Following the anticlimactic security automobile end on the British Grand Prix, former Formulation 1 driver David Coulthard has closely criticised the championship’s present procedures.
Throughout the Up To Pace podcast, the 13-time grand prix winner argued the security automobile course of is unnecessarily sluggish and backed a proposal to mandate automated crimson flags for incidents throughout the closing 10 laps of a race.
The protection automobile was deployed at Silverstone when Pink Bull’s Max Verstappen turned beached at Stowe nook on lap 48 of 52. Whereas Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton pitted for recent tyres, Mercedes’ George Russell stayed out, taking second from the seven-time champion. Nevertheless, the anticipated restart by no means got here.
Regardless of an misguided tv graphic suggesting a final-lap dash, the race ended behind the security automobile as there weren’t sufficient laps remaining to finish the complete procedures. Leclerc claimed victory in entrance of a annoyed crowd and was joined on the rostrum by Russell in second and Hamilton in third.
“So uninteresting and so form of one thing that we should have the ability to discover a approach round,” Coulthard defined. “We’ve got an virtually 6km race observe. We’ve got an incident in a single nook of that race observe. A security automobile is deployed fairly rapidly as soon as they’ve determined that the automobile isn’t going to have the ability to get out of the gravel.
“We then spend a couple of laps ready on the pack catching the security automobile, after which as soon as it is with the security automobile, we then look ahead to the race director to inform the drivers that they will overtake the security automobile. All of it simply takes approach too lengthy.
“We’re Formulation 1. We alter wheels in 2.2 seconds, or the world file beforehand was 1.8 seconds. We develop the quickest racing vehicles on the earth. As quickly as the security automobile is on the market, they may begin that course of.
“As a result of you realize with the GPS information the place the vehicles are on observe, so long as folks respect the pace at which they are going by means of the double yellow space, it is utterly inside {our capability} to try this entire course of sooner.
The Security Automobile
Photograph by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Photos by way of Getty Photos
“It might have averted Abu Dhabi ’21, and it might have averted what we noticed there on the weekend.”
When co-host Will Buxton proposed the thought of mechanically red-flagging a race if there’s an incident throughout the final 10 laps, Coulthard added: “Yeah, I believe that could be a answer, and I believe that may give them the prospect to reset all the pieces.
“I additionally suppose it isn’t past the capabilities of Formulation 1 to do it on observe 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 the very best drivers on the earth.
“They drive at 200 miles an hour, a couple of ft, inches, metres, centimetres, no matter you need to use off the again of one other automobile. And but in some way when there’s an incident in a single nook, it is like they’re kindergarten youngsters and now we have to actually deal with them in a approach that you simply’re not allowed to do sure issues.”
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