Quote:
Originally Posted by Teretonga
But the moves made on Sunday were not thought through nor are they wise.
Part of that is in the rules and part in the way they were applied.
The drivers themselves are not always the best people to ask.
All they want to do is race, but officialdom has a responsibility to do what is in the best interests of safety and what is in the best interests of the sport.
What we are seeing is something of the rudderless ship or a boat that is being pushed to and fro in turbulent water with no real sense of direction.
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I don't disagree, particularly with what I have highlighted in your post above. I also believe F1 officialdom should firmly take charge and tell the teams what to do. However we have reached a point where the Teams basically run the show and FIA manage within those parameters.
At the moment FIA are in a no win situation as they are blamed for complying with the teams wishes and are blamed when they don't. I would love to see FIA take firm control and say "This is how it is done and any team that doesn't like it can go home" but the sport is a victim of its own success and the inmates run the asylum.
In regard to safety I believe the red flags were in the interest of safety. I don't see any problem red flagging the race to clean up large areas of debris quickly following an incident, rather than many wasted laps behind a safety car.
Also standing starts happen at almost every race and and are well within normal safety limits. In dry clear weather there is no reason they cannot happen on lap 1 or lap 60. I can guarantee Lewis and Mercedes were pushing for a standing start as much as Max and Red Bull were arguing against one. I also guarantee this would be different if roles were reversed.
It is certainly unfair to the leader, but as long as they are managed consistently then there shouldn't be a problem as everyone knows the situation.
That being said, in the future should teams want some other practice to be the norm such as parc ferme red flag rules or rolling starts during the race, or god forbid FIA take control and put out a similar standard operating practice, then as long as that is consistently applied, then that would also be good.