Birthday blog: the most important life choice 🖤🏁😳

Better late than never. Here we go. My birthday blog or what was the most important of what happened to me last year.

I haven't been thinking a lot. My choice was clear. The most important and life-changing thing was my choice to work in motorsport. 

It isn't a long story. It isn't too romantic but I wanna share. So in March 2017 I've been working for the sports department in Russian information agency called R-Sport. That time I was chosen to cover Formula 1 Russian Grand Prix in Sochi having the advantage of three foreign languages.

In the end of April I came to Sochi and felt dumb. It was super hot (I prefer cold and rainy weather). The whole area was strange but nice. We went to the circuit on Wednesday to explore and on Thursday for the media day. Firstly I didn't like the whole Formula 1 thing. It was too unknown and too fancy. My four days there led me from hating the Paddock thing to absolutely loving it. I met so many amazing people from drivers to journalists who seemed strangers to me at first but became a kind of a family at the end. That moment I realized: F1 is an independent, maybe strange but amazing world. 

Valtteri won for the first time in his life. I was happy for Mercedes but sad for Lewis finishing P4 and for Danny being out. I stood in the Paddock watching the teams packing and I felt like a very important part of my life is leaving me alone. That evening was frustrating. Later some more important things happened. Football cheated on me but I don't feel like telling this story here. 

I came back to Moscow, lost my job (not the best point of my life either) and decided to watch Spanish GP. Just in case. That moment was absolutely fatal. I loved loved loved F1. Since that GP I started watching every single one, decided on starting this blog and writing for motorsport media. It all worked and I couldn't be happier.

I am sure I have so many future opportunities like working full time and becoming a proper motorsport journalist in Paddock. It all awaits me in my closest future and, yes, now I can tell. I AM IN LOVE WITH MOTORSPORT AND I LIKE IT ❤️

Onboard nightmare: FIA confirms "halo" for 2018 🏎💔✋🏻

Hello there. Are you a person who loves changes or you'd better stay more conservative? If it's new it's not necessarily bad - I used to say being quite conservative in many cases. Not in this one. 

On July, 19th FIA confirmed we are going to have Halo protection system for the championship 2018. Here's the part of the statement: "Following the unanimous agreement of the Strategy Group, in July 2016, to introduce additional frontal protection for Formula One and the repeated support from the drivers, the FIA confirms the introduction of the Halo for 2018. With the support of the teams, certain features of its design will be further enhanced."

Well, I really do think it looks ugly and I am not the only one. I really do think that most of the people somehow connected to F1 are 100% supporting opened cockpits and this "old" way of racing. But if everyone's against than who decides? Why the decision comes despite the total disapproval? Too many rhetorical questions in my mind. Let me shortly go through the options, its pros and cons and leave you to think about for a while (as long as we all have nothing to do but to accept).

Options:

I've been surthing through the internet after I read those terrific news in my twitter and found an interesting poll on motorsport.com. The options there were: accept Halo, accept shield, leave everything as it is, go back to aeroscreen, make cockpits closed and look for other options. So I tried to analyze  shortly what do I personally think of every option. 

For me aeroscreen and shield are quite alike as long as they have the same purpose in different form. Their pros and cons are also a lot alike: making it difficult to see through (blame on glares), getting easily dirty in bad weather conditions, probably some kind of aerodynamics thing (not an expert in this) and so on. Since I haven't been watching F1 for a long time I don't really know a lot about aeroscreen. But I do know about the shield since it has been tested in Silverstone last week and Seb defined it as inconvenient. It is not what I'd like to see but looks 100% better than Halo - that's for sure.

Closed cockpits WILL BE definitely a disaster as long as we know Formula 1 as a championship with opened wheels and opened cockpits. It might just ruin the whole spirit of this amazing sport. Looking for other options is still leading us to cockpit changes which I do feel are not going to be easy acceptable for a long time. Leaving everything as it is is probably THE BEST way which is not happening after that statement.

Talking about Halo, here I will try to give you some pros and obvious cons. 

Pros:

The only real pro which I personally see is the protection from big debris or strong impacts during the accident. That is true. I am not such a big expert but probably it doesn't influence aerodynamics as much as other tested protection systems do so doesn't make worst changes. I cannot come up with more pros but probably they exist.

Cons:

It is ugly. Onboard view is going to be kind of a nightmare. It does not protect from small debris. It has nothing to do with the wind and the downhill power on pilot (especially corners) which is good and bad at the same time. Probably it makes it way more difficult to see through. It also makes it more difficult to exit the car in some particular situations (accidents). 

Well, I can go on for ages. Unfortunately it is the fact now and we can only hope that F1 teams have the power to change the situation (since there we no accidents LATELY which showed that we need this kind of a system). 

The only point to add is the Lewis's words from 2016 he addressed to Halo possibility: "I hope that's not what they bring out, I really do. But if it is, ultimately it's the drivers' protection so we should have a choice individually - I should be able to decide whether to put that on my car. It wouldn't be something I'd choose. I like it the way it is now - when I get in the car I know there's a certain risk. Safety is a very important issue for sure, but there are risks that we take and you have to decide how much of a risk you are going to take. I'd rather drive without it and risk it." Thanks, Lewis!

I am confused, I am embarrassed and I am frustrated. I am also sure you feel the same right now but I'd love to let me know what you think on Halo in any of my social media or e-mail. This blogpost is not a statement but more of a discussion I wrote being emotionally punched by FIA. Thanks for reading though!