Haas driver Oliver Bearman says he is ready to “suffer” after raising an “unfair” issue with the FIA’s new driver cooling vests.

Following extreme heat at locations like Qatar, the FIA sought to improve driver comfort by introducing a cooling system that sees cold water flow past the torso of the drivers in the cockpit.

Oliver Bearman raises cooling system weight issue

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

Under the current rules, drivers are free to wear the kit whenever they please but it is only once temperatures hit 31°C that the FIA loosens weight restrictions.

Once a heat hazard is declared, drivers are free to use the system and for the ones who do not, their car will be fitted with 500g of ballast as compensation.

However, drivers wanting to use the system without the heat hazard declaration face adding extra weight to the car, something Bearman described as “unfair.”

“The original design didn’t work for anyone now, now it works pretty well,” Bearman told media including PlanetF1.com in Miami.

“I tried it in Jeddah, and it seemed really, really good, so I’m really happy with what they’ve been able to do to roll that out.

“But unfortunately, we are not able to run it at the moment as we don’t have the weight from the FIA, so we are just waiting for that.

“It seems like the threshold is quite high. I know that some teams are actually able to run it normally, which I don’t know how that is.

“How some teams are able to run it and of course, clearly they have the weight margin to do it, but if they’re never going to declare it hot enough, then only half the teams are getting the benefit, which seems a bit unfair.”

Bearman though said he was ready to “suffer” until the FIA changes something as drivers and teams will always put performance over comfort.

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“But the benefit of having cool water, even if it works for 10, 15, 20 laps, is game-changing, and because Jeddah, for example, is such a hot race, what you don’t see is the humidity, the heat.

“It may be 27-28 degrees, but with 60, 70 per cent humidity, with all those layers on, it is really hot and having cool water is life-changing. It really helped me in practice, but unfortunately, we were not able to run it in the race.

“The whole system is too heavy, and we’re trying to get the most performance out of the car, we are not trying to make the car lighter to run the cooling vest.

“Unfortunately, we are going to have to suffer until they change something to allow us to run it more freely, as some teams have the margin to run it.”

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