I'm on a couple of motorsports message boards (I'm a big rally fan, as well as IMSA Sports Cars, and also watch some NASCAR and IndyCar), and the closed cockpit thing is a big debate on them now. Designs I've seen are just plain ugly. Maybe it's just that IndyCar and F1 have never before had closed cockpits. Maybe if some other governing body ran them, I'd be OK with it, and it wouldn't look like a messed up IndyCar concept (similarly, in Sports Cars, I hate that Delta Wing, but it would have been fine as a concept car at an auto show).
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
