Late notification of restart reason for major crash in Mugello?
F1 News
- GPblog.com
In Mugello the red flag was waved twice. At the second restart Valtteri Bottas had to give the starting signal. At the back of the field the Finn's late deployment caused a violent crash between no less than four drivers. Jolyon Palmer analyses and searches for the cause.
Dangerous situation in Mugello
According to Jolyon Palmer, Bottas was in a difficult situation. On the long straight you don't want to start again if you lead the race. Everyone can then use the slipstream and you are the only one who can't. The fact that the safety car indicated late that the race would be resumed made the situation even more difficult.
In the BBC's Chequered Flag Podcast the former F1 driver says: "There will certainly be a discussion about this on Friday in Sochi. There were drivers who got into a bad crash and could do absolutely nothing about it."
How can restarting be safer?
There is no doubt that the restart was unsafe. However, Palmer has trouble identifying a reason and coming up with a solution: "I don't really know what can be done. The logical step would be to turn off the lights of the safety car sooner; tell the leader of the race and all the teams that we are going to restart, sooner."
"By indicating earlier that the restart is coming up, you would have had a different situation. Would Bottas still have restarted in the same place? It's not the most obvious move to make."
Bottas went on the gas as late as possible so that his pursuers would benefit as little as possible from his slipstream. However, he had to when he crossed the start/finish line. The slow situation caused misjudgements at the back of the field.