Formula 1: Felipe Massa criticizes IndyCar’s safety

Former Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa criticized IndyCar’s safety standards following the crash in the Belgian Grand Prix.

After Nico Hulkenberg ran into the back of Fernando Alonso at the start of the 13th race of the 21-race 2018 Formula 1 season, the Belgian Grand Prix, sending Alonso’s car up over the top of Charles Leclerc’s car, former Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa praised the halo device that Formula 1 implemented at the beginning of this season.

While it was flying through the air, Alonso’s car made contact with the halo of Leclerc’s car, leaving the device all scraped up following the accident. Several video angles of this incident indicate that if not the body of Alonso’s car itself, one of the tires of his car would have almost assuredly made contact with Leclerc’s helmet had the halo not been there.

Here is a video of this nasty wreck.

Here is what Massa had to say about the halo following the wreck.

However, in praising the halo, Massa also decided to make a bold claim about IndyCar’s safety standards, of which he is evidently not a huge fan.

This accident involving Hulkenberg, Alonso and Leclerc took place just one week after a devastating IndyCar crash involving Robert Wickens and Ryan Hunter-Reay took place in the ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway.

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Wickens’s car was sent up above the turn two SAFER barrier and into the catch fence after making contact with Hunter-Reay’s car on the seventh lap of the 200-lap race around the three-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. It was sent into a violent spin and came back across the top of Hunter-Reay’s car just inches from his cockpit before it landed on the track, where it continued to spin.

Hunter-Reay emerged from his car unscathed, but the accident left Wickens with multiple injuries, including several broken bones and a spinal cord injury, all of which he is still being treated for at Lehigh Valley Hospital – Cedar Crest in Allentown, Pennsylvania after, which is where he was airlifted to after he was attended to by the AMR IndyCar Safety Team and the IndyCar medical staff at the site of the crash before he was taken off on a stretcher.

Here is what Massa had to say about the safety of IndyCar on Twitter.

What are your thoughts on Felipe Massa’s claim about IndyCar? Is his assessment fair, or do you believe that he is failing to see the big picture when it comes to comparing the levels of safety involved in IndyCar and Formula 1?