The FIA’s prototype technique for its new Formulation 1 cooling gadget entails cooled water being pumped round driver overalls, with totally different design approaches permitted in future guidelines, Motorsport.com can reveal.
Final week, the outcomes of the most recent assembly of the F1 Fee declared {that a} new driver cooling provision shall be added to F1’s guidelines from 2025, following the acute warmth encountered within the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix.
Motorsport.com revealed again in July that the FIA was engaged on such a system, with preliminary designs aiming to implement a simplified type of air-conditioning.
This adopted an pressing allowance being added to the 2024 technical guidelines which means a second cooling inlet scoop could be positioned on the entrance of a automotive’s cockpit to enhance airflow in the direction of drivers.
However whereas this isn’t obligatory – and certainly not all groups even have such an element to be fitted this yr – the brand new system should be hooked up to all vehicles if the temperatures at an F1 occasion from 2025 onwards hit an excessive warmth threshold the FIA is but to publicly outline.
This can more likely to be when ambient temperatures are constantly above 30°C throughout a session, as in such situations cockpit temperatures can shortly go north of fifty°C.
Whereas the F1 Fee announcement didn’t include any particulars of the brand new system’s design, Motorsport.com can now reveal how the prototype works, when it was examined and what could change forward of the complete implementation in 2025.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, in his cockpit
Photograph by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Photographs
The way it presently works
The FIA initially supposed its new driver cooling system to be examined in a observe session on the 2024 Dutch GP, however this was beset by moist climate, whereas extra adjustments to the system’s design by the FIA’s engineers have been concurrently within the works.
It’s understood that the primary on-track proof-of-concept experiment was subsequently pushed again to first observe in final month’s Mexico Metropolis GP, involving a so-far-unknown workforce and a single driver.
Whereas the preliminary plan for the gadget featured a simplified AC unit, it’s understood this aspect was dropped as throughout improvement work engineers encountered issues with its implementation that might not have been solved forward of 2025.
The system examined in Mexico subsequently concerned a block of ice offering a warmth alternate to fluid that was despatched to a vest within the driver’s overalls by way of a piping system, with the cooled liquid then pumped across the vest.
It’s understood that the complete system weighed not more than 5kg, though a rise throughout the ongoing improvement work – which is about to contain additional on-track testing over 2024’s ultimate F1 occasions – has not been dominated out.
To compensate for added weight at races the place the acute temperature threshold is reached, it’s doubtless that the minimal weight requirement for automotive and driver would enhance accordingly, with the restrict presently set at 798kg however set to rise to 800kg in 2025.
The gadget could be fitted in both the cockpit aspect construction and bodywork or within the cockpit itself.
It’s understood that the motive force concerned within the check reported that the system did certainly produce the supposed outcomes when it comes to offering cooling, though it isn’t recognized how lengthy the check lasted throughout what was a truncated one-hour session in Mexico.
How the system could also be produced in a different way sooner or later
In addition to the event of the prototype system, a Motorsport.com evaluation of F1’s present and upcoming technical guidelines suggests groups shall be allowed to develop their very own variations of the FIA prototype.
Sources have additionally urged that specs could possibly be launched by way of patents for cooling techniques to be made by exterior suppliers after which bought to be fitted when required by the groups.
Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari, places on a cooling vest within the storage
Photograph by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Photographs
The present F1 laws truly already present for a driver cooling system that “could make use of the latent warmth of vaporisation, or of sublimation, of a substance”.
Saved thermal vitality can be set to be permitted in designs for the brand new techniques, as long as a tool can’t indirectly be used as an extra type of engine cooling.
Subsequently, in idea, F1 groups may match a refrigeration tank containing an already cooled substance that’s pumped via pipes to a driver’s cooling vest, as an alternative utilizing the ice block technique already examined.
Motorsport.com understands that the groups may additionally deploy a unique system altogether that might as an alternative feed cooled air right into a driver’s race swimsuit by way of a fan system to realize the identical cooling impact.
Groups may also have the ability to make use of a fan to offer air for the condenser required within the refrigeration tank for the liquid cooling pump system.
No matter system a workforce chooses shall be required by the principles to solely use air, water, or sure chemical substances diluted in water to enhance thermal conductivity. Dry ice is expressly banned.
From 2025, the groups may also be allowed to open an extra gap to direct air on to a driver – both by way of the ground across the cockpit or the nostril – that should not exceed a complete space of space of 1000mm².
Moreover, F1’s guidelines already embrace a proviso for the usage of “cooling fits or balaclavas” beneath Article 14.6.3 of the present regs, which can be included for these upcoming in 2026.
However these should meet the FIA’s current codes on wearable tools and “could solely use coolants which might be proven to be protected for publicity to pores and skin”, per the rule in query.
Why the gadget is required
The event of the prototype driver cooling system follows the FIA’s vow to adapt its security guidelines following the 2023 Qatar occasion, the place drivers suffered significantly over the complete GP distance that came about in evening temperatures between 31-32°C.
Daytime temperatures have been additionally sweltering at a monitor the place its technical and high-speed structure means the drivers are additionally subjected to sustained excessive G-forces, which place a selected strain on their stomachs when strapped into an F1 cockpit.
Then Williams driver Logan Sargeant withdrew from the 2023 Qatar race with heatstroke, Alpine driver Esteban Ocon vomited in his helmet and Aston Martin racer Lance Stroll briefly handed out.
The FIA instantly promised “materials motion now to keep away from a repeat of this state of affairs” in a press release launched final October, when the 2023 occasion was held at a time of yr considerably hotter than the temperatures anticipated for the re-positioned 2024 Qatar race that can happen early subsequent week.
When the inaugural F1 race on the Losail circuit came about in 2021 on 21 December that yr, the temperature was 26°C all through.
The preliminary concept for air-con to be included within the mandated cooling system was declared “not wanted” by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, when he was quizzed on the thought following the 2024 Hungarian GP.
“That is Formulation 1,” the seven-time world champion added. “It is all the time been like this. It is robust in these situations.
“We’re highly-paid athletes. And you have to prepare your arse off to be sure to can stand up to the warmth, finally.
“It is robust. It is not straightforward, particularly once you go to locations like Qatar and Singapore. However I do not suppose we’d like an AC unit within the automotive.”
Though the anticipated cooler situations in Qatar will scale back the demand on racers there, the event of such a system represents a constructive step for the FIA throughout a interval the place the drivers have constantly urged their suggestions will not be being included in how F1 is run.
