FIA change F1 safety car rule to avoid repeat of Abu Dhabi 2021 Grand Prix chaos which saw Max Verstappen win title
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Published 16/03/2022 at 09:31 GMT
Ahead of the 2022 F1 season starting in Bahrain this weekend, the FIA have updated the wording in their safety car rules. This should ensure there is no room for the sort of interpretation that caused last year's controversial final-lap drama in Abu Dhabi, when only some cars were allowed to unlap themselves, and which enabled Max Verstappen to take the title from Lewis Hamilton.
'Red Bull look ridiculously fast', admits Hamilton
The FIA have taken steps to ensure there will be no repeat of last year's controversial Formula 1 season finale by changing the wording of their safety car rules.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen sensationally landed his first F1 crown in Abu Dhabi last December, but many felt Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton was unfairly robbed of what would've been his eighth title by then race director Michael Masi's polemical decision to only allow the cars between the two drivers to un-lap themselves, leaving Verstappen with enough time to pass the Brit on the final lap.
That will no longer be allowed under the new law, which now stipulates that "all" lapped cars must un-lap themselves before a race can be restarted, rather than the previous wording which - more ambiguously - used the word "any".
As well as the controversy around the un-lapping, Masi's decision to let cars - and most crucially, Verstappen - overtake on the same lap as he had let cars un-lap themselves, rather than the following lap as the rules state, was also met with confusion, especially in the Mercedes garage.
In a tacit admission of the Australian's mistake, the FIA have left this rule unchanged.
There have already been other changes in the paddock for 2022, with Masi removed from his role to be replaced by the alternating pair of Eduardo Freitas and Niels Wittich, who will be supervised by Herbie Blash, a former assistant of Charlie Whiting, the F1 race director who died in 2019.
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Hamilton 'not set any goals' for 2022, but wants to build on 'phenomenal' success
Following the Abu Dhabi saga and Hamilton's will he won't he return to the sport, it has been one of the most talked-about close-seasons in F1 history. And by further consequence, there is more anticipation ahead of the 2022 season-opener than perhaps any other campaign in recent memory.
The Mercedes-Red Bull rivalry - spanning bosses Toto Wolff and Christian Horner and the their two lead drivers - promises to spawn new chapters, but if pre-season testing is anything to go by, then Ferrari could also play their part at the head of the field.
And with the new engineering regulations in place, there is an air of overall unpredictability with a number of other teams potentially concealing their true pace and performance too.
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