SPA

The obvious choice would be the spectacular startline shunt at Spa, where Nico Hulkenberg (who had another impressive crash in Abu Dhabi) misjudged his braking point, cannoned into Fernando Alonso and launched the latter airborne. Alonso’s Mclaren landed on Charles Leclerc’s Sauber and left significant scarring on Leclerc’s halo. Suddenly, critics of the FIA’S latest safety crusade fell silent.

Last year, Niki Lauda said the halo “destroys the DNA of an F1 car”, but perhaps that DNA is worth discarding if doing so can save a life.

Subsequent investigations by the FIA show that the halo did indeed save Leclerc from a blow to the head.

Hukenberg’s Abu Dhabi accident also put the halo in the spotlight again, and it was thought that the device had impeded his exit from the inverted car, but this was later denied by the FIA.

It was impressive how quickly the halo became just the norm in F1: it wasn’t the ugly blemmish that most fans thought it would be at the start of the season. And, with the results of the report into the Leclerc accident, and a similar incident in F2 where Tadasuke Makino was prevented from harm in a shunt in Barcelona, the halo proved its worth.