Max Verstappen leads the drivers championship by 116 points. Charles Leclerc was well beaten at Monza long before the end of the race. There are still six rounds to go this season.
So why is the end of the Italian Grand Prix being likened to last year’s deeply controversial championship-deciding race in Abu Dhabi?
Formula 1 is seemingly incapable of escaping the vortex that is the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It continues to rile up partisan fans online, and even in the paddock it’s still considered with a certain unease despite consensus that the sport is better off having moved on.
But while the title fallout has largely receded among the mainstream, there’s one subject that’s refusing to die, and that’s the matter of whether grands prix should be allowed to anti-climactically end behind the safety car.
That was the nub of the problem in Abu Dhabi — Michael Masi, acting according to agreements with all the teams and Formula 1, was attempting to ensure a race to the finish
“It’s called a motor race,” he said, that phrase now immortal.
And yet barely nine months later the FIA has taken a completely different tack again, allowing the Italian Grand Prix to expire behind the safety car when a thrilling all-in finish was on the cards.
Indeed the conclusion was sufficiently unsatisfactory — at least to some — that F1 is now engaged in a deep debate about whether such endings should be written out of the rules completely.
Some will argue the idea of a neutralised ending is the antithesis of a contest. Others will contend that F1’s soul will be shattered by another sop to entertainment over sporting purity.
It could get ugly.
THE REGULATIONS WERE FOLLOWED
Daniel Ricciardo’s lap-47 stoppage opened a can of worms,
His engine failed with six laps to go, and the safety car was deployed to clear his car from the track.
There was a delay in the possible restart procedure because the safety car picked up the wrong driver upon leaving the pit lane — it’s supposed to emerge ahead of the leader; it picked up third-placed George Russell — and because the McLaren was stuck in gear, meaning it took longer to recover.
By the time the situation was resolved, it was lap 53 of 53, and the race was over.
The first thing to keep in mind here is that the regulations were followed in Italy. There’s no debate about that.
Indeed Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was at pains to point that out after the race, having been on the receiving end of a novel interpretation of the rules last year.
“I don’t think we should complain about anything that happened, because these are the rules,” he said.
“It’s very clear. There are rules, and they are written down. From my perspective, whether I’m Abu Dhabi traumatised or not, these rules have been followed to the dot today.”
But still not everyone’s happy.
“The principle, what we’ve always discussed, is that nobody wants to see a race finish under the safety car like that,” Christian Horner said, taking up a familiar position. “You could hear the displeasure of the crowd at the end there because it just felt like everybody had been robbed of that finish.
“It goes against the principles of what we discussed. It’s not good to finish races under safety cars.”
The principle of never finishing behind the safety car was first seen in a big way at last year’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix when Verstappen crashed out on the start-finish straight with a tyre blowout.
The race was suspended and then restarted with just two laps to run.
Race director Masi said at the time that the clean-up was expected to take so long that the race would’ve expired behind the safety car, which wouldn’t have been “in the best interests of the sport”.
The extension of that policy culminated in last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
But curiously the FIA argued in Italy that it didn’t red flag the race because there was no safety requirement for it to do so — that is, breaking with that informal policy to try to get racing underway at all costs.
“As the safety of the recovery operation is our only priority and the incident was not significant enough to require a red flag, the race ended under safety car following the procedures agreed between the FIA and all competitors,” the FIA said in a statement. “The timing of the safety car period within a race has no bearing on this procedure.”
Wolff, his 2021 scars still showing, said it was the right decision.
“I’m really satisfied to see that there is a race director and colleagues that apply the regs against the pressure of the media and the pressure of the fans and everybody to just be in breach of the regulations.
“At least Abu Dhabi in that sense gave the FIA more robust confidence to apply the regulations.”
RED MEANS GREEN
The problem with the ‘principle’ of the sporting regulations is the same as with the ‘spirit’ of the technical regulations: it doesn’t exist.
If it’s not written down, it’s not a rule.
It’s why an argument to change the rules is gaining significant traction in the aftermath of the Italian Grand Prix.
One proposal is to have races automatically red flagged if there’s an interruption, say, 10 laps from the finish. Rather than a safety car or virtual safety car being deployed, the race is automatically halted while the incident is addressed, after which a standing restart would take place to finish the grand prix under green-flag conditions.
Ironically, it’s Wolff who came across as the idea’s biggest proponent on Sunday night.
“I think we need to say, ‘Do we want to have a race finishing under green?’ and then we reverse engineer it from there,” he said.
“If one is not happy with the regulations and you want to have a big-bang show and two laps of racing and mayhem, then I’m absolutely up for it, but then we need to change the regulations.
“Would I have wanted to have a last lap with a pile of cars on top of each other in the chicane? Hell yes — good TV!”
But in Wolff’s answer lies a salient question. It’s good TV, but is it good sport?
While there’s obvious appeal to having races ended under green flags, is there anything inherently different between five laps of safety car in the middle of the race and five laps at the end?
Or, to put it another way, was having the cars cross the line in formation in Italy any inherently less exciting that Max Verstappen winning by 15 seconds, as he was set to do before the interruption?
And though it may sound extreme, if F1 permits red flags to be waved with 10 laps to go to induce an exciting standing restart, when else might they be appropriate? Perhaps the safety car can be done away with altogether in favour of race stoppages to ensure more restarts in the name of good TV.
But the alternative answer to that question is that good TV is good sport. All sports are inherently contrived, with rules written and progressively updated to suit the times. With a massive influx in new fans — including many from the United States, a sporting nation that notoriously detests a draw — perhaps now is the right time to try to crowbar more opportunities for action into a weekend.
The sprint race is a good example — 30 minutes of racing with relatively high stakes replacing a practice session. Viewership figures suggest it’s been a hit among fans, and the customer is always right.
WHY THERE’S NO EASY ANSWER
It’s not a debate that’s going to be settled quietly or easily — in fact it’s been rumbling on in the background since last year before bumbling to the surface this weekend.
“After what happened last year in Abu Dhabi, there were a lot of discussions between FIA, Formula 1 and all the teams involved in order to see how the rules could be modified to make sure that races never end under a safety car,” McLaren boss Andreas Seidl said.
“But despite the FIA and Formula 1 really pushing us all to find solutions, it was down to the teams, and pretty much all teams we couldn’t agree on any better solution which is then also still a fair solution in terms of the sporting outcome.
“That’s why I guess we simply have to accept that unfortunately situations like this can happen.
“In the end we voted that the regulations should stay as they have been, as far as I remember every single team voted like that.”
Stalemate is hardly a disastrous outcome when you consider that before last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a race had ended behind the safety car just three times in eight years. Even a statistically abnormal two in nine months — counting Yas Marina — is no major drama.
And given the sport’s propensity for tying itself in knots attempting to be scrupulously neutral — think about the variety of complicated engine penalty systems F1 has implemented since 2014 — it may be the simple but imperfect solution is actually the best one.
One could imagine, for example, the rules requiring a red flag to thrown only for the sun to set before the race could be resumed, which would mean the race ending in the pit lane — far worse that behind the safety car.
“Even if it might sound easy to create something like ‘throw out always a red flag’ and so on. It’s actually not that straightforward,” Seidl said. “We discussed it in length. We didn’t come up with any better solution.”
The teams met with the FIA on Monday to discuss a variety of sporting matters, including the use of the safety car, but it’s unlikely they’ll come to a conclusion that’ll satisfy everyone — those who want the sport preserved and those who want it opened up to change.
