Red flag or safety car — how should F1 handle late-race crashes?

Despite the clock ticking away and the possibility existing that the race would run under the safety car to the finish – with Hamilton ahead and therefore winning the championship – Michael Masi chose not to red flag the race and give us a two or three lap sprint to the flag.

His essential reasoning was that the track wasn’t blocked and nor was there a debris field, as in the case of the Verstappen shunt in Baku.

In the end, helped by not all the lapped cars being waved past the leaders, we did have time for that one flying lap to the flag, with Verstappen on new tyres chasing Hamilton on his old rubber. And we all know what happened next.

Monza, 2022

We had another example in Monza last year when Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren stopped and was stuck in gear. The crane was on the other side of the track and even with the safety car out it couldn’t find a long enough gap to chug across. Instead laps ticked away and the race ended as a damp squib behind the safety car when the option was there to stop it and have a sprint to the flag.

The three red flags of the 2023 Australian Grand Prix

Red flag 1

In Australia last weekend there was no such hesitation in deploying the red from race director Niels Wittich.

The first, for Alex Albon’s crash, was essentially because so much gravel and dirt had been thrown onto the track. Some drivers questioned it, especially as they went through once behind the safety car, and it did seem to be a 50-50 call. However, as Fernando Alonso said, race control had more information than the drivers in their cockpits.

“I was surprised with all the red flags, to be honest,” he said. “The first one I think, behind the safety car and there was a little bit of gravel, but nothing really too bad on track.

“But we never know in the car what’s going on — on the track itself. So apparently, maybe one barrier was not properly fit there, so I think the FIA has more information than us. So if there is a red flag, it has to be for a reason.”

The frustration for many drivers was that red flags give everyone a free change of tyres, and those who had already pitted and committed to a certain strategy – including George Russell and Carlos Sainz – lost out.

Red flag 2

The second red flag came after Kevin Magnussen hit the wall coming out of Turn 2. While the Dane kept going and parked in a relatively neutral place his shattered right rear wheel left shrapnel on the track down to Turn 3. Given the speeds involved, a red flag was a sensible call.

It’s worth noting that a spectator received a minor injury from flying debris, a reminder that in the end all such decisions are ultimately about safety.

This red flag came with three laps to go, which meant it set up a formation lap followed by a two-lap sprint to the flag. Drivers who hadn’t had a great afternoon could suddenly smell a bonus, which is why it all turned to chaos.

Carlos Sainz span Alonso out, Pierre Gasly went off, came back on, and collected his team mate Esteban Ocon, Logan Sargeant took out fellow rookie Nyck de Vries, and Sergio Perez went sailing across the grass. At Turn 3 Lance Stroll joined in the fun by going straight on.

Red flag 3

Given that at this point we had just under two laps to go, Wittich could have called for a safety car. It would have met the field at Turn 1 and led them round for a single lap, weaving through the debris of the Alpine accident, and back to the line – where the surviving cars would have finished in the order that they had emerged from Turn 2.

Nico Hülkenberg would have been a remarkable fourth, and the two Astons – both of which got going at the back of the pack – would have been out of the points.

Haas boss Guenther Steiner was furious about Hülkenberg losing sixth and protested the results

That didn’t happen. Instead Wittich threw another red flag, and the cars completed lap 57 of the 58 touring back to the pits.

We now had one lap left – which meant the only option left was for the field to drive out of the pits, do a lap behind the safety car, and cross the line. There was no time for a grid restart and final racing lap.

That meant that points would now be decided by the order that the FIA deemed that the cars should leave the pits, which is where we came to another grey area in the rules.

Deciding grid order at restarts

Article 57.3 of the sporting regulations says that “the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars. All such cars will then be permitted to resume the sprint session or the race.”

What is lacking there is sufficient detail of exactly what that entails. At Silverstone last year, after the Zhou Guanyu crash, it was decided that the red flag came so early that there wasn’t a point that the field had crossed where the order could be determined.

The race thus restarted with the original grid (which is how it happened for many years after first lap crashes). It didn’t really impact anything as there was still a full race distance left to run.

In Australia, that decision was critical, as it would determine the finishing order. Many in the pitlane believed that the FIA could take the order off the safety car two line (SC2), which crosses the track just before the first corner. Indeed some teams were actively pushing for it, including Haas, as it would have put Hülkenberg ahead of Lando Norris in sixth. Perez would have been ahead of Stroll for fourth, and Yuki Tsunoda in front of Oscar Piastri in eighth.

It was the internal debate in the FIA about this order that delayed the restart.  A source tells me that race control requested the order that the cars had crossed SC2 from the timekeepers but for some reason it wasn’t immediately available, and eventually the FIA settled on the previous grid order – so in effect that meant that the above three place swaps, achieved at the last grid start, didn’t really happen.

Haas boss Guenther Steiner was furious about Hülkenberg losing sixth and protested the results. After a lengthy investigation the stewards rejected the protest, and this the positions thus stayed the same.

In their judgement they backed Wittich, noting: “Race control determined that the last point at which it was possible to the determine the position of all cars was when the last grid was formed.

“The decision of race control and the race director needed to be made promptly; with the exercise of appropriate discretion and by using the most appropriate information available to them at the time.”

It wasn’t spelled out in the judgement, but an FIA source pointed out that given that SC2 was in a braking area it wasn’t a reliable spot at which to take the order, given that some drivers might be risking more than others.

The suggestion was to set a precedent might encourage drivers to do banzai moves and gamble on a red flag next time we have a similar one or two lap sprint.

The need to make a decision within time constraints was a fair point but overall it was not a convincing argument that the best, fairest or even correct decision had been made.

Hülkenberg, Perez and Tsunoda all lost points that they might have had if SC2 had been used. In the grand scheme of things that might not be as significant as if a podium position had been at stake, but then again Perez is potentially a title rival for Verstappen, and every point counts.

NASCAR has provision for extra racing laps to ensure a green flag finish

The bigger picture is that hitherto red flags for “showbiz” reasons to ensure a proper racing finish, rather than processing to the line behind the safety car, have not been encouraged.

Indeed I’ve been told multiple times that they’ve been discussed and rejected by team bosses in F1 Commission meetings.

But they do seem to be a much better option than watching the cars drone around to the chequered flag, as we have seen so often in the past. The option of calling a red flag even if not strictly needed should be an official part of the race director’s toolbox if, say, within the last five laps in his judgement we won’t get a green flag resumption.

You could argue that that’s leaning too much in the showbiz direction, but who really loses out if they generate some last-minute action? Monza 2022 would have had a much better finish.

Then there’s Abu Dhabi 2021. In a parallel universe somewhere we could have had a grid restart with two or three racing laps left and with Hamilton having switched, like Verstappen, to new tyres. May the best man have won, etcetera.

The other anomaly in all this was that seemingly redundant final lap behind the safety car. NASCAR has provision for extra racing laps to ensure a green flag finish.

On Sunday a race of 58 laps plus a “bonus” would have given us a single lap sprint from a grid start. Fuel limitations means that such a thing could never happen in F1, but it’s a fun idea and it would have been more exciting than the final lap we did get…