The discussions regarding Formula 1’s safety car rules once again resurfaced after last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix at the Monza circuit. The GP finished under the Safety Car after Daniel Ricciardo was forced to stop his car on the side of the track due to a power unit issue and his McLaren car could not be removed in time to restart the Italian Grand Prix.
Despite the fact that race control strictly followed the rules this time – as opposed to how the events unfolded in the last race of the 2021 Formula 1 season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where the final-lap restart decided the winner of the F1 world championship, fans and media left the Monza track disappointed for not being able to enjoy a fight for the win in the last few laps.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner admitted he would have liked the Italian Grand Prix to be red-flagged and therefore give drivers at least one final lap to battle on track, instead of ending the race behind the safety car, despite the fact that this outcome favoured his team.
However, McLaren F1 team principal Andreas Seidl admitted that attempts to put an end to safety car finishes had been evaluated following the controversial end of the 2021 Formula 1 Abu Dhabi, only for teams to fail to agree on the ideal option for this matter:
“After what happened last year in Abu Dhabi, there were a lot of discussions between FIA, Formula 1 and all the teams involved in order to see how the rules could be modified in order to make sure that races never end under a safety car.” – the German motorsport engineer and manager explained – “But despite FIA and Formula 1 really pushing us all to find solutions, it was down to us as the teams, and pretty much to all teams not agreeing to any change because we couldn’t agree on any better solution, which is then also still a fair solution in terms of the sporting outcome. That’s why, I guess, we simply have to accept that, unfortunately, situations like today can happen.” – he added.
Andreas Seidl pointed out that the FIA and Formula 1 “tried really hard” to identify a solution to change the regulation and therefore make sure the events always finish with on track action, but several teams expressed their worries that the show would be prioritised over the sporting aspect:
“We only want a solution that’s also fair on the sporting side and not suddenly ending up in jeopardy. And that’s why we couldn’t agree on anything better than what we have in place. In the end, we voted that the regulations should stay as they have been. As far as I remember every single team voted like that. And therefore, I think let’s close the subject.” – the McLaren boss added.
Emirati former rally driver and current president of the FIA, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, held a summit with race officials and Formula 1 bosses the day after the Italian Grand Prix in order to talk about a range of sporting topics, as the safety car rules also on the table during the discussions.
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A possible solution to prevent such outcomes as was seen at Monza would be to state in the regulation that an automatic red flag is shown if the safety car is needed within a certain distance of the end of the Grand Prix.
When asked about this option, Alpine sporting chief Alan Permane said it “sounds great” but there would inevitably be some “unintended consequences. But it’s happened before, we did it in Baku last year, and it was good. I guess you can write that into the regs. It doesn’t sound crazy. I’m sure there’ll be something that we don’t like about it, but after all, we’re here to put a show on. And [the Monza finish] clearly wasn’t acceptable. It’s not an ideal finish at all, no one wants to finish under the safety car. It’s miserable, really miserable for the fans. We didn’t show our best, that’s for sure. But maybe we don’t need to knee jerk to say every time it’s a safety car within 50km of the end or something, you throw a red flag. Maybe we just need to make sure we get those safety car procedures right, and we have been working to try and make them quicker. The problem is with safety cars later in the race, you’ve got these lapped cars. We’ve had endless discussions about how to improve that situation, and there are definitely many unintended consequences of changing that procedure.” – Alan Permane added.
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