Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Safety car stupidity

After the Valencia debacle, the FIA changed the safety car rules, and then changed them again.

The good part is that nothing like the Valencia fiasco should happen again, as the safety car will now always be deployed in front of the race leader. The bad part is that they're essentially fixing the wrong thing. The problem with what happened at Valencia was that the penalty for overtaking the safety car was a joke. Silverstone showed quite nicely that in many ways, a drive-through penalty is horrible. Alonso's drive-through knocked him clear out of the points, while Hamilton's drive-through didn't affect his standing at all.

The penalty for overtaking the safety car, or reckless driving behind a safety car that causes an accident, should be a black flag. Oddly, both my examples were perpetrated by the same guy. Both of them show a clear disregard for the rules in a situation that race control has deemed dangerous enough that a safety car has to be deployed. You already get disqualified for running a red light at the pits, so why on earth don't drivers get disqualified if they overtake the safety car?

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