some features or detail, and when the teams may just need to raise the car up more," he said. “That’s something I don’t think we can easily avoid.
“Are the cars too low? Yes, we would rather they were riding a bit higher. But the inherent characteristics of a ground-effect car is that it tends to have more performance running low.
“Sometimes, you don’t have enough support [from teams]," he admitted. “So for 2026 we’re going to greatly simplify that area that we couldn’t simplify as much as we would have liked for the current regulations.
"You have to realise that sometimes we do want to do things, but then we still need to go through governance and the teams need to vote for it."
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