Formula 1: Felipe Massa’s IndyCar safety comments are highly inaccurate

The comments made about IndyCar’s safety standards by former Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa are extremely inaccurate in many ways.

Like many people did, former Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa took to Twitter to praise the new halo device that Formula 1 implemented at the start of the 2018 season following the horrific crash at the start of Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix.

Heading into turn one on the first lap of the 44-lap race around the 19-turn, 4.352-mile (7.004-kilometer) Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps road course in Stavelot, Belgium, Nico Hulkenberg ran into the back of Fernando Alonso.

This impact sent Alonso’s car into the air and up over the top of Charles Leclerc’s car. In fact, it went directly over the cockpit of the 20-year-old Monegasque’s car, and multiple video angles of the crash show that had the halo not been there, parts of the 37-year-old Spaniard’s car would have hit the rookie in the helmet, which could have resulted in him suffering serious injuries or even death.

Here is a video of this accident.

Here is how Massa responded to it.

But instead of sticking to his praise of the halo, the 11-time Grand Prix winner decided to go a step further and take a shot at IndyCar’s safety standards. Here is what he had to say about the matter.

Massa’s comments about IndyCar’s safety standards could not be more inaccurate, and several IndyCar drivers let him know it on Twitter.

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He is absolutely correct in that the halo did what it was supposed to and very well may have saved Leclerc’s life. However, just because this device is not used in IndyCar certainly does not mean that the sport’s officials are simply sitting on their hands doing nothing about improving the safety measures currently utilized in the sport.

A halo may very well be an option for IndyCar in the future even though it does not currently look like it is. However, to state that IndyCar is “not doing much” is ridiculous.

This tweet pretty much proves this point, as many of the current Formula 1 regulations that are in place for safety purposes were actually already in place in a similar form in IndyCar when they were implemented in Formula 1.

In addition to these safety measures that IndyCar implemented before Formula 1 did, IndyCar’s safety team, the AMR IndyCar Safety Team, are by far the best in the business. Anyone who knows anything about IndyCar knows this, and it is proven week after week with how quickly and effectively they respond to accidents.

Look no further than how they responded to James Hinchcliffe’s near-fatal crash in practice for the 2015 Indianapolis 500 as an example of this. Hinchcliffe was within seconds of passing away given how much blood he was losing because of the fact that a piece of suspension pierced the front of his car, entered the cockpit and ended up going through his leg before stopping in his pelvic area.

But IndyCar’s safety team held together an artery that Hinchcliffe had severed, preventing the Canadian from bleeding to death as they extricated him from the car and took him to the hospital.

Even before the death of Dan Wheldon following a massive accident in the 2011 season finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Dallara had been developing a new and safer chassis for IndyCar to use, and it has proven to be much safer than the old Dallara IR-05 chassis that was used through the 2011 season. This new chassis has been used since the 2012 season, and it is named the Dallara DW12 after Wheldon, who tested it on multiple occasions.

Plus, even though additional head protection has not been implemented since a piece of debris struck and killed Justin Wilson over three years ago in a race at Pocono Raceway, IndyCar have been working on the development of a possible solution: a windscreen.

Like the halo, the windscreen certainly has its pros and cons, but the pros outweigh the cons or else there would be not even be a discussion about the possibility of implementing it. Multiple tests on this windscreen have been done, and it appears that this will be the direction that IndyCar will take in the very near future as far as additional head protection goes.

The fact that the windscreen has not yet been implemented isn’t because of a lack of action by IndyCar. In fact, it is a result of the exact opposite. They do not want to implement it until they know that it will make this as safe as they can possibly be for the drivers, which is the reason for all of the tests. They have no desire to rush such an important process just to say they’ve done it.

So no, IndyCar isn’t “not doing much” about driver safety, and the fact that anyone would even consider believing that is absurd.

Do you believe that the comments made by former Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa about IndyCar‘s safety standards are highly inaccurate, or are you in agreement with the 37-year-old Brazilian?