You probably wont find many people who don’t have a problem with the looks of the Halo device. Though safety is its primary purpose there are plenty who’d prefer that cockpit protection takes on a less…hideous form.
With that in mind there have been a few ideas knocking around about how to make it look better, from blending it in with the livery to making them mirror the driver’s helmet design.
Of course for many fans, the best way to improve the looks of the Halo would be to simply get rid of it altogether, but Jean Todt says he doesn’t care that fans hate it because driver safety is too important. Speaking to Motorsport.com, Todt said:
“Honestly, I don’t care. I do care if something will happen and I will realise that we didn’t do something that we could do. If you see all the last severe crashes in single-seater racing, they have been around the head. I am sure that other bad incidents will happen, and we need to have a vision to do something beforehand.”
There have been some ideas knocking around on how to improve the looks however. One is to make the championship leader have a different colour Halo, similar to how the leading rider in the Tour de France wears a yellow jersey. It’s an idea that Jean Todt likes, too, which probably means it’s going to happen.
“I think there are some clever ideas [on how to improve the looks]. I heard one idea that I quite like, we should give a different colour of Halo to the leader of the world championship. I want to see the name and the number of the cars, which we cannot see. So maybe it will be one opportunity to give that – even if I hear already that teams have sold the space to sponsors. So lucky them!”
Funny how he also wants to use it to make the names and numbers easier to see, even though that aspect was given a shakeup earlier this year. Maybe if they weren’t getting rid of the shark fins…
The ‘yellow jersey’ idea for the Halo is an interesting one though. Is that something you’d like to see or have you got a better idea on how to make it look better? Let us know in the comments!
