Liam Lawson says he would be “pretty disappointed” if plans to make cooling vests mandatory in F1 are forced through as planned.<\/p>\n
After the brutal conditions of the 2023 Qatar GP, the FIA began to investigate ways of cooling drivers, with a cooling vest being developed, and run for the first time at the ’25 Singapore GP after a heat hazard was declared.<\/p>\n
The hazard was declared again in the United States, with air temperatures above 31 degrees triggering the use of the vests.<\/p>\n
For 2026, there are plans to make the vests mandatory for drivers, something most have voiced opposition to, with Kimi Antonelli’s even failing during Friday practice in Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Offering his thoughts on the situation, Lawson believes the cooling vests don’t match up to safety improvements such as the Halo and the HANS device.<\/p>\n
“I’d be pretty disappointed if they made it mandatory, I don’t think it makes sense to force us to wear something that isn’t something that we find comfortable,” Lawson told media when asked by RacingNews365 for his thoughts on the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not something that we need. I mean, other things develop over time. The Halo is a life-saving device and stuff like that, the HANS device, these kinds of things are very important for safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But for me, the cooling vest isn’t doing the same job. We train very, very hard to drive these cars, and I think most of us don’t feel the need to use it, so I don’t think we should be forced to use it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s another variable that can go wrong, and for me, if it’s something I don’t feel like I need, then I’m not going to run it just for the sake of running it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liam Lawson says he would be “pretty disappointed” if plans to make cooling vests mandatory in F1 are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-256387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}