Why Alfa Romeo has kept its blade roll hoop on 2023 F1 car

Roll hoops came under the spotlight after Alfa driver Zhou Guanyu’s huge accident at the start of last year’s British GP.

Alfa was the only team using the blade design permitted by the FIA, and in an unprecedented occurrence, its pointed top dug into the track and was eventually snapped off.

The incident prompted an investigation by the FIA, which included three meetings of the Technical Advisory Committee in which all teams play a role.

One of the conclusions reported by the FIA was that “the wording, as currently in the regulations, allows teams to homologate their roll hoops with forces acting through a lower point than intended. This can lead to the roll hoop resisting forces that are lower than originally intended by the regulations”.

For 2023 the FIA duly mandated “a change to require a rounded top of the roll hoop, which will reduce the chance of it digging into the ground during an accident,” plus “a change to ensure a minimum height for the point of application of the homologation test” and “the creation of a new physical homologation test where the load pushes the roll hoop in the forward direction.”

In addition, the FIA confirmed that it will introduce much stricter load tests for 2024, while giving teams enough time to comply with the new requirements.

Alfa had already decided that it was too late to abandon the blade for this season.

However, in addition to complying with the 2023 requirements, including a more curved top, the team has also decided to meet the load tests planned for 2024 as an extra safety measure.

“We will use a completely different roll hoop,” Alfa technical director Jan Monchaux told Motorsport.com.

“It’s still a blade, because when the decision was made to change or tweak the rules, it was at a point where we had already made some strategical decisions on what is carry over and what is not, from which we couldn’t revert, because it was summer.

“And all the other teams were in a similar situation. So we agreed between FIA and the teams to do effectively three steps.

“A first step is in ’23, which is mainly a geometrical constraint to avoid sharp edges that cut and things like this on the top, to make it harder for a roll hoop in such a situation to dig into the track.

“For ’24 there are some additional rules and some new load cases that are more demanding, that everyone will…