Monocoque, key component in a driver's protection package

The heart of a Formula 1 car is the monocoque. The most important component of a driver's comprehensive protection package, this carbon-fibre safety cell has to withstand extreme loads in an emergency.

As Brian O'Rourke, chief of the Composites Department at BMW Williams F1 Team, says: "The monocoque plays a key role in the safety of Formula 1."

The FIA technical regulations define the monocoque as a survival cell.

"When developing a car, we have two goals: build a fast racing car and at the same time protect the driver as well as we can," said O'Rourke.

"You can see just how safe the monocoques are from the fact that after a major collision, the cars are often seriously damaged but the drivers can climb out of a virtually intact monocoque uninjured."

The monocoques are made of carbon fibre, a composite material twice as hard as steel but five times lighter.

And in Formula 1, every gram counts.

The monocoque consists of up to 12 layers of carbon-fibre mats in which the individual fibres are five times thinner than a human hair.

A honeycomb-shaped aluminium layer is inserted between the carbon-fibre layers, which increases the rigidity of the monocoque even more.

The whole shell is then heated under pressure in an autoclave - a giant oven - and completely hardened after two-and-a-half hours.

Even so, the baking procedure is repeated twice more for safety reasons, because, at the end of the day, the safety cell should not only come from just one mould but will also need to stay in one piece in an emergency.

The monocoques used in Formula 1 are tough enough to be able to survive even the most critical accidents.

However, to protect the drivers, the cars must also have a certain amount of flexibility.

This is the task of the compulsory crash structures in the car nose, sidepods and rear, which act as a preliminary safety cell to absorb some of the impact energy.

The load capacity of the crash structure and the monocoque is guaranteed by static and dynamic crash tests which have been stipulated by the FIA since 1985 and made more and more stringent over the years.