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Well then. Jeddah happened, didn’t it? That surely was a
series of things that happened in Saudi Arabia. As the race unfolded, bit by baffling bit, lots
and lots of questions started screaming from the void after every incident, drama and twist in the
tale. So let’s blast through all the questions and confusion arising from Sassy Masi’s Saudi Circus.
Why did they throw a Safety Car only to stop the race?
On lap 11, Mick Schumacher lost control and span off into the barrier at high speed at turn 22
This prompted the deployment of the Safety car for
three laps before a red flag was thrown on lap 14 to repair the damage to the TecPro barrier
Some people were angry at this as a lot of cars pitted as the Safety Car was called, but those who
didn’t were essentially gifted a free pit stop as they could change tyres under a race suspension.
Most notably, this included Max Verstappen who jumped from 3rd to 1st as if by magic.
However, I don’t think the decision to initially call a Safety Car and then
up it to a red flag is particularly controversial. The race was put under Safety Car initially as
it should be, at minimum, on this narrow track with a crashed car out on circuit.
The car and the debris was all out on the run off area and not actually on the track itself
and Mick Schumacher had confirmed he was OK so there was a fair chance that the race
could be briefly controlled under the Safety Car while the area was cleared.
The Safety Car not only controls the speed but bunches the pack and creates a large gap
of empty track for marshalls to safety work on clearing the car and debris, as well as
inspecting and repairing elements of the circuit. In this period, having attended to Schumacher,
marshalls were able to inspect the damage to the TecPro barrier and confirm
it required extensive repairs. At this point, the red flag was thrown.
We want as many actual racing laps as possible - not 25 minutes behind the Safety Car,
pootling round eating up the race distance. So if we’ve got a long delay ahead,
throw a red flag. That makes sense. Now, some said a red flag should
have been thrown immediately as it was obvious that big repairs were needed.
But in all honesty, until they’ve been given a close look over,
they couldn’t be sure that the barriers couldn’t have been quickly sorted. If it was a quick job,
they could have done a few laps under the Safety Car and then gone straight back to racing.
Going through a Red Flag procedure takes a lot longer, not least due to the fact
that race control has to give at least a ten minute warning before the race is restarted,
every time. Ideally we want to keep the race running within
its scheduled time window as much as possible. So the decisions made at the time they were made
did make some logical sense when trying to run the race as effectively as possible.
But then we inevitably ask - Why can teams change tyres under Red Flag stoppages?
I agree there is a silliness to this rule that has ended up causing more
farce than utility, if we’re honest. The reason cars are able to freely change tyres,
as well as repair and replace parts of the car is the notion that red flag conditions
are likely to have been caused by accident and incident [Show Re g 50.4]
Therefore, it follows that many cars may be sporting damage,
or have tyres at risk from debris caused by on track incident. So it’s deemed safer to give
them a chance to repair their cars and use tyres that haven’t run over shards of carbon fibre.
In practice, this just gives everyone a free and lengthy pitstop. But not everyone may have
damage or risk of cut tyres. So, in an ideal world, it might be better for car changes to
be signed off on a case-by-case basis, but the sheer time weight involved in running
these inspections and giving all the cars the OK or not would massively delay the restart.
And let’s be honest, we want to watch cars racing on track, not the FIA running
up and down the pit lane inspecting cars. I agree it’s contentious though and that other
motorsports don’t have it so I would welcome a review. It allows some cars to freely benefit,
sometimes dramatically, which seems unfair. However, it is not a new rule; it’s been
around for a long while. Hamilton himself benefited from it this season in Imola,
repairing damage to his front wing during a red flag that was causing him significant time loss.
There will always be jokers thrown into a race, like Safety Cars and Red Flags,
and you have to account for and strategise around these possibilities.
Mercedes pitted immediately under the Safety Car. Red Bull waited, and were gifted a Red Flag. It
happens. We knew it might. That’s how it goes. So, yes the rule probably needs looking
at but - just as we know pit stops come cheap under a safety car - we knew there
was a possibility of a red flag coming after that crash. And the teams made their calls.
Should Bottas have been able to hold Verstappen up under the Safety Car?
When the Safety Car was called after Schumacher’s incident the gaps between
Hamilton, Bottas and Verstappen were about 2.6 and 1.3 seconds respectively,
but Bottas slowed right down, falling about eight seconds behind Hamilton’s lead.
