Abu Dhabi 2021.<\/a> The context there was that it had been agreed that it was, in ideal circumstances, preferable for races not to end under a safety car.<\/p>\nThe problem in that race was that the race director at the time set about trying to ensure the race ended under a green flag, thinking that was the right thing to do, but he made a series of mistakes in doing so, including ignoring the rules.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen people say that the race director is free to operate the safety car as they wish. That’s a misinterpretation – they are free to operate it as they wish under the rules as they stand.<\/p>\n
That’s what Michael Masi got wrong in Abu Dhabi. The race director can’t just make up the rules. Otherwise, why have them?<\/p>\n
Now, yes, the race director on Sunday at Silverstone could have chosen to red-flag the race when Verstappen crashed at Stowe. Some may well have preferred him to.<\/p>\n
But if Verstappen’s incident had happened on, say, lap 25 rather than lap 48, would it have been a red flag? Almost certainly not. <\/p>\n
So, why should it be a red flag with four laps to go just because the race might end under the safety car?<\/p>\n
There is a question of sporting integrity here. Any choice by a race director in this situation has the potential to change the result.<\/p>\n
In this case, George Russell did not stop for tyres, and he gained a place as a result of it. Had the race been red-flagged, everyone would have been free to change tyres, there would have been a re-start. Positions could well have changed again.<\/p>\n
Who is to say which of these situations is right or wrong, preferable or not? And even the drivers can be conflicted on this, depending on their own personal situation.<\/p>\n
Race-winner Charles Leclerc said: ‘It’s not great for the fans that are here around the track. In the helmet, I was kind of happy that there was not a restart to keep that win.”<\/p>\n
Russell said: “Of course it’s a shame for any race to finish under the safety car. But then you go back to Abu Dhabi ’21, and that is just how racing goes.<\/p>\n
“Nobody can plan for somebody to have an incident, and the way F1 deal with it and FIA deal with it shouldn’t be any different at the end of the race compared to the start of the race.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, there was a lot of chat post-Abu Dhabi ’21. If you actually look at the number of races that have finished under the safety car over the past 20 years, it’s not actually a lot. So, it is a shame, but what can you do? I don’t think it should be different.”<\/p>\n
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said: “Sometimes it doesn’t give for the most exciting finale. Certainly from a spectacle standpoint, everybody would have loved to see Lewis (Hamilton) on a soft (tyre) against us and maybe fighting with Leclerc. But this is a sport. Show follows sport and not the other way around.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Leclerc added a second win for Ferrari in three races at a dramatic British Grand Prix at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-785720","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\/785720","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=785720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}