Ban the Safety Car

[Valve Bounce]

After watching the Farcical "race" at Surfers paradise yesterday, the only good thing that came out of it was the re-start after the accident when the race was run for the first three laps under full yellows. I had advocated this ages ago in lieu of running the cars behind the safety car. My reasons are that the safety car runs too slow and the cars are brought down to an unrealistic speed on the track, allowing the tyres to cool. When you really think about it, there is no advantage in having the safety car out there. If there is an accident that requires the cars to run slower than full yellows, bring them into the pits. That's achieved quicker than running the safety car out onto the track anyway, and would allow better access to medical vehicles and recovery teams. What the hell good is it running the cars round and round at speeds slower than my Volvo going shopping?
And re-start the race with one formation lap (at speeds the cars normally do on their formation lap), and a couple of laps under full yellows.
There, this should keep you guys busy for a few hours in the non F1 season.

[nameless]

this is something that affects CART and other series (generally american) much more than F1 as cars are often behing the safety car for a number of laps, in F1 the cars dont follow the safety car for such a long time so bringing them into the pits may not be a suitable solution, but certainly that is a good idea for CART.

[Valve Bounce]

Au contraire, I initially proposed banning the safety car for F1 because I could not see its usefullness under any conditions in F1. I do remember there was one race where there was an accident and the cars followed the safety car for many laps. I consider it more appropriate to bring the cars back into the pits and let the medical and retrieval guys get on with their jobs safely. The race can always be restarted safely under the full yellows as seen at Surfers Paradise yesterday.

[Mr V]

I think the safety car should be used in F1 if it's only going to be for a lap or 2, whats the point of stopping a race if a situation can be dealt with quickly.

Originally posted by Valve Bounce
I do remember there was one race where there was an accident and the cars followed the safety car for many laps.

I believe you talking about Monza 2000 and yes i agree, that was silly, the debris and crash scene couldn't be cleaned up in a couple of laps (the safety car was out for 10 laps if i remember correctly....out of a 53? lap race) so the race should have been red flagged.

[Yoong Montoya]

Austria 2002 is a good example too with the Heidfeld/Sato crash. I think they should have red flagged it, let the medical staff attend to the drivers and restart the race later, and maybe even do it in 2 parts and decide the results by aggregate times, ala Suzuka 1994. Ferrari might not even have made Rubens move aside for Michael on the last lap if it had turned out this way.

[MiniMe]

VB ~ you have a Volvo?????????

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by MiniMe
VB ~ you have a Volvo?????????

Yeah!! and you want to see the looks on these young hot shots' faces when this old fart in a Volvo Station Wagon outdrags them off the lights.

Regarding the safety car, the point I am making is that if either a medical tam or retrieval team needs to access the track, it's much much quicker to bring the cars in than run the safety car out because it takes a couple of laps for he safety car to pick up the race cars in their correct order, and then they will still interfere with the ambulance going onto the circuit.

[Armco Bender]

Yeah it should be either a red flag or racing.If theres a big shunt,stop the race and sort it out properly,especially if its a big start line shunt,then it gives drivers a chance to get in the spare cars rather than having half the feild eliminated at the first corner.The safety cars seem to come out every time a chip packet blows across the track these days.It also leaves it open for manipulation if Team A is miles in front of Team B's No1 car,Team B could get the number 2 car to drive into the sand trap and bring out the safety car to close up the gap.

[Bleu]

Originally posted by Yoong Montoya
[B]Austria 2002 is a good example too with the Heidfeld/Sato crash. I think they should have red flagged it, let the medical staff attend to the drivers and restart the race later, and maybe even do it in 2 parts and decide the results by aggregate times, ala Suzuka 1994.[/B

Nowadays there are no aggregated times. If the race had been stopped, the new race had been started with the order by the time, but gaps would have been nulled.

The rule was introduced for 2000 season and was used in Spa 2001 after Burti's accident.

[AndyF]

I think the Safety Car is a good idea. If there is debris on the track, then why stop the race when it can be cleared in a lap! IMO it would be dangerous to remove the Safety Car, as the organisers would be unwilling to red-flag a race, possibly putting lives at risk

[Kex]

I don't think the Safety Car should be banned, but if it's been deployed for more than five laps you have to wonder whether they should have stopped the race.

