Formula 1 has a problem with cooling vests And it's serious
Formula 1 has arrived in Singapore for the most gruelling Grand Prix of the entire season. Introduced to the calendar in 2008, the race has always been held at night, immediately becoming one of the most spectacular events on the calendar. At the same time, the Singapore round presents drivers with a series of complicated logistical challenges, as they live according to European time rather than the local time zone, which is six hours ahead, as well as unparalleled physical difficulties, forcing them to rely on improvised solutions such as cooling vests to deal with the extreme heat. This scenario is playing out again for the 2026 edition, and once again cooling vests have become a problem.
What are cooling vests?
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A cooling vest is a cooling system that drivers wear underneath their race suits. More specifically, it consists of fireproof underwear fitted with a system of extremely thin tubes arranged in a circular structure, through which a cooling liquid flows with the aim of lowering the drivers’ body temperature and preventing heatstroke. The use of these cooling vests is not mandatory, but Formula 1 allows them at Grands Prix held in heat hazard conditions, meaning extreme heat. The Singapore Grand Prix at the Marina Bay circuit falls into this category.
Temperatures in Singapore rarely drop below 30 degrees during the race weekend, and the extremely high humidity makes the heat even harder for drivers to withstand. Inside the cockpit, they can experience temperatures of more than 50 degrees while wearing helmets and gloves. The conditions are so extreme that drivers can lose as much as 4 kilograms during the race, as happened to George Russell last season.
Why George Russell will not wear a cooling vest in Singapore
George Russell himself has revealed that he will not wear a cooling vest at the Singapore Grand Prix. Not for physical reasons, but for financial ones. To reduce the story to its bare essentials: cooling vests are developed by Formula 1 teams for their own drivers, but the costs of this work fall under the cost cap, the maximum amount each team is allowed to spend over the course of a season. Against this backdrop, Russell revealed that he will not wear a cooling vest because Mercedes was unable to develop a suitable system for this season without risking exceeding the cap.
Mercedes will nevertheless provide the British driver with a series of alternatives to reduce the effects of the heat in the moments before the race, such as an ice pack, essentially a vest divided into small squares, each containing ice. Alternatively, Russell, like his teammate Kimi Antonelli, will be able to wear CLIMACOOL, the revolutionary jacket introduced by adidas last season that allows drivers to maintain a lower temperature through a ventilation system combined with a cooling agent.
Cooling vests, heat and driver safety in Formula 1
Russell will not be the only driver who will not wear a cooling vest. In his case, however, it is a forced situation, while for other drivers it is a voluntary choice. Formula 1 does not mandate the use of cooling vests in extreme heat conditions, and some drivers, including Max Verstappen, chose not to adopt the solution last season when it was first introduced. This is because they were not entirely satisfied with its benefits. As mentioned above, cooling vests work with a cooling liquid. The problem for some drivers is that the liquid only provides benefits for a few minutes. Once the temperature inside the cockpit rises, the temperature of the liquid circulating beneath the race suit also rises, effectively making it lose its main purpose: providing an advantage to the driver.
This scenario connects to the issue previously described by Russell, namely the impossibility for some teams to work on this solution without risking exceeding the cap. For this reason, Russell himself has proposed that the FIA, the institution that governs Formula 1 at a regulatory level, provide each team with an additional budget so they can work independently on these systems, or that the federation itself develop a single system for all the teams. On the latter point, The Race reports that the main difficulty lies in the fact that Formula 1 teams do not have identical cockpits, making the implementation of a single system difficult.
The problem therefore remains. It may seem trivial, even like a luxury, but driver safety is Formula 1’s guiding principle. It must be guaranteed in every context. However much drivers work away from the track to prepare for this particular event — years ago, Carlos Sainz even trained inside a sauna — no one can train to drive for two hours inside a cockpit where temperatures exceed certain levels. And this is precisely where the problem of cooling vests stops being a technical issue and becomes a matter of safety: if a solution designed to help drivers in an extremely difficult situation is not effective for everyone, then it is up to Formula 1 to find an alternative that is, rather than leaving the responsibility to individual teams.