Should the rules of restarts change?

[Angus Martin]

After 4 weeks away, the excitement of F1 was back today from the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps reminding us all why we love the sport.

After a rain affected qualifying session on Saturday, the grid was not business as usual with the Force Indias locking out the second row. The top two however, was a mirror of the Drivers Championship standings as Lewis Hamilton lead the Ferrari of Vettel into T1. The two leaders then swapped positions up the Kemmel straight while all hell broke loose in the midfield at La Source. In fact, an out of control Hulkenburg managed to “nudge” Fernando Alonso into the sky with a bit of help from the ramp shaped Sauber of Leclerc. This is one of the first crashes of the year to show the necessity of the halo as Charles Leclerc got a face full of Mclaren leaving a big black tire mark on the safety structure. The domino effect of this shunt had consequences on both Raikonen and Ricciardo who were out of position from qualifying. Obviously, this scale of accident brought out the Safety Car allowing us to calm down, gather our thoughts and look back at the 4-wide action between Hamilton, Vettel and the 2 Force India drivers into Les Combes. Once the Safety Car left our screens, the pure pace of the Ferrari allowed Vettel to get away from the second placed Mercedes and no-one saw either car until the end. In the middle of the pack, Bottas managed to make his way from the back of the field all the way up to 4th position by the end leaving Max Verstappen on the last step of the podium.

As the race neared its midpoint, we all noticed the excitement had died down and the on-track action had dramatically reduced. It’s fair to say that this “reduction in fun” is due to the Safety Car interference so early in the race. Therefor, could there be a rule change? By this, I mean should the Safety Car be allowed to intervene in the early, and exciting, stages of the race? No, this doesn’t mean leave the Marshalls to clear the track whilst cars are rushing past at 200 miles per hour. If within a certain percentage of the race, the track needs clearing up. It should be automatically red flagged and do a normal standing start once all debris has been removed. This way, a race will keep the tension lost once the Safety Car comes out and no laps will be used up by cars driving at reduced pace.

Would this be forcing entertainment or is it a good idea?

 

[Terry Rock]

It's fine the way it is...no need to change it.
You start doing dead stop/starts and clutch failures will become a huge issue.

 

[Dave Stephenson]

I'm not convinced the safety car had the effect you're attributing to it. Even without it Vettel had enough raw pace in the car to drive away from Hamilton. Hamilton had enough in the Merc to drive away from everyone else. The race was over the moment Vettel made the pass.

 

[Authense]

Charly certainly did not wait to press the button for Vettel to overtake Hamilton. If anyone ever complained rudely about Charly over the radio and in front of millions it was Vettel, so if Charly was biased in any way, he would have the lowest motivation to do something for Vettel.

With that out of the way, it is a 7km lap and the first corner is wide and there is lots of space and time for cleanup so he waited until the end of the long straight to take his decision. I have no concerns with that. Furthermore, having been in Spa for thousands of kilometers with Assetto Corsa, I would have great concerns with what could happen while everyone is driving 340 km/h, overtaking each other under enormous stress and at max pulse and then all of a sudden, everyone will slow down immediately, the guy behind or besides me takes a split second longer to realize the situation and bumps into me or somebody else just like Huelkenberg did yesterday at a much much lower speed - and also for this reason it was a wise decision from Charly to wait for the end of the straight. Every bad judgement at 340 km/h ends in disaster.

With regards to the suggestion in this thread:
To stop a race immediately is against the nature of racing.

Other options:
As to bring the safety car out on every occasion as a general rule, that would be possible, also to launch the virtual safety car every time something happens, but that does not seem to be what the drivers want.

I have never heard them asking for that and they are sort of unionized so they could make up their mind and send their speaker. Furthermore, if not agreeable with the F1 officials they could simply agree amongst themselves to stop overtaking and to slow down every time they get the yellow flag signaled in the cockpit or over the radio. No one could stop them from doing so.

But if not, really, they cannot complain about anything. It is as easy as that.

 

[Antony Snook]

I believe teams should be allowed to modify car setup in a small time frame. Particularly if going from a wet qualifying session to a dry race or vice versa. Stupid rules make teams run wild card setups in these situations and it is not safe.