F1 | Wurz's idea to combat the scorching heat: cooling seats on every single-seater

The scorching heat was one of the obstacles the pilots had to contend with in the Qatar Grand Prix, the seventeenth seasonal round of the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship held on the last weekend. Extreme conditions that brought many of the protagonists of the race to losail to leave their cockpits exhausted, with Logan Sargeant even having to raise the white flag by retiring before the end of the race.

A situation that is leading to deep reflections on what happened, with the FIA ​​itself wanting to study solutions to prevent this phenomenon from happening again, and which according to the president of the GDPA Alexander Würz could be solved by installing cooling seats inside the various cockpits.

F1 | GP Qatar, the FIA ​​studies new solutions to avoid extreme weather conditions

“There are multiple factors that contribute to all this and which need to be understood – declared Wurz, interviewed by BBC Sport – My initial thoughts turn to the lessons taught by other categories that have reduced heat to a limiting factor for riders. Seat coolers, for example, work very well and are not too difficult to produce and install. This is something every team should think about."

Wurz, completing his thoughts, added: “Better insulation and/or air cooling is needed for very hot electrical boxes, which are often located near the pilot's seat, or which in the future may reroute hot hydraulic lines, so that the environment around the seat does not it overheats. The entire set of rules includes testing and boundaries for many parts of the car. Given that the driver is one of the performance parts of this equation, perhaps it is time to consider defining the limits of the heat to which he is subjected.”