Does F1 need to make changes?

MELBOURNE, Australia — Formula One has always been a complex sport, but the chaos of the final few laps at the Australian Grand Prix even left some drivers and team bosses confused.

In the space of the last four laps, the race was red flagged twice, resulting in one standing restart, four cars eliminated in collisions and one meaningless rolling restart behind the safety car with no overtaking to complete the final lap of the race and decide the finishing order.

Despite some confusion over the way the closing laps panned out, which continued long into the night after the Haas F1 team protested the result, the rules were ultimately followed by the race director and the FIA. The question is whether F1 should rethink those rules or at least clarify some of its procedures to avoid a repeat of chaotic scenes in Melbourne.

What happened?

Here’s how things happened on a lap-by-lap basis (the full race distance was 58 laps).

Lap 53: Kevin Magnussen ran wide and clipped the barrier on the exit of Turn 2, ripping the carcass of his left rear tyre from its shattered rim in a shower of sparks. Magnussen made it to the inside of Turn 4 before stopping, but the debris left in his wake — reported by the FIA to be lots of chunks of metal from the wheel rim — initially resulted in in a safety car before a red flag was shown, suspending the race.

Max Verstappen had been comfortably leading the race up to that point, with Lewis Hamilton over eight seconds adrift in second place when the Haas hit the barrier.

Lap 55: With red flags flying from the marshal posts, the cars returned to the pits to allow the debris from Magnussen’s accident to be cleared. Teams are allowed to change tyres during red flag periods and all the remaining cars were fitted with soft tyres for the two-lap sprint to the finish.

Lap 56: The cars left the pits behind the safety car to line up on the grid in the following order:

1. Max Verstappen

2. Lewis Hamilton

3. Fernando Alonso

4. Carlos Sainz

5. Pierre Gasly

6. Lance Stroll

7. Sergio Perez

8. Lando Norris

9. Nico Hulkenberg

10. Esteban Ocon

11. Oscar Piastri

12. Zhou Guanyu

13. Yuki Tsunoda

14. Valtteri Bottas

15. Logan Sargeant

16. Nyck de Vries

Lap 57: The race restarted with the remaining 16 cars hurtling down towards Turn 1 for a two-lap sprint to the finish. Verstappen made a clean getaway and held Hamilton at bay, but chaos…