"Steering damper plays a key role": FIA shows video with measures to prevent hand injuries in Formula E

Following several serious hand injuries to drivers in the first two Gen3 years of Formula E, the FIA reacted. In addition to several smaller measures, including improved padding in the front cockpit area and a revised steering wheel, a newly developed damper system was installed in the vehicles to reduce the forces transmitted to the steering wheel in the event of a collision. One year later, the drivers draw a positive conclusion.

"For us as engineers, we need first to understand what has been happening," explains Nuno Costa, FIA Safety Director. "Then, when you understand the problem, you can find a solution. Once we understood that front wheel contact and the rotation on the steering wheel was the origin of this, we started looking into different solutions. When there was impact on the front wheels, the steering wheel was rotating up to 10 times faster than in normal driving. Then we started doing simulations trying to understand what we needed to do to reduce such speed."

"The easiest thing for us was to attach a damper parallel to the steering rack to absorb the energy after a crash," explains Xavier Mestelan Pinon, FIA Technical and Safety Manager. To this end, the FIA worked together with Spark, the manufacturer of the Gen3 car. Following the development of the damper, tests were started to check the function of the new safety feature.

"It was important that it was transparent for the drivers"

"The manufacturers need to test it in private testing, then we tested it on all the cars during the pre-season testing," Costa continued. "For us, it was important that the solution was transparent for the drivers. We didn't want to increase the force to drive the car during normal driving. So we want that the system only works when there is an impact."

The practical test on the racetrack was not everything, however. The FIA also carried out tests of the new system in the laboratory, as Costa describes: "Basically, what we tried to do was to simulate an impact on the wheel. So we did it with and without the steering damper to validate that the concept worked there."

"There were some crashes that were involving some hand injuries, but the FIA took note of this and actually have gone above and beyond in order to ensure that these kind of things don't happen anymore," says Sam Bird, who himself suffered a hand injury in Monaco 2024. Robin Frijns, who broke his hand at the Sao Paulo E-Prix in January 2023, agrees: "The steering damper I think is a very good tool. Not being tested yet on my side, but if you have a crash and the damper takes all the force away from the wheel that it doesn't really move out of your hand anymore."

"The steering dumper has been the key deployment that has been playing a key role on preventing this type of injuries," concludes Costa. "Since the introduction of that solution that is the steering dumper - we fortunately and hopefully will remain like that - we have not seen any injuries anymore."