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People tend to get hung up on trying to engineering solutions that will solve ALL known and unknown problems current and future. Plus trying to solve using a single solution. For example a common one is... When car is in X position, how will the driver extract himself? That line of thinking has no reasonable path forward if the solution to all problems is always "self extraction".
I am sure we can generate conditions using both the current open and potentially future closed cockpits in which self extraction is impossible. Or rather... would be difficult to do without external help, or requires significant engineering burdens upon the design within the car. The Alonso example is a good one and I think the very recent Pascal Wehrlein Monaco example is good as well. Maybe self extraction in those and other cases may not be the answer?
Combat fighters at 10's of thousands of feet have no "help" when things go wrong. So that is why complex ejections systems exist (explosive canopy release, rocket extraction from the aircraft, automatic parachute deployment, etc.). These cars are designed to race in a relatively controlled environment in which the overall safety goes beyond just the driver and the survival cell. Outside help does exist.
So, design the solution so that the driver can self extricate in the vast majority of common scenarios (including some upside down scenarios). For the exceptional situations in which that may not be easily achieved (car is upside down, large fuel fire and another car or debris is piled on top. Or the car is deeply buried in a tire wall or some other structure. Or even straight up equipment failure of the egress system which prevents the canopy from opening) You should then rely upon alternative safety measures. That may include designs to enable a "shelter in place" strategy until on track help arrives. Frankly I see no other way around that. It is unlikely that any solution will solve all problem. As much as I dislike the non-canopy solutions, they clearly are taking this approach. They are trying to solve for a number of scenarios (generally intrusion from the front) that is less than all of the potential scenarios (intrusion from the top). My beef is that they are not solving for enough scenarios.
And as always... it's good to point out again and again... All of this has generally been solved in other series. F1 loves to pretend they are so unique that their solution has to be unique as well. Just look to other series as to what has worked and what type of extraction scenarios have occurred.
Richard
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