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Japan! Suzuka! It’s back! Sort of. Bit of an awkward Sunday, all in all, wasn’t it,
but we avoided the full horrors of Belgium 2021 when we got no racing at all (unless
you look at the official records) and we did in fact get half a race in the end.
So I’m going to be really annoying in this video and have a little bit of a
main on two key issues, and you probably know what they’re going to be… but FIRST
Big congratulations to Max Verstappen on winning the 2021 Drivers’ Championship.
You can’t say he didn’t deserve it, he’s been phenomenal all year, extracting pace in ways
his rivals just couldn’t. We are truly in the Max Verstappen era at the moment and everyone else is
going to have to step it up in a big way if they want to compete with him.
And he did it in sensational style, absolutely wiping the floor with everyone else in terms
of race pace. He seemed to find grip where others just couldn’t.
But it was a bit of a damp squib in terms of being able to celebrate that moment of claiming
the championship, partly due it it being won due to a Leclerc corner cut penalty and partly
due to a lot of confusion over championship points. But we’ll get to that in a second.
Because firstly, we really have to discuss the recovery vehicle - the tractor, crane,
truck, whatever you want to call it - being out on an active and dangerously wet track.
Because no one was happy about it. So to set up the scene, the race began in
wet conditions with all drivers on intermediate tyres. From the formation lap it was clear the
track was WET. The spray was high and thick, turning the air into an opaque, blinding fog.
And the spray was kicked up from the standing water. And standing water causes aquaplaning.
Aquaplaning is essentially when the cars’ tyres skim across the surface of the water
like a boat instead of pushing through the water and gripping the actual tarmac below.
The car loses almost all grip and all control. And that’s what happened to Sainz on lap one on
the accelerating right hander after the hairpin. He lost control, and hit the barrier, sending bits
of debris and advertising across the track. A Safety Car was called so that the FIA could
neutralise the track and deal with the incident. Meanwhile, Pierre Gasly had started from the
pitlane after a late rear wing change. So he was already a bit behind the pack,
but then collected some of the strewn barrier debris from Sainz’s crash so had to pit AGAIN
at the end of lap one. This meant he was way behind the Safety Car train and had to catch up,
so his pace was faster than other cars on track. In catching the Safety Car he went past the
scene of the accident were he found a recovery vehicle on the track dealing with Sainz’s car.
In fact there was a marshall on track too. So here’s the problem. You probably know I
don’t like recovery vehicles, like tractors or cranes or trucks, being out on the track while
cars are circulating nearby but I can ge nerally cope if it’s well controlled as I’ll get too.
But here we had a track where we knew aquaplaning was a serious issue. People
can easily make mistakes out there even at reduced speeds. Visibility was a nightmare,
you tell me that this vehicle is easily visible before it’s potentially too late.
So the chances of an F1 car losing control, going a bit wide or plain just not-seeing-the-truck and
crashing into it were a lot higher than normal. And we’ve had an accident with a truck at this
very track, and that time the truck was way deep into the
gravel trap. This one was -on the circuit-. Now, was Gasly going too fast? Yes. No question,
and he was penalised for it. Under Safety Car conditions, under double yellows,
under Red Flag conditions and passing by scenes of accidents you have to
slow down and drive responsibly. No question. But. Whether Gasly was going too fast or not was
an entirely separate issue to whether the truck should have been there in the first place. F1 cars
can still lose it at much lower speeds and can still have nasty accidents at much lower speeds.
A collision between a recovery vehicle and an F1 is so dangerous because the low height of an
F1 car and the high floor of a recovery vehicle means a collision could result
in devastating head injuries. This is one of the reasons we have a halo on the cars
But a halo isn’t a be-all, end-all solution. In fact,
in the Bianchi accident investigation report from the FIA, the accident
where Bianchi died from head injuries in a collision with a tractor, it says, quote:
“There is simply insufficient impact structure on a F1 car to absorb the energy of such an impact
without either destroying the driver’s survival cell, or generating non-survivable decelerations.
It is considered fundamentally wrong to try and make an impact between a racing car and
a large and heavy vehicle survivable. It is imperative to prevent a car ever hitting the
crane and/or the marshals working near it.” Meaning: It is not feasibly to hope to make
collisions between F1 cars and recovery vehicles safe. The best thing - the most important
thing - you must do is all but eliminate the odds of a collision ever happening.
And in the wet, in terrible visibility. It was too high.
And look, it wasn’t just Gasly that went past the truck because he was late to the Safety Car train.
The whole train went past. Extremely closely. And while the train was going much slower than
Gasly, they weren’t going SLOW. And we already know that area was ripe for aquaplaning because
that’s why there was a crash there in the first place. So a Safety Car does not
remove the chance of someone losing control. Especially with marshalls working on track,
the risk isn’t worth the haste. OK, but I get it. You can’t stop the
race every time you need to recover a vehicle. Sometimes it’s dry and/or conditions are safer,
but the risk is still there. So what do we do when we need these big dangerous vehicles?
In this case, I think it’s clear what was needed was to stop the race before bringing
the tractor out. That much should be obvious as they did indeed stop the race shortly
afterwards. They should have waited. But in general, I think this is a fair
plan of action to step through: One: Do we need to stop the race
first? If so, do. If not… Two: Neutralise the race
completely. And by completely I mean all cars need to be behind the Safety Car,
for reasons that will become clear, shortly. On this point it’s worth asking if we should start
closing the pit lane during Safety Cars anyway. It kind of messes with strategies and throws too
much random luck around. But also it slows down the process of getting behind the Safety Car.
