Coulthard Pushes for Revised F1 Safety Car Rules After Procession-Like British Grand Prix

After a lackluster British Grand Prix concluded behind the safety car, former Formula 1 driver David Coulthard sharply criticized the sport’s current protocols.

Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast, the 13-time grand prix winner argued that the safety car procedure is needlessly protracted and endorsed a suggestion to automatically red-flag races if incidents occur in the final ten laps.

The safety car was summoned at Silverstone after Red Bull’s Max Verstappen ran off at Stowe corner on lap 48 of 52. As Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton dived into the pits for new tyres, Mercedes’ George Russell remained on track, inheriting second place from the seven-time world champion. The expected restart, however, never materialized.

Although an on-screen graphic erroneously hinted at a final-lap dash, the race finished under safety car conditions because too few laps remained to complete the required restart sequence. Leclerc took the chequered flag before a disappointed crowd, with Russell second and Hamilton third on the podium.

“So dull and so kind of something that we must be able to find a way around,” Coulthard explained. “We have an almost 6km race track. We have an incident in one corner of that race track. A safety car is deployed pretty quickly once they’ve decided that the car is not going to be able to get out of the gravel.

“We then spend a few laps waiting on the pack catching the safety car, and then once it’s with the safety car, we then wait for the race director to tell the drivers that they can overtake the safety car. It all just takes way too long.

“We’re Formula 1. We change wheels in 2.2 seconds, or the world record previously was 1.8 seconds. We develop the fastest racing cars in the world. As soon as the safety car is out there, they could start that process.

“Because you know with the GPS data where the cars are on track, as long as people respect the speed at which they’re going through the double yellow area, it’s completely within our capability to do that whole process faster.

The Safety Car

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“It would have avoided Abu Dhabi ’21, and it would have avoided what we saw there at the weekend.”

When co-host Will Buxton floated the idea of automatically red-flagging a race following a late incident inside the final ten laps, Coulthard responded: “Yeah, I think that is a solution, and I think that would give them the chance to reset everything.

“I also think it’s not beyond the capabilities of Formula 1 to do it on track and to do it quickly. There are only 22 cars, and that’s assuming they’re all running at that point. It isn’t that complicated. These are the best drivers in the world.

“They drive at 200 miles an hour, a few feet, inches, metres, centimetres, whatever you want to use off the back of another car. And yet somehow when there’s an incident in one corner, it’s like they’re kindergarten kids and we have to really treat them in a way that you’re not allowed to do certain things.”

Source link