This gave Merc the opportunity to pit both its cars without delay but also in holding Max back
it took away Red Bull’s ability to fight Merc in the pit stops and potentially gain a position.
At minimum, this was pretty unsporting of Valtteri as he knows Max isn’t allowed to overtake so is
just artificially impeding him and stealing precious seconds from Red Bull’s strategy.
Article 48.5 of the Sporting Regulations states that under a Safety Car “no car may be driven
unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner which could be deemed
potentially dangerous”. So it’s quite surprising Bottas wasn’t brought up on this, and it’s not
the first time this has happened either. The wording is just grey enough to allow
some wiggle room in interpretation. What is ‘unnecessarily slowly’? I think we can argue
Bottas had no necessity in slowing down, but I don’t decide where that line is.
Perhaps, in the end, Verstappen deciding not to pit and thus inheriting the lead of the
race led to the stewards ignoring the incident in an already chaotic race situation as technically
it made no difference to Verstappen’s race. Except, perhaps Max was going to pit had he
been able to keep the gap. After all, if Bottas had held position close to Hamilton, there was
a very big change that Verstappen would jump him in the pits as he stacked behind Lewis. Perhaps
Bottas unwittingly got Verstappen on pole for the restart by faffing about in the way he did.
But yes, Bottas shouldn’t have done that in my opinion, from a purely sporting perspective.
I’d like to see that tightened up in future as I don’t think cars should be allowed to
abuse Safety Car procedures more than necessary. Speaking of which: Was Hamilton allowed to fall so
far behind Verstappen at the restart? At the first restart on lap 16,
Verstappen led the cars to the grid and Hamilton behind kept dropping back beyond
a distance of ten car lengths to Verstappen. This annoyed Max, who came on the radio twice
to complain how it wasn’t allowed. Hamilton falling back potentially
increasing the chances of Verstappen’s brakes and tyres cooling down before the start and
giving others a better chance into turn one. Now, it isn’t technically true that Hamilton
did any thing against the rules. The ten car lengths rules applies only to following in a
Safety Car train, but the warm up lap to a standing start does not include this rule,
unless they are led out by the Safety Car. And only then, the rule applied
while behind the Safety Car. [show all rules] So Hamilton’s behaviour was technically legal.
Tactical? Yes. Mind games? Maybe. But legal. Next question: Why did Masi negotiate the grid
order with Red Bull at the second restart? So, at the first restart, Hamilton got a
much better start on the inside but Verstappen braked later and barrelled around the outside,
overtaking Hamilton off track and in rejoining he compromised Hamiltons exit of turn two,
which allowed Ocon into second place. The race was then immediately red flagged
again for a second crash so we went back into suspension and prepared for the next restart.
At this point the restart order would have been Verstappen, Ocon, Hamilton.
Race Director, Michael Masi then got on the radio to Red Bull and essentially offered
them the opportunity to drop Verstappen behind Hamilton on the grid, in lieu of investigation.
Red Bull could volunteer to put Max third on the grid behind Ocon and Hamilton based on Max’s off
track manoeuvre at turn one at the first restart. At this point, Max was not yet under investigation
by the stewards so essentially, this amounted to Masi saying ‘if you give the position back
to Hamilton, we won’t have to look at it any further. But if you decided to stay in first
you might well be investigated and penalised’ So Red Bull took the place drop for the restart.
This struck a bit of a raw nerve with some people as it looked like Masi was
negotiating out a penalty with a team instead of just laying down the law.
But to me it seemed no different to encouraging a driver to hand back a
place after an unlawful overtake as we see many times during a season. The only difference was,
the race didn’t continue here so Max couldn’t opt to hand the position back. So here,
Red Bull were offered the ability to sort this out quickly and quietly and avoid the need for
protracted stewards investigations and penalties. And that’s a good thing, I think.
We got straight back to the on track action instead of potentially driving around with Max
having a five second penalty over his head and more arguments between teams and stewards. It
was all sorted out and we got back to racing. I liked it, honestly. And I liked that it was
broadcast so we understood it. Which is a lot more than we can say for MANY of the
stewarding and direction across this weekend. And, as a bonus, Max managed to steal both
positions back immediately at the restart in a thrilling move we’d have never had the
opportunity to see had they just let him start on pole with an ongoing investigation.
What on earth happened with Hamilton crashing into the back of Max?
