Following the anticlimactic security automotive end on the British Grand Prix, former Method 1 driver David Coulthard has closely criticised the championship’s present procedures.
In the course of the Up To Pace podcast, the 13-time grand prix winner argued the security automotive course of is unnecessarily sluggish and backed a proposal to mandate computerized crimson flags for incidents throughout the closing 10 laps of a race.
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The protection automotive was deployed at Silverstone when Crimson Bull’s Max Verstappen grew to become beached at Stowe nook on lap 48 of 52. Whereas Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton pitted for contemporary tyres, Mercedes’ George Russell stayed out, taking second from the seven-time champion. Nonetheless, the anticipated restart by no means got here.
Regardless of an faulty tv graphic suggesting a final-lap dash, the race ended behind the security automotive as there weren’t sufficient laps remaining to finish the total procedures. Leclerc claimed victory in entrance of a pissed off crowd and was joined on the rostrum by Russell in second and Hamilton in third.
“So boring and so sort of one thing that we should be capable of discover a approach round,” Coulthard defined. “We’ve an virtually 6km race monitor. We’ve an incident in a single nook of that race monitor. A security automotive is deployed fairly rapidly as soon as they’ve determined that the automotive shouldn’t be going to have the ability to get out of the gravel.
“We then spend a number of laps ready on the pack catching the security automotive, after which as soon as it is with the security automotive, we then look forward to the race director to inform the drivers that they’ll overtake the security automotive. All of it simply takes approach too lengthy.
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“We’re Method 1. We alter wheels in 2.2 seconds, or the world document beforehand was 1.8 seconds. We develop the quickest racing vehicles on this planet. As quickly as the security automotive is on the market, they may begin that course of.
“As a result of you already know with the GPS information the place the vehicles are on monitor, so long as individuals respect the pace at which they are going via the double yellow space, it is fully inside {our capability} to do this entire course of sooner.
The Security Automobile
The Security Automobile
“It might have averted Abu Dhabi ’21, and it will have averted what we noticed there on the weekend.”
When co-host Will Buxton proposed the thought of robotically red-flagging a race if there’s an incident throughout the final 10 laps, Coulthard added: “Yeah, I feel that could be a resolution, and I feel that might give them the prospect to reset all the pieces.
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“I additionally suppose it is not past the capabilities of Method 1 to do it on monitor and to do it rapidly. There are solely 22 vehicles, and that is assuming they’re all operating at that time. It is not that sophisticated. These are one of the best drivers on this planet.
“They drive at 200 miles an hour, a number of ft, inches, metres, centimetres, no matter you need to use off the again of one other automotive. And but by some means when there’s an incident in a single nook, it is like they’re kindergarten children and we now have to essentially deal with them in a approach that you simply’re not allowed to do sure issues.”
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