But it’s yet another unnecessary and messy mistake from race control in conditions and on a day it needed to be better, whether to protect the safety of the drivers or protect the integrity of the championship. In the grand scheme of everything that happened on Sunday and in the context of Verstappen’s enormous points lead, it seems like a trivial matter, particularly given only two positions changed on the final lap. Some simple communication and clarification wouldn’t have gone astray to prevent the championship-deciding race to end as a fizzer on international feed of the race.
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The FIA will argue the regulations are clear - and they are, if you were troubled enough to read through the 117 pages of the sporting regulations to find the single line explaining it - it’s clearly unacceptable to have left TV commentators at a minimum to fumble through the entire race until Johnny Herbert was told in his earpiece during the post-race interviews that Verstappen had sealed the deal.
At the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix model Winnie Harlow was told to wave the chequered flag one lap early in a miscommunication with race control. The problem is that Verstappen appeared to be shown the chequered flag one lap too early, on the lap the clock ticked down to zero. They’ll then go around one more time on the final lap, at the end of which the chequered flag will be shown and the race will be over. The regulations state that when the race clock expires, the lap the leader is on at that moment becomes the penultimate lap. A grand prix is limited to two hours of racing in a three-hour window, which means the sport had around 45 minutes of racing left by the time the action got back underway. There was a delay of more than two hours between the race being red flagged and then resumed behind the safety car. The FIA can’t use Gasly’s mistake to shield itself from the significantly more dangerous decision to prematurely deploy the recovery truck and put him and the marshals in harm’s way.Īfter the race the governing body released a short statement saying it would undertake an investigation into the events.Īny other governance issue pales in comparison to risking the life of a driver, but in an unfortunate postscript, there’s also something of a question mark over the ending of the race under time-certain conditions. The FIA penalised him 20 seconds and two penalty points for subsequently speeding under red flags later on the lap - he hit 250 kilometres an hour on the back straight, which can only be regarded as reckless.īut that can’t distract from the more egregious error of creating an unsafe circuit environment in already unsafe conditions.
Of course Gasly must accept some blame for travelling quite so fast in the conditions - another lesson from 2014 was that drivers need stricter rules regarding speed during caution periods - even if at the moment he approached the crash scene he was technically within the safety car rules. “I came past two metres on the right - two metres away from passing away today, which I don’t think is acceptable as a race driver.” “It was a dramatic incident (in 2014) and I think on that day we learned we don’t want to see any tractors in this kind of condition. “It is just not disrespectful towards Jules, towards his family, towards his loved ones and all of us. Jules Bianchi died after strriking a tractor in 2014 Source: Getty Images “I don’t understand how eight years later, in similar conditions, we can still see a crane, not even on the gravel but on the racing line. “We lost Jules eight years ago in similar conditions, with a crane on track or in the gravel,” Gasly said.
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Although rules have been tightened to prevent that exact series of events from unfolding again, the fundamental lesson clearly that bad weather, speed and foreign-object hazards don’t mix clearly hasn’t been learnt. It ultimately lost him his life.Īt the heart of that sorry episode was excess speed in wet conditions with external vehicles on track. It was only eight years ago, in 2014, that Jules Bianchi had the crash with a recovery vehicle at this track in similarly treacherous conditions.
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