An easy thing to say, but short of resurrecting Whiting, a harder thing to execute. As you say, Charlie wrote most of the regulations, and had been working in F1 since time immemorial...there aren't any other Charlie Whitings out there. Hard man to replace; realistically, the only person with any experience to take the job would be Silvia Bellot, as she has been the race director for F2/F3 for a couple seasons.
A couple of questions for the more knowledgeable F1 followers. How do they decide whether to use a virtual safety car or an actual safety car? Why are the rules so different for both? I don’t understand why, under the actual safety car, the drivers aren’t just told to drop their speed by X% in the same way as for the virtual safety car, thus maintaining the space between the cars. My guess, for the second part, is that F1 can be incredibly boring for viewers who just dip in and out of it to watch a procession, and they are actively trying to inject a bit more excitement into it by bunching the cars up. If having closer races is that important, to generate more interest, then run shorter races.
Usually because of people on the track (marshals, driver etc) and particularly other vehicles (removal trucks and medical cars). Google Jules Bianchi for why that change was made. It's not terribly pleasant.
-Yeah, the bunching under a full safety car is intentional; it means that marshals can go out on the track for an extended period of each lap without worrying about traffic. In general, a Virtual Safety Car is called for in situations where the marshals only have to be on the track briefly (like grabbing a piece of debris), or when the stricken vehicle is well off the track but in a position where it cannot safely be left and speeds need to be reduced. A full safety car is necessary any time you have people or equipment on the track for any real length of time. There was no way to safely remove Latifi's car under anything other than a full-course yellow.
Thank you both. I hadn’t considered the need to bunch the cars up to free up time for the on track marshals. I still don’t like the rule though. My way would be to line them all up in the pit lane, and release them with the time gaps still in place and without losing any laps. And no maintenance/tyre changes etc.
Honestly, I love the rule. It can make what is a procession suddenly interesting and fun again. It adds to the experience, when used correctly. And you win some, you lose some - they all understand that. The way it was applied in Abu Dhabi was wrong though.
It's all ultimately part of the strategy as well. On tracks known to produce plenty of safety cars (Baku, Montreal and Jeddah, to name three) teams tend to take more risks on aging rubber, because there are significant advantages to pitting under caution.
Turns out that we were innovators. Having clearly seen our success in getting sponsored by a website about a squirrel, the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team has entered into a partnership with a company with two nonfunctional websites, an app that may or may not exist, and a CEO who appears to be a digital image of a Witcher 3 NPC and calls himself "Sir Lucas Capetian". https://defector.com/what-the-hell-is-this-company-the-76ers-just-partnered-with/ The digital media space is wild, y'all. So blessed to have gotten in on the ground floor.
Soooooo. Djokovic has been given a medical exemption to enter Australia without being vaccinated so that he can play tennis. Not connected with money at all....I’m sure the same thing would have happened if he’d been a qualifier ranked 200th in the world. So don’t be so cynical.
