I’ve never heard of a chest injury, but I guess if you’re happy to pay it go for it. Not found any for $240. Cheapest I’ve seen is the $330 mark. Their homologating boots and gloves now I think as well. To be fully kitted out will be near 1000 soon.
I need to lay eyes on some homologated gloves to see how abrasion resistant they are. The gloves that most karters wear around us from Alpinestars or Sparco or OMP or whatever would disintegrate if they slid across the tarmac… and if that isn’t what the FIA are looking to prevent with homologation, then it is simply a money grab.
Even if they don’t protect against abrasion… gloves help when you touch hot bits and I sweat a lot.
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Having scanned the standard there’s a requirement for the gloves and boots to be abrasion resistant and the gloves to be heat resistant too. There’s a bunch of other bits in there about the stitching, straps and tongue size also.
As far as I know, kiddos are particularly susceptible to organ injury as their sternum etc is not fully formed. That’s why we tend to see chest protection offered for the classes with younger drivers.
I don’t exactly know what question you asked but there’s a difference between the length of homologation and how long you can use it for. So the length of homologation is 5 years, which can be extended. But the suit is valid (i.e. can be used for) 10 years. See image below:
Helmets is 10 or 5 years according to the list of homologated helmets, the FIA don’t comment on helmets at all in that email. But most series use the Snell standards, which is 10 years with a new iteration of the standard every 5 (SA2010, SA2015, SA2020).
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