So this all started at the beginning of lap 37 when Lewis went for an overtake on
Max into turn 1, using DRS and slipstream to pull out much faster down the outside.
Max, in defence, braked late and forced both of them off track in order to keep his lead.
Max was then told by the team to give the position back to Lewis which somehow resulted
in a clumsy incident where he slowed down and Hamilton drove clumsily into the back of him.
So what was that all about? Well, Max was told by Red Bull
to give the place back “strategically”, so he decided to offer the position swap
just before the DRS detection line into the long start-finish straight, so that he could hopefully
grab the position right back again under DRS. We saw something similar a few laps later,
in fact, where Verstappen again gave Lewis the position at the same point,
only to immediately steal it back again and waltz off with DRS power into the lead.
But that didn’t fly - and there is precedent for that. If we look at Spa 2008, Hamilton
overtook Raikkonen off track, then slowed to let Kimi back past but immediately overtook
him again into the next corner. This landed Hamilton with a 25 second penalty (the smallest
available at the time) as the stewards decided he hasn’t properly given the position back.
But anyway, back to lap 37 at Jeddah. Verstappen slows in the fast final section and instead of
holding firm to the side of the track, he does wander a little from right-to-left-to-right.
Not dramatically but enough to confuse Hamilton in the moment.
At this point, Hamilton hasn’t been told he was being let by and he hesitated,
wondering if there was any tactical stuff going on from Verstappen. And as he slowed
up behind Verstappen, Max braked - and this is the key part of the stewards documentation.
Because Verstappen braked suddenly with 69 bars of pressure and 2.4 g of deceleration this was deemed
to be the predominant cause of the collision. Reading the stewards decision, it’s clear from
their chats with the drivers that both of them were fighting over that DRS detection point,
neither wanting to cross first and make themselves vulnerable.
So it’s all a bit of a mess, honestly but I can see why Max got a ten second
penalty for the erratic braking. The track is narrow and fast so you really need to be
clear in communicating you’re letting a car past and hold a steady pace and position.
Or accidents might happen, as they did. So maybe we need a bit more clarity and
formality over handing positions back. I mean, you’d hope we wouldn’t and that drivers could
handle it responsibly but when you’re fighting for a title, drivers will take any inch they can get.
So maybe you just officially shouldn’t be allowed to concede positions close to DRS detection. Or
you should have to wait two corners before repassing. Just to take away
the incentive to muck around as we’ve seen all drivers do under any opportunity given them.
So after one attempt to hand the position back which resulted in a crash, and a second attempt
that wasn’t really an attempt at all, the stewards just gave Max a five second penalty for the dodgy
turn 1 overtake and dusted their hands of it. Noticeably, though, when speaking of the Lap 37,
Turn 1 incident that started this whole ‘position handing back saga’ Max said he
was surprised at the penalty as ‘it was fine in Brazil’ to make sure a defensive mood…
which is exactly why not investigating his move in Brazil properly was so frustrating! ANYWAY
Finally: Does Max have a mandate to cause a crash in Abu Dhabi and force a double DNF?
I’ve seen this chat flying around and I don’t like it.
Max and Lewis are equal on points, but Max is ahead with one more win. So if
they both DNF in the finale, Max wins the title. No one wants to see this. I mean, I don’t think we
wanted to see the farce we saw in Jeddah. I was looking forward to hard, clean, tactical racing
and we got a series of arguments instead. But we have one final race to get that nice
clean fight between two incredible drivers. And, for most of the season
it has been brilliant stuff, with only a smattering of questionable moments.
I’ll say this here and now. I do not believe at all that Max would deliberately instigate
a crash to seal the title. And I’m holding that belief until absolutely proved otherwise.
Now he clearly races very… hard. And sometimes in my opinion, he’s a little too hard. I should
have phrased this differently. Anyway, my point is sometimes, for me, he’s a bit too elbows out and
strays across the line of legal, rigorous defence. And it’s clear he has less incentive to yield
in a battle with Hamilton as he has much less to lose from a crash than Lewis does.
So, sure, he’ll use that as an advantage which they fight for track position.
I think that’s been clear for a while now. But I also believe he’ll want to fight fair. Fair,
but tough. Unyielding. Aggressive. And I won’t be surprised to see him squeeze the limit on that.
So here’s hoping for a spectacular finale. A new,
fast, track layout in Abu Dhabi awaits. We’ve had a cracking season to let’s sign it off in style.
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