In evidence of its unstinting commitment to safety in all aspects of the sport, the FIA has been hard at work on the development of a steering damper that has already proven to be a game-changer in avoiding hand injuries in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

In recent seasons, a few drivers have suffered hand fractures in the all-electric single-seater series, with the incidents triggering an investigation that is the topic of a new short film released by the governing body entitled ‘A Hands-On Approach to Driver Safety’.

It was discovered that in front-end accidents, the steering wheel rotated up to ten times faster than usual – a revelation that prompted a suite of solutions from modifying the steering wheel’s shape to adding foam inside the cockpit and redesigning the front wing to better protect the car’s front wheels.

While all of those adaptations have unquestionably helped, the real breakthrough came in the form of a new steering damper which absorbs the energy of the impact and reduces the peak rotational speed in such situations by as much as 40 per cent, with no repeat injuries since its introduction.

The FIA film shines a spotlight on the challenges involved as well as the painstaking procedure from testing and simulation to final validation, and features insights from FIA Safety Director Nuno Costa, FIA Chief Technical and Safety Officer Xavier Mestelan Pinon and ABB FIA Formula E World Championship Medical Delegate Bruno Franceschini.

There are similarly interviews with two of the drivers whose seasons have been interrupted by hand injuries, including NEOM McLaren Formula E Team’s Sam Bird – who praises the FIA for going ‘above and beyond to ensure these things don’t happen anymore’ – and Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns, who fractured his hand and wrist in an accident in the Season 9 curtain-raising contest in Mexico City in 2023, forcing him to miss the following four rounds.

“Basically, I broke my hand inside the cockpit because I wasn’t expecting the steering wheel to suddenly come out of my hands,” the Dutchman explains. “Unfortunately, I had quite some damage because I broke the bone in three places.

“My injury was quite bad, but the FIA is pushing hard to make it safer for us and they’ve made big steps from that moment onwards. I think the steering damper is a very good tool. If you have a crash, the damper takes all the force away from the wheel so it doesn’t really move out of your hands anymore.”