Is now the time to change open-top racing?

Accelerating out of the second turn is always tricky in Austria. The corner is off-camber and grip is low, particularly given the persistent light rain of the previous day.

To make matters worse for Kimi Räikkönen, he was being passed easily by the stream of cars that had forced him to the outside.

He had no choice. He went for it. He put his foot down, flicked the wheel, and powered out of the corner. Then it all went wrong.

The prime compound-shod Ferrari broke traction. The rear kicked to the left, veering right, and Räikkönen tried to correct, but it was too much, too fast. The balance switched and the car lurched uncontrollably to the left.

Before Fernando Alonso, who was lining up a pass around the outside of the Ferrari, could react, it was all over.

Räikkönen’s car swept the McLaren off the track and, with both drivers mere passengers in multi-million dollar carbon fibre projectiles, the cars slammed into the wall with such force that the MP4-30 was forced on top of the Ferrari before the pair came to rest by the side of the road.

Both drivers climbed out of their cars unscathed, but had contact between the cars, the angle of collision with the barriers, or the speed of the crash been even slightly different, the situation could have been grave.

Looking back at the on-board footage from Räikkönen’s car, it is terrifying to see just how close to his helmet the tray of Alonso’s McLaren comes as it slides across the bow of the Ferrari. The margins for disaster could be measured in mere centimetres.

Accidents likes these – though rare enough that they still shock – are hardly unheard of, and are not limited to freak submarining or over-the-top incidents like this. Racing cars with open tops, particularly in combination with open wheels, provides all the crucial ingredients for a catastrophic disaster.

Without thinking it’s easy to conjure a range of accident borne from this style of racing in Formula One alone – Jules Bianchi’s accident last year, María de Villota’s ultimately fatal testing crash in 2012, and Felipe Massa’s brutal head injury in 2009 all come readily to mind, and this list is by no means exhaustive.

Even Formula One’s last in-race fatality, Ayrton Senna, died before injuries sustained to the head, and it is this point that is most salient. Safety in this sport – and, as a result, all of motorsport – has come such an incredible distance since the death of Senna that this aspect of motor racing is barely recognisable from its former self.

The FIA and Formula One quite rightly pride themselves on this no-stone-unturned approach to safety, and countless lives have been saved because of this. That accidents and fatalities like those mentioned and the many more unreferenced are so very shocking is testament to this.

However, though we are 21 years on from that landmark day at Imola in 1994, one safety aspect has remained largely unaddressed, and that is the danger of open top cars themselves.

It’s easy to understand why – Formula One and other series like it are ‘open top’ categories. While the DNA of the sport is bandied about to prop up all sorts agendas, there are few things more intrinsic to Formula One than open tops and wheels.

To its credit the FIA has conducted tests into two alternatives to the current protection-free open cockpit model.

One experiment involved launching a tyre at 225 kilometres per hour into a jet fighter canopy testing to test its durability. A second involved a ‘forward-facing’ roll hoop designed to deflect major debris away from the driver’s head.

Both methods offer a solution to the dangers of open cockpits, though neither is perfect. The front-facing roll hoop obviously obstructs the driver’s vision, while the canopy similarly carries with it vision distortion due to its shape and the materials used.

But these are from dead ends – these options all hold promise, yet no-one has picked up either of them to inquire further into how they might be better appropriated into the motor sport context.

On one level it is understandable that those with the power to act are apprehensive at targeting what is perceived as a central tenet of Formula One – but safety, as it has been for decades, must be paramount.

Fortunately Räikkönen was just another close call for Formula One, but the sport should not wait idly for tragedy to prompt it into action. Now is the time to finish this work and let progress take its course.