Photo Credit: MoneyGram Haas F1 Team
The last Formula 1 race before the break, in Melbourne, was chaotic and saw a continuous succession of events. Between red flags, multiple Safety Cars, DNFs, the show was not lacking, but there were those who complained about how the situation was handled by the race direction.
After the second red flag, the race restarted with a standing restart, to complete the final two laps, but several incidents interrupted the GP once again.
F1 regulations say that if a race is suspended “in all cases the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars”, and race director Niels Wittich decided to renew the order from before the restart to end the race and so to do the last lap behind the Safety Car.
In an interview with Sky Sports, Haas Team Principal Guenther Steiner opened up on the matter, as the American team was affected heavily by the decision.
Nico Hulkenberg in fact, who gained positions and climbed to 4th place which would have then been P3 because of the Sainz penalty, ultimately had to settle for P7 due to the current regulations.
“They wanted to do the ordering on a timing line. With the technology that we have these days, GPS is accurate enough – we use GPS for the blue flag for example.” Steiner said.
“They say it’s not accurate enough for a finishing position yet it’s accurate enough for a blue flag – we need to make our mind up what it is and what it isn’t.
“I really think there needs to be a lot of thinking. We could have frozen everything, via camera and via GPS, at the exact moment when the red flag came out,” he explained.
“I think it will come up at our next F1 Commission next week. Let’s see what comes up – people are a lot less outspoken in meetings like this about it but everyone will have their opinion.
“I think in general, we need to do it for the fans. For me, the biggest thing was to make people wait half an hour for a race result knowing that it will not change anymore. We only had to go around another lap and a half,” the team principal of the American-owned team concluded.
