Tackling F1's safety car troubles

 The Formula One safety car: the source of much debate this season.

More than once this year, controversies involving the safety car have grabbed the Formula One headlines. First there was Michael Schumacher's last-corner pass on Fernando Alonso in Monaco - a move for which, rightly or wrongly, he was later penalised as it was deemed that safety car conditions still applied at the time.

Then, in Valencia, Lewis Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty for overtaking the safety car itself, having failed to make his move before reaching the crucial second safety car line, when it would still have been legal. And yet that penalty was neither severe enough nor applied soon enough in the eyes of Alonso, who spoke out in no uncertain terms after the race, claiming that the race had been fixed by the stewards.

And of course there has also been the controversy over the so-called "delta times" - the minimum lap times that drivers are supposed to set under safety car conditions - after no less than nine competitors were handed five-second penalties for speeding during the European Grand Prix. But many of them were well into the final sector of the lap when the delta times were shown and so were unable to slow down sufficiently to meet the target time.

"I didn't see the Safety Car delta time on the steering wheel display at all," said Pedro de la Rosa, who was demoted from tenth to twelfth after the post-race stewards' inquiry, thus losing his only championship point of the season so far. "These are fast corners, and we were still running close together, fighting for positions ... To tell the truth, I also think that if one of us had lifted in response to the delta time, it would have caused a crash." 

Compounding the confusion

Clearly there is some work to do to improve the current rules and the manner in which they are enforced. But is the answer to try to refine them further - thus making them even more complicated, and possibly causing even greater confusion - or do they require a more fundamental rethinking? 

All a safety car is meant to do is neutralise the race - in theory it should not be too difficult to regulate. One of the problems, however, is that in many cases drivers are no longer sure what they can and can't do when it is deployed. And as the Monaco example shows, the confusion has even extended on one occasion to race control itself. Had that race been supposed to end without overtaking, the "safety car in this lap" message should never have been displayed on the teams' timing monitors, nor should green flags have been waved to indicate a return to normal racing conditions.

A back-to-basics approach is needed to make the situation clearer, not just for drivers, teams and officials, but also for spectators, who are growing frustrated by ever more arcane regulations and increased intervention by stewards, which often leaves race results in doubt for several hours after the chequered flag. What, then, can be done to simplify the safety car rules?

Potential solutions

One answer - suggested by Will Buxton on his blog - is to close the pit lane as long as the safety car is deployed. Since cars now carry their entire race fuel with them, there is in reality no pressing reason why it should remain open. With no pit stops allowed, there would be no need for drivers to scramble back, and so the concept of delta times could be scrapped altogether: instead a 200 km/h speed limiter could be used to keep cars from circulating too quickly.

It is not a perfect solution, however. Often when the safety car is deployed it is because there is debris on track - what happens if a driver is forced to stop having picked up a puncture, or received other damage? What about those whose tyres are already on the point of giving up when the pit lane is closed? Is it really fair to penalise drivers for stopping under these sorts of conditions, where a pit stop is a matter of necessity rather than choice?

Another answer - arguably the simplest of all - would be to do away with the safety car altogether, and instead instantly stop the race when it becomes clear that an incident cannot be covered under waved yellows alone. Drivers would then form up on the start/finish straight or in the pitlane in the order they had reached on the last complete lap, ready for a formation lap followed by a restart as soon as the incident had been cleared.

From a a sporting perspective it is surely the fairest way of resolving the issue, and it would offer spectators the exciting prospect of another grid start. However, red-flagging the race necessarily breaks up the action, which is far from ideal; by contrast, the advantage of deploying the safety car is that it at least allows the cars to keep rolling without interruption.

No easy answers

Neither solution is without its problems. But the current situation surely cannot continue. At the moment, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the safety car emerges is often enough to ruin one's chances of a good finish - as Alonso found out in Valencia - while others can profit simply through chance rather than design - such as Jenson Button, who rose to third place at the Spaniard's expense. Of course fans enjoy a safety car period, since it introduces a random element into proceedings, shuffling up the race order and injecting some excitement into what can otherwise be largely processional affairs. Some might argue that this luck of the draw is part and parcel of modern circuit racing. But it hardly makes for a fair sporting contest.

Unfortunately there are no easy answers. Perhaps, in this new climate of co-operation, it needs the FIA and FOTA to sit down together and discuss the possibilities. But it is something that desperately needs attention if another debacle like Valencia is to be avoided and Formula One is to maintain its credibility as a true sport.

Photo reproduced under the Creative Commons Atrribution ShareAlike 3.0 licence from an image originally uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Morio.