Cockpit design without a canopy

[SidSidney]

Just spotted this old shot of Keke Rosberg in the McLaren MP4/2, it struct me how chassis' have evolved over the years - this was rightly called a tub, but now they are much more enveloping and protective of feet - this chassis is an ankle grinder.



This has probably been discussed before, but this image made me wonder if you could extend the top of the current tub with a pair of removable spaceframe rails linking the corners of the dash to the roll hoop to provide some additional protection without adding a full cockpit (added to this shot just as illustatration of what I mean).



It could be something that pivoted into place, with an overlap under the dash, and a pinlock on the rollhoop end, so that it was easily removable post-crash. The pin end would be some kind of spring loaded catch that could be popped by the driver from the cockpit in emergency.

Something like that might have helped Bianchi a little bit without making things overly difficult in cases of fire for example. I can also see some downsides to it, like if you are trapped upside down in gravel, but there is a always a balance to be struck.

[Manoah2u]

I always liked the 'naked look' on the 'older' cars with panels over the carbon tubs. Amazed me to see how fragile and dangerous they really were. Makes me annoyed when people start inventing rubbish on the current noses being able to penetrate the tub (which they factually are not capable of).

These were dangerous, but still, the noses were low enough they would rather scoop up a car in the very unlikely event ever to occur that a F1 car would hit another F1 car from an exact 90 degrees turn exactly at the tub, not to forget there's a sidepod and wheel structure right aside the driver.

In a 'flip', the tub is relatively 'safe' to protect the driver. I know F1 today is trying to build rules so that a car that gets scooped up at the front isn't able to hit the driver, and they prefer low noses which would 'lift' the car in front instead of 'slide it' into the driver.

However, If I look at this, then I imagine it to perhaps even be worse, if the car in front gets scooped up by the nose, the chances of hitting a driver is even larger compared to a high nose; the short angled nose is too short in distance to lift up the car in front so it will glide along the angle towards the rollbar.
Instead, it'll scoop up the car and the end of the car will come down into the cockpit when it loses it's support from the nose, essentially squashing the driver's head.

Offcourse this is all worst case scenario, which leads me to the following question;

apart from the near-head collision of Schumacher vs was it Sutil? when his car was reversed @ the track.....Has there ever been a situation in Formula 1 where the driver's head was perilously close to another car during contact due to 'scooping'? (i'm not talking about the Grosjean-Alonso incident btw). I remember an Indy/Champcar incident where there actually was minor contact with the helmet and car end, but has something ever happened in the history of F1?