The debate on the F1 safety car rules was reopened at the Italian Grand Prix last Sunday, after the race was not restarted following Daniel Ricciardo’s retirement a few laps from the end, finishing behind to the Safety Car.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he thought the race should have been stopped with the red flag to ensure it ended with at least one lap of the race, and to avoid ending up under a Safety Car regime.
But McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl revealed plans to try to stop Safety Car arrivals were discussed in the wake of Abu Dhabi last year, only teams failed to find a solution. .
“After what happened last year in Abu Dhabi, there has been a lot of discussions between the FIA, Formula 1 and all the teams involved to see how to change the rules to make sure that the races never end in Safety Car. “explained Seidl after the race.
“But despite the fact that the FIA and Formula 1 pushed us to find solutions, it was us teams, and more or less everyone, who did not accept any changes because we could not agree on a better solution, which was still fair in terms of results. sporty”.
“For this reason, I believe we simply have to accept that, unfortunately, situations like today’s can happen.”
The Safety Car Kevin Magnussen, Haas VF-22
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Seidl said the FIA and Formula 1 “tried hard” to find a way to change the rules to ensure that races always end with the green flag, but there were too many concerns from teams that the show was privileged over the sporting aspect.
“We just want a solution that is also fair from a sporting point of view and that does not suddenly end up in danger,” said Seidl. “And that’s why we haven’t been able to agree on anything better than what we have in place.”
“In the end we voted that the rules remain as they always have been. As far as I remember, every single team voted in this way. Therefore, I believe that the matter is closed.”
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem held a summit with race marshals and F1 team managers on Monday after the Monza race to discuss a number of sporting issues, probably including safety car rules.
A possible option to ensure that races always end with a green flag would be to write in the regulation that the red flag is automatically displayed if the Safety Car is needed a few laps from the end.
Motorsport.com submitted the suggestion to Alpine’s sports manager, Alan Permane, who said the proposal “looks great”, but there would inevitably be “unwanted consequences”.
“But it has happened before, we did it in Baku last year, and it was good,” said Permane.
“I think it can be written in the regulation. It doesn’t seem absurd to me. I’m sure there will be something we won’t like, but after all we are here to show off. And the Monza finale was clearly not acceptable.”
“It’s not at all an ideal ending, nobody wants to end up under the Safety Car regime. It’s a shame, a real shame for the fans. We didn’t give our best, that’s for sure.”
“But maybe it’s not the case that every time there’s a Safety Car with 50km to go or something, the red flag is displayed. Maybe we just need to make sure the Safety Car procedures are correct, and we have worked to try to make them faster “.
“The problem is that with the Safety Cars later in the race, there are laps. We have had a long discussion about how to improve the situation, and there are certainly many unwanted consequences of changing this procedure.”
Additional information by Jonathan Noble
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