Photo credit: GIUSEPPE CACACE – Getty Images
When Nicholas Latifi crashed in the closing laps of Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the implication was obvious. Whether the race re-started or not, the winner would be dictated by the timing of the safety car. This is the way racing has gone since safety cars were introduced, every race comes with a constant knowledge that one ill-timed wreck could alter the outcome of a whole season drastically. In NASCAR, this is a feature. That kind of chaos is encouraged, it's part of the show. In F1, it has always been considered a bug. Safety car timing and enforcement should not decide full seasons. This one did.
Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton have seemingly accepted this. The team has dropped its intent to appeal a Sunday ruling that the race director can more or less do whatever they want regardless of what safety car rules officially say, removing the asterisk on Max Verstappen's first world driver's championship. But they did so only after the FIA announced a “detailed analysis and clarification exercise” over the incident, effectively an official review of the rules that allowed such a catastrophe to happen. In other words, the focus has shifted from wallowing in the knowledge that F1 race director Michael Masi's decision handed a championship to Max Verstappen in an instant to asking how it happened. From there, the logical next step is to ask how to keep it from happening again.
That solution should be very easy.
Masi decided the outcome of the race, but his decision only mattered because the current procedure is out of balance. As rules are written right now, any late safety car will benefit either the leading or trailing car, and that benefit will always be decided by clean-up time and the race director's discretion. A good rulebook would take that decision out of Masi's hands, a great one would fix the tire problem entirely.
The benefit is straightforward: In Formula 1's current tire-based meta game, a driver in a comparable car outfitted on a fresh set of the softest compound of tire will always beat a driver with old tires on any one or two lap shootout to end a race. If the end of the race is guaranteed to come in a shootout after a restart, the leading driver will always come in to stop for that tire to avoid being passed within the first five or six corners of that lap. If the end of the race is guaranteed to come under the safety car, the leading driver will always stay out to win the race without giving up the lead on track. Hamilton was caught out in the tiny space in between, the four to seven lap window where it is unclear if an incident will be cleaned up and safety car procedures will be completed in time for a restart. If the cleanup went as it did and safety car procedures were followed normally, he wins without pitting. If the cleanup went as it did and Masi used a force majeure power to restart the race with one lap to go, but with no cars cleared from being one lap down, Hamilton likely wins without pitting. But if Masi lets only four cars by, as he did on Sunday, the trailing car is almost guaranteed to win. Only a herculean defensive effort against a car two or three seconds a lap faster could stop that outcome.
Masi himself understood this, which is why he chose to instead red flag this year's Azerbaijan Grand Prix and re-start it for a late shootout. In doing that, he was able to guarantee the race resumed. Ironically, that decision also, inadvertently, had championship implications: Hamilton lost a certain win and 25 points when he made a mistake selecting his brake bias for the standing start that comes after every red flag, falling from the lead to a non-points position. Those 25 points would have put him well ahead of Verstappen by Abu Dhabi. But that was Hamilton's fault entirely, and, whether or not you agree that a standing start after a red flag has merit, the category's otherwise-controversial rule that allows teams to change to fresh tires under red at least creates a fair situation for all drivers sprinting to the end. If Masi ordered such a red-and-restart on Sunday, Hamilton and Verstappen would have been given the chance to fight each other on equal footing on that final lap.
The FIA decision over the first protest claims Masi was right in acting with his authority over what the rulebook actually states because teams have long since agreed that races should end under green if possible. If this is a serious focus for Formula 1, Baku represents a way forward. That way forward only works if it is codified, though. A simple, official addition to the rulebook that covers all late-race safety car situations would go a long way towards making sure no future races end like Sunday's debacle:
Any safety car in the final ten percent of a race distance, including one that starts earlier in the race and bleeds into the final ten percent of the race distance, will lead to an immediate red flag. Every car will be given the opportunity to stop one final time for a fresh set of soft tires made available to every team regardless of their weekend-long tire usage. The race will be resumed by a rolling, single file restart on the next lap after the red flag is lifted, with lap-down cars moved behind those on the lead lap. If a red flag would otherwise be thrown in the final three laps of a race, the event will instead end under the safety car.
There are other solutions, but this is the version that solves the most problems. By guaranteeing the red flag, clean-up time is removed entirely from the equation. By guaranteeing the tire change to a new allocation of tires, it takes both the pitting advantage and a team's previous weekend-long use of their precious resource of tires out of the equation. By guaranteeing a rolling restart as if starting behind the safety car, it guarantees every driver is within one or two seconds of their nearest competitor without introducing the manufactured chaos and opportunities for desperate moves that come with an additional double-file standing start. Formula 1 is guaranteed close conclusions between their best drivers on equal footing, something that fits within the spirit of existing rules without eliminating the additional excitement that a restart can create. Most importantly, there is no room for a race director to alter the procedure in any way, putting the race back in the hands of a strong, clear rulebook.
Formula 1 may look very different when the series returns on March 20th of next year. And if a rule like this is added before then, some good will have come out of Sunday's awful conclusion.
Keyword: Formula 1 Can Fix Its Safety Car Problem Today