Force India: Incorporating Halo a big challenge

Editor

Force India admit getting Halo onto their 2018 car proved to be a “big challenge”, especially in keeping the weight down.

This season all the teams have to include Halo in the design of their cars after the FIA made the cockpit protection device mandatory.

It, however, redesiging the chassis for Halo hasn’t been as easy as some had hoped.

“The biggest thing over the winter for us was trying to incorporate the Halo into the car design because it was introduced so late,” chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer told RACER.

“Which for a team of our size makes it even more difficult to redesign and not start afresh but make massive changes to the design that we’d gotten on with already to incorporate the Halo.

“We did [find it a big challenge]. It weighs quite a bit so we had a big challenge in keeping the weight down but also making the Halo robust enough to take all the prescribed loads, which are not insignificant.

“We’ve completed them all [the crash tests]. We’re right on schedule actually and the nice thing is we passed the first time. So had we not then that could have been troublesome.”