It’s just under a month now until the new Formula 1 season gets underway in Melbourne.

The drivers are currently in Barcelona as they begin their pre-season testing ahead of the new campaign that kick-starts on March 25.

The teams have also been able to show off their new designs and test their new features this week.

This includes one of the most obvious changes, the safety Halo.

Despite the majority of the sides opposing against the inclusion of the new feature, the Federation Internationale de I’Automobile went ahead with the idea anyway.

The safety Halo was put in place to help protect the drivers.

However, it still seems to be drawing its critics, even Renault driver Carlos Sainz Jr has expressed his discontent with the addition.

The son of former double World Rally Champion Carlos Sainz claimed that the halo prevents drivers from detecting light rain.

Speaking to F1i.com after Monday’s session, the Spaniard didn’t realise it had started raining as the Halo blocked the drops from his visor.

"Today, when it started raining a bit, the rain, you couldn’t see it on the visor," Sainz said.

"The Halo was not allowing the rain drops to go onto the visor.

"So you were not really seeing if it was raining or not. You were just feeling it in your hands, in your ass to see how the grip was."

The 23-year-old, along with his fellow drivers, were left guessing as to how hard the rain was and admitted that the conditions make it hard to determine the track’s level of grip.

"This kind of rain sometimes as drivers it really bothers us because you don’t know if you can actually push 100% or not," he added.

"You have to guess it with the pit wall and see how much rain there was because for us, our visor was completely dry and outside it was raining. So a bit tricky there."

So it seems the Halo hasn’t gone down well with Sainz, and after nine out of the 10 F1 teams opposed the feature before it was added, will it continue to face criticism?