SEPTEMBER 15, 2004

New safety measures

Although Formula 1 remains stalled on an agreement over reducing the speed of the cars, there was a meeting of the Technical Working Group at Monza and a number of safety changes were agreed. The wheel tethers are to be changed from fibrous materials to metal, which is reckoned to absorb more than four times the energy of the existing tethers. Other research had revealed the value in increasing the thickness of the side headrests in F1 from 75mm to 100mm while the engineers agreed that to avoid composite shards on the crcuit after a crash all front wing endplates, barge boards and turning vanes will be manufactured using outer skins of materials such as Kevlar which will reduce debris.