The recent British GP put a renewed focus on a subject that comes up every couple of years or so in Formula 1 – the frustration generated when a race ends under safety car conditions, with the field being released to accelerate around the last corner and cross the line.
At Silverstone, things seemed set up for a shootout after Max Verstappen’s late spin triggered a safety car. Leader Charles Leclerc was far enough ahead to be able to pit for fresh rubber and stay in front. Second placed Lewis Hamilton also took new tires, but behind him George Russell did the obvious thing and chose not to change, and instead gained track position by jumping ahead of Lewis. It was now nicely set up for the resumption, with the obvious possibility of seeing Hamilton on new tires trying to battle his way past Russell on his older tires in what would have been a curious reversal of what happened on the last lap of the infamous 2021 Abu Dhabi GP, when Hamilton lost the race – and the World Championship – to Verstappen.
The problem was that it took a while to move the stranded Red Bull, and more laps slipped away while the complicated unlapping and wave-by process was conducted. And then the rules demand that another lap is run before the resumption. A message saying that the safety car was to come in was released in error, and thus when that didn’t happen – and we’d run out of laps for a resumption – it was a huge anti-climax. We didn’t see the fight to the flag, and Hamilton had given up his second place to Russell for nothing.
It wasn’t just about the Russell/Hamilton battle, as there were other potential fights down the field. A few drivers were confident that that they could gain position – including Pierre Gasly, who was so frustrated that he gave race control a sarcastic round of applause as he crossed the line.
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“I’m a racer,” the Alpine driver said in Spa on Thursday. “And it’s never great for anyone on track or off the track to finish a race behind a safety car. So I think I was a little frustrated with the situation. I didn’t have all the information at the time. Afterwards, I think I understood why things happened that way, but I think we all agree in the future, ideally, we don’t have a situation where you have a safety car ending the race in in that fashion. I don’t think it looks great for us.”
Gasly says a solution should be sought: “I’m sure we’re going to discuss it, trying to find a way to just have maybe a faster way of coming to these decisions, or just allowing the race director a more efficient way to restart the race, just to avoid this this situation, because I’m sure they’re not happy with it. And I think on my side as a racer, if you ask me, do you want to race for one more lap and get a chance to make a few more positions? I’ll always be happy to do it, and that’s the way I see racing.”
Oscar Piastri made the point that at least it was better that the rules were followed, and no shortcuts were taken by race control, which was the case in Abu Dhabi in 2021.
“It just seemed a little bit unfortunate in terms of time,” the McLaren driver said of the Silverstone finish. “I heard it was three or four seconds too late, basically, to get a full lap. The rules are there. It becomes very, very messy if you start making exceptions to rules that that you’ve made, and things like that. Clearly, yes, in the future it should be dealt with in a bit more of a slick manner, and obviously we want to finish the race under the green flag conditions if we can. But I’m kind of happy in some way that they followed the rules. Just the execution can be improved.”
By that he means that the unlapping process could be fast-tracked to ensure that races can be resumed as early as possible. It’s a tricky one. In some racing categories, laps are added to ensure a green flag finish, but fuel considerations set by a regulation distance and rules about those distances mean that can’t happen in F1.
There is, however, another way to ensure we get a proper race to the flag, and that’s throw a red flag and wait for the track to be cleared.
There have been a few examples over the years. At the 2011 Monaco GP Vitaly Petrov had a heavy crash at the chicane in the closing laps, and after a few laps behind the safety car the late FIA race director Charlie Whiting red-flagged it after 72 of 78 laps. We then had a restart and a short sprint to the flag. At the time Whiting told me he stopped it because everyone deserved to see a proper finish, and he could see that wouldn’t happen if the safety car continued touting round.
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We also had a very late restart in Baku in 2021, when we had one racing lap, and another in Australia in 2023. So there are some precedents – and it could be argued that Abu Dhabi 2021 should have been red-flagged while Nicholas Latifi’s wrecked car was attended to. We would have had a couple of laps of racing with everyone on fresh rubber, and arguably a fairer fight to the line between Hamilton and Verstappen.
Hamilton, the man who lost out that day in Abu Dhabi and again two weeks ago at Silverstone, believes that stopping to ensure a proper finish – and not because the track is blocked and so on – should be an option.
“Yeah, definitely,” he said when Road & Track asked him about it. “It happened in Australia, I think, one year. It was one of the best races. When you’re in the lead, it’s not a great thing, but it really gives the fans the maximum experience, so I think they have the power for it, and they’ve done it before. But yeah, definitely finishing under the safety car, I would be disappointed. I am disappointed being in the car and as an athlete, so I can only imagine how the fans feel.”
GPDA director George Russell isn’t so sure that it’s the right thing, however.
“I’ve got conflicting views,” he said. “Is it fair for a driver who’s got a 20-second gap to then have a red flag and the race neutralized with three laps remaining? I think if there’s 25% of the race remaining, or 30% of the race remaining, and there’s a red flag, you can kind of maybe accept it. But if there’s three laps to go, and there’s a red flag, similar to Melbourne in 2023… Equally, do I like a race finishing under safety car? No. I’d love to finish the race and have that great big climax, but if there was no incident, there would be no climax anyway in those final stages of the race.”
Whenever the subject has been discussed in a formal setting the teams have said they don’t want late red flags and grid restarts for sprints to the finish, the consensus being that they would represent too much focus on the show and less on the sport. There’s also a fear that we could get another ‘Crashgate,’ with a driver triggering a stoppage that helps his team mate.
In other words in recent years race directors have been actively discouraged from throwing red flags in order to help ensure that we get a racing finish. Perhaps it’s time for that debate to be revisited.