The lapped cars thing is an either/or decision. According to Lando, they get told to unlap about half the time on SC restarts (likely depending on how long the SC is). Also, lol. This is just last year. https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/fia-race-director-masi-explains-norris-f1-eifel-gp-safety-car-decision-4978255/4978255/ Masi said that was the only reason for the length of the safety car. "That one was the fact that we had to, there's a requirement in the sporting regulations, to wave all lapped cars past," Masi said. "I think from that point, it was position 6 onwards that was still running. "So 10, 11 cars, that had to unlap themselves, and therefore the safety car period was a bit longer than what we would have normally expected."
I think is the part that bothers me the most: The Race Director stated that the purpose of Article 48.12 was to remove those lapped cars that would “interfere” in the racing between the leaders. Masi knows here that Lewis has zero chance to hold off Max, and just basically admitted to having a huge effect on the results, and indirectly said that it was all for show and that the midfield doesn’t matter.
Another possibility, is that apparently once cars are allowed to unlap, the SC is supposed to come in on the FOLLOWING lap. I admit I have not double checked that rule, though. If so, that obviously was also not followed.
No, there wouldn’t have been enough time to do it the normal way and the race would have ended under SC. They made one decision, then changed it, but then changed on the fly once again, and started the race once only the cars in front of Max had gone, but not the rest. Obviously the title battle is most important, but it also fucks with other constructors fighting each other too, since they were fighting two different restarts essentially, because some cars started on the lead lap, and some didn’t. It’s a fuck.
It was confirmed by Mike Elliott a few days ago. Rumor was they were going to use it on the nose but it failed crash testing and they abandoned it. Stuff only counts against the budget cap once it’s homologated, so….they held off.
Shit, Merc didn’t even spend development tokens this year. I think the top 3 will still be the top 3, but that Ferrari will be much closer, maybe ahead of Red Bull.
It needs to be tweaked but I’m not totally sure how. I don’t think repairing the car should necessarily be disallowed. At minimum, I do think replacing a front wing should be allowed since they are critical to the car, and it’s pretty standard practice and happens pretty often anyway. There is zero practical reason to send a car with a broken FW out for a standing restart. I have read a few possible ideas. - Allow a tire change, but only to a set of the same compound, so if you haven’t yet run a second compound, you’d still need to. This could work, but if a car is on their only set of hards and they got a puncture, how do you then rule? Eh. - Set order to the last green flag lap order. Don’t think I like this one because of situations like what happened in Jeddah where many stopped but then did like 3-4 SC laps. That was part of the strategy, and would have just been totally nullified. - Close the pits during SC laps kinda like INDYCAR. Would make red flag situations more “fair” to everyone but I don’t really like this as it does remove more strategy options. I dunno.