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The FIA must do a better job with future Safety Car situations, Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto has said, after yesterday’s Italian Grand Prix ended before it could be restarted.The FIA said yesterday’s race at Monza could not be restarted because it took longer than expected to recover Daniel Ricciardo’s car, which caused the stoppage to begin with.
However Binotto pointed out there was another delay in organising the field to be ready for the restart. The Safety Car initially failed to appear in front of race leader Max Verstappen as required, and spent two laps running ahead of third-placed George Russell.
Binotto believes the correct rules are already in place to deal with such situations, which the sport scrutinised in detail following last year’s controversial championship-deciding race in Abu Dhabi.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of changing the rules,” he said. “The rules have been discussed, largely, especially after Abu Dhabi last year. They were discussed with the FIA, F1 and the teams, and we came to a conclusion that the current format is probably the right one to keep. So I don’t think it’s a matter of regulations.
“I am certainly disappointed for how long it took them to decide, and I think we are not understanding why it took so long to release the cars between the Safety Car and the leader.”
The presence of Ricciardo’s car at the side of the track should not have delayed organising the field into the correct order, said Binotto.
“I don’t think safety could be the right reason for it because when you are released, as a driver, you cannot go simply flat-out around the track. There is a minimum lap time, which is set by the regulations and this minimum lap time is there to make sure that whenever they are running and driving, they are doing it safely.
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“So what we do not understand is, on the current regulations, that we believe are right, why it took so long for them to decide.”
He accepted that the unexpected difficulty in moving Ricciardo’s car, which involved the use of a crane, had caused part of the delay.
“But still, in parallel, I think that [they] could have, with the Safety Car, done a better job in order to prepare the entire train of cars to be ready for a new start of the race. That didn’t happen.
“So I think simply that was wrong and could have…
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