[Stephen Green]

Ok, a couple of thoughts on this subject.

1. Red flagging F1 is rapidly becoming a big no no. That's because to stop the race and then restart it later screws up the TV braodcasting times and satelite allocation. In the days where F1 is big business and sponsors pay a fortune, there has to be a continuous feed for the TV audiences.

2. Being a marshal I can tell you I would far rather work trackside while a safety car was being used that a full course yellow (or black and yellow as they are in the UK). It is my experience that very few drivers slow down sufficiently to make it safe to work on the track without risking life and limb in the process.

[Yoong Montoya]

Originally posted by Stephen Green

1. Red flagging F1 is rapidly becoming a big no no. That's because to stop the race and then restart it later screws up the TV braodcasting times and satelite allocation. In the days where F1 is big business and sponsors pay a fortune, there has to be a continuous feed for the TV audiences.

So even if a marshall was killed, they would have to let the race go on for media reasons, ala Monza 2000 and Melbourne 2001?

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by AndyF
I think the Safety Car is a good idea. If there is debris on the track, then why stop the race when it can be cleared in a lap! IMO it would be dangerous to remove the Safety Car, as the organisers would be unwilling to red-flag a race, possibly putting lives at risk

Let's look at it this way: it takes at least two laps to bring out the safety car and for the safety car to pick up the racers in the correct order - some cars are actually signalled to pass the safety car and go round to the tail end of the group. So, let's say it takes 3 laps, two of which are slow before the cars can be bunched up. How red flagging a race would put lives at risk has not been explained by AndyF, so I'll leave this to him for further discussion.
In my view, the safety car is deployed in an effort to keep the TV viewers from switching channels, which they probably will in droves if the race were red flagged. However, one must ask what value we place on the possibility of rapid deployment of the medical team plus ambulance when a race is red flagged (almost instantaneously) vs 3 slow laps at least, not to mention the safety of marshalls who have to go out to rescue the driver(s) under the circumstances like Surfers Paradise, as well as the removal of debris without any cars going round, and of course removing the carbon fibre debris before the cars run over it and damage their tyres.
Will somebody please explain the benefit of deploying the safety car to me!!

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by Stephen Green

2. Being a marshal I can tell you I would far rather work trackside while a safety car was being used that a full course yellow (or black and yellow as they are in the UK).

Wouldn't it be safer for the marshals if there were no cars on the track? (except the ambulance and medical team cars)? and later on the recovery truck.

I am only advocating the full yellows as a procedure for the restart. Please read my lead post on this thread first.

[Stephen Green]

Yes VB it would be safer to do that but as I said earlier it's all about TV coverage and satelite time allocation in my opinion. What I was saying is that of the two (safety car or yellows) I would prefer the safety car for reasons of self preservation.

In the event of a major accident involving possible loss of life or serious injury to a driver or marshal, then I believe the C of the C would insist on a red flag or race stop.

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by Stephen Green
Yes VB it would be safer to do that but as I said earlier it's all about TV coverage and satelite time allocation in my opinion. What I was saying is that of the two (safety car or yellows) I would prefer the safety car for reasons of self preservation.

In the event of a major accident involving possible loss of life or serious injury to a driver or marshal, then I believe the C of the C would insist on a red flag or race stop.

First of all , I did say in bold in my lead post that if there is an accident that requires the cars to run slower than full yellows, bring the cars in.
I also think that bringing the cars in would have less impact on satellite coverage allocations as the medical team would be able to get to the injured quicker, have them taken away quicker, marcha;lls can have the debris removed quicker if the cars were brought in than have the safety car brought out when the medical and recovery cars are allowed access only when the safety car has picked out the leader and packed the field, and don't forget the cars that are waved past the safety car are allowed to go round at a much faster pace. So the only thing that is affected are the TV viewers who, on seeing the cars brought into the pits, will switch channels to watch something else.
The whole point is we never know when there is a major accident or not. Senna's accident looked most innocuous when I first saw it, and it certainly did not compare with the horrendous pil up at Spa or surfers paradise, or Jacques running into Ralf's car at Albert Park. I only wish more marshalls would give their comments here.