Three: Communicate to the drivers exactly where the recovery vehicle is going to be.
Again I need to ask why F1 doesn’t yet have a system where Race Control can speak to all
drivers via radio to issue safety instructions. It happens in other sports and it’s super useful and
effective. “Attention all drivers, there will be a recovery vehicle on track on the left hand side
of turn 12. Keep right and drive with caution” Four: Only then do you bring out the tractor.
Five: You then use the Safety Car and Race Control Radio to control the pace and positioning through
this zone. If the Safety Car needs to move at a snails pace for one corner, then so be it. And
Race Control can tell the drivers “No weaving or sudden changes of speed between turns 11 and 13,
follow Safety Car on the right of the track”. Easy, safe. The race keeps going.
Also as a final point, I think these recovery vehicles need to be mandated to have flashing
lights of a minimum brightness so they are at least as visible through spray as F1 rain lights.
I hope you agree I’m not being over zealous on this. There is a way to get everything done safely
and this was all rather shambolic and dangerous and we’re all grateful there wasn’t an accident.
We’d be rightly furious and upset if there was. The second big topic of shambles
was the Race Points situation. Again, I’ll set the scene. So first of all, with
four races and a sprint after this race giving a maximum 112 points, Verstappen needed to leave
Japan with a 112 point lead over Perez and Leclerc to secure the title. He already had 108 points
over Leclerc, so he needed to score 8 points more than him this round. This was a potentially
championship deciding race so of course everyone was keeping a close eye on the points situation.
Secondly, once the race was red flagged after lap one, we didn’t get going again for over two hours,
so ended up with a time limited race and just over 40 minutes of running, so naturally we
weren’t going to get the whole 53 laps. But that’s OK, we have a new system for
points if a race is only partially completed. It was brought in after the Belgian race in 2021
ran for only two laps behind the safety car and awarded half points - something
a lot of people thought was ridiculous. So the everyone, including the media
and the teams and the official social media teams for a lot of F1’s platforms
were working from this system whereby: If over two laps have been completed,
but less than 25% race distance is completed (which is 14 laps in Japan), the points at
six for the winner, down to one for 5th place. If we complete between 25 and 50% of the race
(between 14 and 26 laps), column 2 points are awarded, so that’s
13 points to 1 point for the top 9. And if we complete 50 to 75% of the race (that’s
27 to 39 laps), then column 3 points are awarded, with 19 for the winner down to 1 for 10th place.
And if they do over 40 laps then full points would be awarded.
So they completed the first two laps and we were in column 1 territory.
They did 14 laps and we moved into column 2. And actually we did get all the way to 28 laps,
moving past half distance so column 3 points were expected. 19 for Max, 14 for Leclerc in second.
That’s only 5 points difference, not the 8 he needed, so no championship celebrations were had.
But then Leclerc got a 5 second penalty and dropped to 3rd. OK, so that’s a gap
of 7 points. Still not 8, no championship secured. But then came the bombshell. The FIA were awarding
full points for the race. Something no one had been expecting. Max suddenly had a 10 points
advantage over Leclerc and secured the title. He only realised when chilling in the cool down
room. Hardly the massive celebration we’re used to seeing as a championship winner crosses the line
and joins his team in raucous jubilation. So what happened?
Well. The FIA were technically correct. Which is, as you know, the best kind of correct. But
also the whole thing was extremely stupid. So why were they correct? Because the rules
stated these columns of points for partially finished races only apply to races that were
stopped prematurely. All these points refer to the suspension of a race,
through red flags due to dangerous situations. They don’t apply to races which start so late
they become timed races. There’s a three hour window to fit the race into and if you start
the race over two hours late, naturally you don’t all the laps in. In this case,
the FIA considers the race to have been brought to a stop naturally with a normal chequered
flag. Which I guess is true. But it’s stupid. Why? Because the whole reason these points strata
were brought in was because everyone said it was ridiculous to give drivers half points for just
two laps of racing, as happened in Belgian 2021. So in theory, this doesn’t solve the problem
at all, because you could start the race with 5 minutes before the time runs out,
get two laps in and award full points. Incredible. The FIA have managed to construct a regulation
that fails to solve the problem of scaling points to the length of the race completely.
The second reason it was all very silly is that it wasn’t communicated properly. The media,
the commentators, the journalists, the teams and the drivers - even Max Verstappen himself,
were going off the assumption we’d use the partial points system. If that has happened
there’s been a failure of communication. Yes, F1 briefly flashed up the full points
breakdown on the timing tower partway through the race,
but the thing is: F1 often accidentally flash up incorrect information on the timing tower.
It happens. They’re not perfect. So we assumed it was in error, and they hadn’t updated the system.
They needed to put a proper message on screen and on the timing computers
confirming full points would be awarded so everyone knew when we crossed the line,
and when Leclerc got penalised what it meant. So the team could celebrate. So the fans could.
Instead, we got to watch a bunch of professional F1 teams and journalists wandering around asking
“did Max win? I don’t know? Did he? It says he did, but I don’t think he did? What’s going on?”
So, a bit sad really. But on a good note,
it was a pretty exciting race. Very treacherous but controlled once we got going. We saw the world
champion drive like a world champion. We saw great battles, overtakes and defences and I think we all
just wish it could have gone the distance! So congratulations to Max Verstappen again.
Now let’s all take a breather before we do the final run to the finish!
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