Some Formula 1 drivers believe fortunate near-misses in the Australian Grand Prix have further exposed two safety issues that need addressing.<\/p>\n
A popular concern during pre-season testing was about the potential for big differences in race starts between drivers leading to incidents on the first lap.<\/p>\n
The engines have turbos that need to be spun up to avoid a lag between throttle input and power delivery, hence the extended period of revving just before the start itself.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s an inexact science because while there is the new five-second pre-start procedure, and the period of the red lights coming on one by one, there is then a final hold before the lights are extinguished at the discretion of the start lights operator.<\/p>\n
Working out exactly how long to rev the engine to spin the turbo, and how much to rev it without then having the wrong throttle input for the launch to avoid wheelspin, is therefore very tricky.<\/p>\n
Ferrari\u2019s engine has a smaller turbo so is less vulnerable to this, hence the mega starts we saw in testing and indeed in the Melbourne race. But there was another variable too.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc, who got a great launch from fourth and was able to dive into the lead on the brakes in Turn 1, reckoned the starting lights operator was being \u201cquite cheeky\u201d with a short hold before the lights went out that \u201ctook everybody by surprise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The first race start being so varied was also not helped by several drivers reporting much lower battery levels than expected after the formation lap.<\/p>\n
George Russell and Max Verstappen, for example, were baffled that they didn\u2019t have any electric power to deploy – this doesn\u2019t happen immediately as it only kicks in after 50km\/h, but it explains why it wasn\u2019t just the initial launches that were different it was the next phase of the start too.<\/p>\n
In all the chaos, we had a change of lead, big swings four or five places throughout the order, and Fernando Alonso even rocketing from 17th to 10th in his hamstrung Honda-powered Aston Martin.<\/p>\n
Franco Colapinto, meanwhile, was lucky to even still be running. He somehow avoided a catastrophic crash as he dodged Liam Lawson\u2019s slow-moving Racing Bulls at the very last second, by squeezing through an impossible gap and saving F1 from the worst possible scenario.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the start I almost had a massive shunt with Liam as he was stuck on the grid,\u201d Colapinto explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was pretty lucky to be honest. Things like that happen but it was just very dangerous and quite sketchy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad I got through that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drivers further back being blind to slow or stationary cars at the start is one of the most unsafe situations possible, and is exactly what some warned about in pre-season.<\/p>\n
After all, race start safety was one of three concerns McLaren team principal Andrea Stella had expressed after testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the concern remains today, the start was a bit of a near miss,\u201d Stella said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were huge speed differential on the grid. We can hope for the best or we can just do something further to make sure that we reduce this speed differential.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very technical matter. I don’t think we should go too far into \u2018we should do this or we should do that\u2019. My appeal in a way, my call is to say we should do more.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep attention on the start because at some stage that will become a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other safety concerns<\/p>\n
Some safety concerns emerged beyond just the start, including speed differentials on straights between cars that are still deploying energy and those that run out of it.<\/p>\n
Lando Norris warned: \u201cDepending what people do, you can have a 30, 40, 50km\/h speed [differential] and when someone hits someone at that speed you’re going to fly and you’re going to go over the fence and you’re going to do a lot of damage to yourself and maybe to others, and that’s a pretty horrible thing to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n
To state the obvious, that implied \u2018car in the crowd\u2019 warning is a very serious one to make.<\/p>\n
There was another more subtle issue too. Some drivers were already wary of the impact of following very closely through the kinked section in the middle of the lap that has a straight mode zone where the car\u2019s active aero is in low-downforce mode.<\/p>\n
It was this concern that led to the FIA deciding to get rid of that zone before FP3, only to do a U-turn and reinstate it before the session began due to a backlash from teams.<\/p>\n
Carlos Sainz called it \u201creally dangerous\u201d on the opening lap, and later on when racing someone else.<\/p>\n
Even race winner Russell, who experienced the phenomenon in his fight with Leclerc, had an opinion on this.<\/p>\n
He found some of the racing “a bit sketchy” and actually wants the FIA to change the straight mode so that the front wing angle doesn\u2019t reduce as aggressively.<\/p>\n
This would make it potentially more sketchy in terms of the rear being light and moving around, but Russell found there is just not enough front grip in the current set-up and it was \u201clike my front wing wasn\u2019t working\u201d.<\/p>\n
He believes that could be an easy fix, but the same can\u2019t be said for some of the other fundamental things exposed by F1\u2019s 2026 race debut.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Formula 1 drivers believe fortunate near-misses in the Australian Grand Prix have further exposed two safety issues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-522559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}