[Stephen Green]

Thanks Valve...Actually, when you are at the circuit as a marshal you do get to know when it's a serious accident or not. I can't tell you exactly how we know, it's a little like a sixth sense in a way.

On the point of clearing the debris quicker if the cars were in the pits, that would depend a little on the circuit, but for most cases we do have enough time to get much of the work done once the cars have passed. Even at Brands Hatch Indy circuit where lap times are in the region of 50 seconds, we managed to clear away a huge amount of debris or cars from the track before the pack come round and that's often under race conditions!

[Valve Bounce]

Stephen, I don't know about you, but I was stunned when I found out thet the Senna accident was serious. I wonder who had a sixth sense that Senna's accident was that serious from the visual immediately after the impact?
But we are talking about getting the medical and ambulance onto the track quicker if the cars were brought in. Again, talking about getting the debris cleared before the pack came around again, I am saying that it takes around 3 laps to get the safety car organised and out onto the track and to pick up the leader and allowing teh tailenders to pass by. In fact, apart from the television viewers switching to another channel, I have not been presented with a single case where the safety car is an advantage over red flag.

[Stephen Green]

I agree with you in that there really isn't a huge advantage for one over the other, but I still believe they use a safety car in order to keep the race running as close as possible to the worldwide TV schedules. In doing this they have managed to get more and more countries to screen F1 live. As in all walks of life, the producers of the TV companies need to know when the programme is going to start and finish. In my opinion that is why the safety car is used in preference to the red flag. Of course, as we have discussed in previous posts, if it were to be a major emergency then a red flag would be used and bugger the schedules.

[BootsOntheSide]

I've always felt that instead of the safety car, they should bring the cars back into the grid and then resume after 1 or 2 pace laps (counted towasrds the race distance, so as not to mess up fuel allocations) then resume with a rolling start, rather tyhan spending ages under pace car. For the sake of TV timings, they could change it to stop the reace after 2 hours of time since the start, regardless of how much racing there was. Its not perfect but it'll have to do.

[Valve Bounce]

Boots, we are one on this idea. This procedure will actually minimise non racing time, and help clear the track quicker, not to mention getting medicos to the drivers quicker. It might even allow a helicopter to land quickly on teh track near the scene of an accident if necessary. As I said several times above already, the safety car's main advantage seems to be preventing TV viewers from switching channels.

[Mr V]

Originally posted by Valve Bounce
As I said several times above already, the safety car's main advantage seems to be preventing TV viewers from switching channels.

It would appear so, take qualifying at Japan for example (and yes i know, the safety car can't bunch the field up in qualifying) but there was about 45 minutes of "non track action" and due to restriction times, ITV didn't show the end of qualifying. (Thank goodness for Sky digi+), but if this is the case, then it's a sad fact that the sponsers, getting their moving advertisments is put as priority over the safety of the drivers, marshals and medical people.

[Stephen Green]

I'm afraid that we have to accept that Formula 1 is big business and as such sponsors have to be looked after in whatever way possible.

On the matter of getting the doctors to the scene of an accident quicker if you red flag a race, I have to disgree. In my experience it makes little or no difference whether the race is stopped or they use a safety car or full course yellows.

I can only reitterate the comments I made earlier and say I (personally) have no qualms about working trackside under safety car conditions. owever, I wouldn't feel so safe under yellow flags!

I should also say that if the accident or incident were serious enough that the race were to be held under such conditions for more than say 10 laps (purely arbitary number there) then I do believe it would be right to stop the race and have a restart at a later time.

The problem lies with so many countries now showing F1 live, that hold ups like we have discussed can only make life more difficult for the TV producers. That's when you end up having the problems such as Suzuka when the satelite time ran out before the end of practice or the race.

[Valve Bounce]

Originally posted by Stephen Green


On the matter of getting the doctors to the scene of an accident quicker if you red flag a race, I have to disgree. In my experience it makes little or no difference whether the race is stopped or they use a safety car or full course yellows.

Om this point, I totally disagree with you. There was one F1 race in the last two years where the passage of the safety car plus its entourage of zig zagging racecars not only interferred with the passage of the ambulance going out to the scene of the accident quickly, but it also interfered with the passage of the ambulance departing afterwards.