Vettel: Compromise between danger and safety is needed

Sebastian Vettel has claimed that there needs to be a compromise between safety and danger in F1 in order for the sport to maintain its spectatorship.

With the Halo and Aeroscreen concepts being touted as a measure to improve cockpit safety, the FIA are determined to make F1 as safe as possible.

However, the Scuderia driver has said that although he agrees that safety is vital in F1, they should not sacrifice the speed of the cars and try to meet in the middle.

The quadruple World Champion also added that danger plays a huge part in attracting people to the races and if the sport had to lose that factor then it would be tough to continue it’s growth.

“The fact that the cars have become a lot safer, obviously it’s a lot nicer for us, because knowing a little bit of the history and reading a little bit [you learn] that many years ago the drivers weren’t as lucky, the cars weren’t as safe as they are now, so I think you need to find the right compromise,” the German told Motorsport.com.

“The ingredients for passion, speed, danger [and] noise are very important.

“Equally, we want to make the sport safer – we can’t shut our eyes if bad things happen – [and] I think we need to react. I think we have [learned] over the last years and still [do] now and I think that is the right approach.

“It is [a difficult balance], and ultimately it might sound wrong initially, but I think the sport in some way has to remain dangerous because that is what is appealing to people.

“[If] you lose that ingredient people don’t sense anymore that it’s something out of their reach [or] out of this world and it becomes less exciting.”