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Accidents for the likes of Envision Racing's Robin Frijns and NEOM McLaren's Sam Bird triggered the FIA into an investigation into exactly what was to blame.
The process of engineering an eventual solution involved a painstaking procedure from testing and simulation to final validation with FIA Safety Director Nuno Costa, FIA Chief Technical and Safety Officer Xavier Mestelan Pinon and ABB FIA Formula E World Championship Medical Delegate Bruno Franceschini playing key roles.
The front-end shunts caused the steering wheel to rotate up to 10 times faster than usual. This discovery prompted a suite of solutions from modifying the steering wheel’s shape to adding foam inside the cockpit and redesigning the front wing to better protect the car’s front wheels.
While all of those adaptations have unquestionably helped, the real breakthrough came in the form of a new steering damper which absorbs the energy of the impact and reduces the peak rotational speed in such situations by as much as 40 per cent, with no repeat injuries since its introduction.
“Basically, I broke my hand inside the cockpit because I wasn’t expecting the steering wheel to suddenly come out of my hands,” says Frijns. “Unfortunately, I had quite some damage because I broke the bone in three places.
“My injury was quite bad, but the FIA is pushing hard to make it safer for us and they’ve made big steps from that moment onwards. I think the steering damper is a very good tool. If you have a crash, the damper takes all the force away from the wheel so it doesn’t really move out of your hands anymore.”
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