Its impossible to change that aspect of the car in such a dramatic way, and making the nose stronger for a frontal impact would make it much more dangerous in a skirmish on track for position.

An F1 car is designed to almost turn to dust upon heavy impact, thereby decreasing the chance of large debris smacking the drivers in the face.
 
POW RIGHT IN THE  KISSER.

I remember reading about a new barrier being developed made from plastics that is intended to prevent tire-wall burial, if I find a link explaining it I will comment again.

I’m sure work will begin on that corner, considering all the other after-thought changes they’ve made to the facility. While watching the race, I also wondered what would happen if a car lost grip during New Holland chicane?

I do NOT like run off area’s.  Having a huge stretch of tarmac round every turn in F1 is giving the drivers a "reset" button for mistakes.

Heikki’s car split the belt about 40cm above the ground. That’s where it first hit, and it penetrated and then went through the tyres. When I looked at the pictures I thought it had gone under it.

I think they could investigate use some kind of destructible device before the tyre stacsk in the high speed run-off areas. Something like pneumatic barriers used in motorbikes races, or the fences used in skying.

First, I’m not sure how much help a paved runoff area would have been in Heikki’s case, since he was basically a passenger once that tire blew. Sure, the gravel probably didn’t slow him down (or help him control the car) very much, but I doubt tarmac would have done much better.

Second, it seems to me that the main reason why his car was so buried was because the low nose allowed it to burrow in under the tires. Could this possibly be solved by putting the tires a few feet below ground-level, so the car can’t shovel itself under them?

Similarly, rubber pads underneath the car could be extended to work just like the `shoe brake’ on old style children’s scooters.  They’d need to have something requiring a pit stop after use to prevent non-accident  use.

If the barrier is too hard, too soft, too elastic i think it’s not going to work properly. I don’t know if the belt is a good idea. Heiki’s car was completely stopped by the second row of tyres. I guess the best option for a human body is a progressive deceleration, and use all the existing rows, but in this case we would have the problem concerning to be trapped into the stack.

Anyway it looked like if everything worked fine last Sunday, and Heiki could avoid a serious accident. Once again, i think HANS was the most important piece of safety.