The FIA have officially confirmed an important change for the Safety Car rules as a result of the events that took place in the final lpas of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the Yas Marina circuit.
In the final round of the previous championship, Race Director Michael Masi decided to release only the cars between the two Championship contenders Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes, and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
This created the perfect opportunity for Max Verstappen to overtake his title rival on the last lap of the race after changing his Pirelli tyres and using new softs as compared to Lewis Hamilton’s old hard tyres.
Inevitably, Mercedes was not happy with how the final laps of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix were managed and lodged a protest of the decision immediately after the event. As a result, the FIA informed that a full investigation of the events would be undertaken.
The results of the investigation includes a restructuring of the FIA’s Formula 1 operations as well as a revision to the sporting regulations regarding Safety Car restarts.
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The new regulations aim to streamline the restarts on clarifying what will trigger the Safety Car period to end and return to the pits. Under previous regulations, racing would resume “once the last car has passed the leader”.
Under the revised regulations the Safety Car period will come to an end “once the message ‘lapped cars may now overtake’ has been sent to all competitors”.
The circuit should also have been declared safe by the clerk of the course before this process is undertaken.
Once the message is displayed, lapped cars are able to overtake and the Safety Car will return to the pits. This has been done with the goal of reducing the amount of time it will take for backmarkers to pass the leaders, or allow the teams more notice of racing to be resumed.
The new regulations will come into force for the first race of the 2022 Formula 1 championship in Bahrain.
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