Teams are considering the idea of fully enclosed cockpits in an attempt to improve safety.

Ahead of F1's return to Hungary, where two years ago Felipe Massa was involved in a freak incident in which he was hit by a spring that had fallen from a rival's car, the sport is still seeking ways to prevent such incidents occurring.

The Hungaroring incident, which almost ended Massa's career, was all the more horrendous for it came just days after F2 racer Henry Surtees, son of racing legend John Surtees, was killed at Brands Hatch after being hit by a wheel from a rival's car.

Speaking at the Nurburgring today, James Allison, who last week was elected head of FOTA's technical regulations working group, admitted that one of the proposals under consideration is fully enclosed cockpits.

"This is something that's been under discussion for a few Technical Working Group meetings now," he told reporters. "We're looking to try to look after the driver's head, both from large scale things like tyres and also small scale things like the very unfortunate incident that Felipe suffered.

"There are a few suggestions around," he admitted, "one of them was looking into a fully enclosed canopy. Another one was looking into a visor-type where it's still open above the driver's head but he has a visor in front of him. And then there is a third type of proposal as well, where there isn't a see-through windscreen at all but there is like a roll (bar) structure in front of the driver that would anyway deflect any big objects. All those things are still in fairly early discussion and you would have seen from what the FIA proposed, published recently, that they are showing some of the very early research that's being done into the feasibility and practicality of this type of solution, but there are a lot of questions to answer before we can bring it to a practical solution.

"The closed canopy would have an aerodynamic effect," he continued, "not a bad one, it would be easier to manage the airflow around a closed canopy than an open one - but there are all sorts of other things to discuss, like egress in the event of an accident, keeping the canopy clean, for example when it might get covered in oil and the like, so each of the proposed solutions has advantages and disadvantages and we need to do the basic research to find out what is the best way forward."

The FIA Institute recently carried out tests in which an F1 wheel and tyre were fired from a cannon at a canopy from a jet fighter at 140 mph.