{"id":915575,"date":"2026-10-04T07:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T07:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915575\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T07:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T07:42:14","slug":"whats-actually-going-on-with-george-russells-fia-cooling-vest-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915575\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s actually going on with George Russell’s FIA cooling vest complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> Formula 1 driver George Russell<\/a> caused a stir in some quarters by appearing to suggest the\u00a0FIA should protect teams against themselves by ensuring cooling vests are commonly used in hot races.<\/p>\n

Driver comfort in hot climates has been a topic since the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix, when several drivers experienced heat exhaustion symptoms during the Doha race, which was held October before being moved to a more reasonable December climate.<\/p>\n

In response, the FIA and all F1 teams conducted research to improve the venting and cooling of drivers in such extreme conditions. The end result was a cooling vest that circulates water through a tube system, which drivers can use in extreme conditions.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

The FIA declares a so-called “heat hazard” at the start of a grand prix weekend when ambient temperatures for an on-track session are predicted to exceed 31C.<\/p>\n

This weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, exceptionally held in Malaysia, is the third such heat hazard of the 2026 season, with a fourth one likely following next weekend in nearby Singapore.<\/p>\n

It prompted Russell to reveal that he would prefer to use a bespoke cooling solution, but that his Mercedes team had decided against developing one.<\/p>\n

\"Carlos <\/p>\n

Carlos Sainz, Scuderia Ferrari, puts on a cooling vest in the garage<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Sutton \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

“We won\u2019t be running the cooling vest because we haven\u2019t put the resource into making it robust enough,” Russell told The Times in Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it works, it works great. So, I would like to wear it this week, and I would like to wear it next week. But the team asked me\u2026’look, we can develop it, and we can put the money towards it [but at the cost of performance]’.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s why Russell called on the\u00a0FIA to get involved again and effectively protect teams against themselves: \u201cI feel we need the FIA just to step in and say, ‘Here\u2019s some money extra in the cost cap,’ or there\u2019s an external company who\u2019s going to develop it for everybody, you just put the money towards it. Because we should all be wearing it.”<\/p>\n

In some quarters the story has been construed as Russell going against his team or being forced to suffer in the heat by his engineers, but the real story is somewhat different.<\/p>\n

Initially, the\u00a0FIA did intend to make the use of cooling vests mandatory when a heat hazard is declared, but the standard vest wasn’t particularly popular with drivers, with many feeling the vest only provided a benefit for a handful of laps before becoming more of a hindrance than a help. As a result, the vest is still optional, with drivers who don’t use it instead being forced to add the corresponding 0.5kg of ballast to the car.<\/p>\n

But despite Russell’s claims, the\u00a0FIA did in fact implement a cost cap exemption from the 2026 season onwards for teams to make the cooling\u00a0vest more effective and comfortable to wear.<\/p>\n

Motorsport.com understands teams were offered the opportunity to receive a 50,000 USD cost cap exemption if they could come up with a cooling system that was proven to work for the entire race duration.<\/p>\n

They were also offered an additional 75,000 USD allowance for improving the comfort and\u00a0 effectiveness\u00a0of the cooling vest itself. Those two allowances were cumulative, so teams could in theory get up to 125,000 USD of additional cost cap budget for their customs cooling vest, with several teams understood to have taken up that option.<\/p>\n

With a heat hazard only declared a limited number of times per season, it appears Mercedes is one of the teams that haven’t\u00a0deemed it worth the engineering resources when such conditions are rare, and haven’t been as extreme as they were in Qatar 2023.<\/p>\n

\"Logan <\/p>\n

Logan Sargeant, Williams Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Williams F1<\/p>\n

As Russell mentioned in his explanation, any extra human resources poured into sporadically used vests would not be spent on improving the performance of his W17 car.<\/p>\n

So, as Mercedes battles to stay ahead of the pack against advances from\u00a0McLaren<\/a>, Red Bull and Ferrari<\/a>, and the issue revolves around comfort rather than outright safety concerns at this stage, it is clear where the priority is.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes Formula 1 driver George Russell caused a stir in some quarters by appearing to suggest the\u00a0FIA should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,406426,817,813,816,3875,141090,85,482959],"class_list":["post-915575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bahrain-gp-in-malaysia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-sepang-international-circuit","tag-sports","tag-whats-actually-going-on-with-george-russells-fia-cooling-vest-complaints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915575","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=915575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}