Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne was an eventful and controversial one, which finished under Safety Car conditions after three separate red flag stoppages.
Two standing restarts took place – the second of which took place on the penultimate lap, resulting in carnage through the field.
At the end of the race, some were left thrilled, while others were left with a sour taste in their mouth. With decades of experience watching, commentating on and writing about motorsport, what did RaceFans’ writers make of the Australian Grand Prix ‘spectacle’?
The show or the sport?
While F1 lately prefers to use the red flag rather than a Safety Car to for the benefit of ‘the show’, the opposite was once the case. After the Safety Car entered regular use in the nineties it was often deployed instead of a red flag following major crashes as the powers-that-be felt it was better for television to keep the cars running. So when eight cars were eliminated in a huge crash at the start of Melbourne’s 2002 grand prix, the race went on.
Fast-forward 21 years and the same race saw two red flags for separate, single-car incidents. Perhaps by modern standards the quantities of debris and gravel justified this. But, especially in the case of the latter stoppage, it felt like this was done more for entertainment reasons.
But what spoiled the Australian Grand Prix wasn’t only decisions arguably made with an eye on the spectacle. Familiar flaws such as questionable rules and incomprehensible stewarding decisions played a role too.
If the first red flag was thrown to create drama, it failed, as it allowed everyone to change to hard tyres and nurse them to the finish. This was thanks to a feature of F1’s rules drivers have derided for years, which allows penalty-free tyre changes during red flag periods. “The worst rule ever invented,” as Lando Norris once called it.
The final standing restart produced some unfathomable calls from the stewards. Why does Carlos Sainz Jnr deserve a penalty for crashing into Fernando Alonso, when Logan Sargeant isn’t even investigated for crashing into Nyck de Vries, and Pierre Gasly goes unpunished for rejoining the track in the path of other cars, driving to the opposite side of the course and putting his team mate in the wall?
The decision to reset the running order ahead of the final restart smacked of convenience. The pointless spectacle of the field trundling…
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