F1 drivers discuss pros and cons of FIA’s cooling vest being trialed

The F1 drivers are still in a mix about the cooling vest that the FIA brought in for 2025 and beyond after heat hazard they faced in Qatar.

Post the 2023 Qatar GP, the FIA worked upon in bringing a cooling vest for the F1 drivers to maintain their body temperature in races where the outside temperatures go beyond a certain threshold which is unbearable for the racers, especially in an already hot cockpit.

Ahead of the first supposed hot race in Bahrain, some of the drivers like Oscar Piastri, Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll were not certain about the cooling vest, which sports tubes containing fluid to maintain the body temperature. The first test was done by Charles Leclerc in Abu Dhabi in 2024.

It was made optional for 2025 to test it further, but it is set to be made mandatory from 2026, especially in races where the temperatures go beyond the given limit. The most recent use of the system was done by George Russell in Bahrain, even though the temperature wasn’t high enough to mandate it.

While Lewis Hamilton was surprised that Russell trialed it or if anyone done it, but there are several who are trying it this weekend in Saudi Arabia. Piastri is one of the drivers spotted sporting the cooling vest along with Russell, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Oliver Bearman, Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda.

Russell: “It was definitely very noticeable when I turned on the cool water. At the start of the race, it was 16 degrees pumping around my body, which feels quite nice when you’re in a cockpit that’s 50 degrees plus. Of course, there’s always room to improve. But, for us as a team, they’ve put in so much hard work and have the confidence that the system would work, and I wanted to give it a whirl. So yeah, so far so good. That cooling vest is off the shelf and there is room to improve the comfort of [it]. I think that has been a bit of an issue for some of the drivers, but we are developing our own cooling vest which won’t be here for a couple of weeks. I wasn’t too concerned with the discomfort in Bahrain, because it was quite a low-speed circuit, but here, with the very fast corners of Jeddah and all of these pipes around my rib area, it could cause me some issues. So that’s why I’m going to see on Friday. But the system, or at least our system, is very much capable of being raced and used, and it clearly worked well in Bahrain.

“[In terms of ‘space jacket’,] they aren’t space jackets, they are used to help us cool down. I mean for all the drivers there, it wasn’t the specific case in Bahrain but when we stand on the grid ahead of the national anthem, we are in direct sunlight in our fireproof suit, designed to keep fire away, so they are not exactly the thinnest and most breathable of material and fan jacket is sort of designed to keep the ice cool that we have got on – you often wear your ice vest – but when you are on 33 degrees of sunlight that ice doesn’t last for very long. We are looking for these marginal gains and pushing the boundaries and also I raced with the driving cooling vest in Bahrain – as I said – and it is great to see that us as a team are pushing the boundaries and are ahead of the curve.”

Ocon: “I think it’s a very good initiative the FIA has done for us to be able to fix some of the issues we had in Qatar a couple of years ago. It’s a good initiative, but unfortunately, I can’t quite use it at the moment. The way the seats are designed and some of the vests—it’s very different to what we are currently using. It’s much more bulky and a lot bigger. We would need to basically redo a complete seat and I’m not even sure that doing that would still be suitable in corners. Good initiative, but I think they need a bit more thought behind it, or from our side as well, on how we could accommodate it better.”

Piastri: “I think it still has a bit of fine-tuning to go. I think it’s been a good process with the FIA and the manufacturers with the cooling system, and I think it will be a big positive for us. But for me personally, it’s not quite ready to be used. There’s been a lot of good work going on, but I think Sunday, given it’s a night race and it looks a bit cooler, I’m not sure we’ll actually trigger the heat hazard with the FIA anyway. So if you want to use it, it will come with a weight penalty on Sunday. I think there’s still some work to go, but it’s going in the right direction.”

Stroll: “It still needs some work, that’s the reality. Depends how desperate you are to be cool in the car. I think it’s going to come down to that in the really hot races if the product doesn’t improve. It’s not very comfortable, but yeah, get a few degrees out of it, so we’ll see.”

Hamilton: “I’m really surprised if he did, because you would have to add five kilos to the car for it, and no one else would…I’ve only had like two races in my career where it’s been… Malaysia, my first year at Malaysia my drinks machine didn’t work, so I was just dehydrated at the end of the race. Singapore last year was pretty brutal. But I love that – that’s what we’re supposed to be. The top, the highest of the highest in terms of athletes, and it needs to be tough. If anything, the cars today are easier to drive than when I started F1, and I don’t want to use it if I can avoid it.

“For me, I want to look at how I can prepare better. How can I use a cooling vest before? How can I pre-cool my body, how I can make sure I’m hydrated? That’s part of the whole process. But I do understand that it’s tough, and we don’t want drivers passing out. That one race in Qatar, where it was extremely hot, I didn’t actually take part because I crashed out! I think it’s good that they’ve got the technology in there but for me, it’s not what I want to see in my car – that’s just my opinion.”

 

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