The Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday was quite unfortunate for everyone except Williams ’employees. The event will be reduced to the shortest in the history of Formula 1, due to a deluge of rain that intensified after qualifying and made safe racing impossible. The spray from the major cars was so severe that drivers would have gone blind out there. FIA race director Michael Masi and his team were right not to run the race, lest the sporting risk another terrible accident in the humidity in Spa-Francorchamps.
No rational person could resent this decision. However, the call to determine the full race and award half a point after a little over two laps of the safety car deserves to be examined. Fans stayed in the rain for more than three hours, only to pay for their loyalty with a podium celebration for a race that never happened. And yet, the record books will count as a Grand Prix like all the others, just one that gave fewer points.
After the event, Masi was adamant as he spoke to the media that the idea of taking the cars out during those minutes was not motivated by the desire to cross the minimum of two laps that would have made the race official. From Running Man:
We were all looking for a window that we thought there was – and the teams saw it – there was a weather band where we thought we could take part in races and, as you all know, being a fan of the sport, you know the speed of time changes in this place. We thought we could get something done, but the weather deteriorated quickly, so we couldn’t.
There were 50 minutes left in the race clock after the final red flag; 17 minutes later, the race was finally called. With room for about half an hour of potential running at the time, it seemed very unlikely that things would resume. Still, fans who must have looked terribly cunning watched from grandstands as the cars paraded monetaryly around the circuit. not more long enough for F1 to conclude, technically, that a race had been made.
G / O Media may receive a commission
During the post-race interviews, the first-place finisher, Max Verstappen, credited the spectators with having highlighted him; he also called them the “biggest winners” of the afternoon who, to give him the advantage of doubt, would like to choose a deficient word. George Russell was, I imagine, too busy to surprise him events from the previous 24 hours to erase the smile on his face and who could blame him for that? This left Lewis Hamilton as the only podium to reflect on the shit of it all, while offering a fair solution to the problem. That’s how it was put Instagram:
Today has been a farce and the only people who have lost are the fans who have paid a lot of money to see us compete. Of course, nothing can be done about the weather, but we have sophisticated equipment to tell us what’s going on and it was clear that the weather would keep coming down. They sent us for one reason only. Two laps behind a safety car where there is no chance of winning or losing a seat or providing entertainment to fans does not run. We should have finished quitting, not risking the drivers and, most importantly, returning to the fans who are the heart of our sport.
It’s really that simple: run a legitimate race or reimburse fans.
Say what you want about NASCAR, but I would have pushed the event until Monday. In fact, NASCAR he did exactly that earlier this year for the Bristol dirt race. A cursory search shows that IndyCar had to do the same for the 2010 St. Petersburg Grand Prix, which was postponed one day to March 29th.
Masi said rescheduling Monday would not have been a feasible course of action in the case of Spa, because it would have needed an agreement between F1, its teams, the FIA and the race organizer, according to The guardian. Fairly enough, though that doesn’t really excuse why F1 never had a contingency plan in the rulebook for such an eventuality in its 70-year history. Or rather, he did it and now we’ve seen it, and we all know it hurts. Maybe that defense will fly this time, but it won’t fly again.
As such, the question now arises as to whether and how F1 will resolve this situation in the future. Zak Brown, head of McLaren it was frankly Sunday on its disapproval, again, not of time, but of regulation. According to F1 general manager Stefano Domenicali and Masi, they agreed to discuss Motorsport.com. Domenicali also said that F1 and the organizers of the Belgian Grand Prix he will be able to speak on the possibility of compensating the fans, while acquiring the responsibility of the sport because “[F1] they are not the ones they are putting on [out] the tickets “.
All the while, Domenicali backed down against Hamilton’s insinuation that the call was financially motivated. If this is true, the best way to prove it would be to return the money to the fans, perhaps a prorated amount for people who bought weekend tickets or the full cost of Sunday. If this does not happen, it is not necessary to take into account the comments of Domenicali, nor those of any of the F1.