Are There Too Many Red Flags in Formula 1?

so a little while ago as I was casually whizzing through on either anarchistic father Twitter had to provide that week I saw something from another F1 YouTuber that kind of made me go huh a dude by the name of Peter Brooke brought up a decently interesting point regarding red flags about how back in the 50s and 60s there were virtually none and here we are at the beginning of the 2020s where we have more red flags than a Soviet parade and there ain't much to dispute there it's been evident that in the last few years red flags meant from being a relative Rarity to being of more common occurrence even in circumstances where really it shouldn't have happened so what gives why the sudden rise and really we must ask ourselves are there too many red flags in Formula One nowadays well to better understand this we might need to understand the history of the red flag as we can see from Peter's tweet the first red flag occurred back in the 50s except it kinda didn't in that instance it was more a race ending early rather than it being stopped out right for something that you might expect a red flag to be thrown for but this also occurred in the 9 1950 Indianapolis 500 which yes while being a part of the Formula One calendar back then wasn't run to Formula One regulations wasn't really run by people within the formula on Paddock and served as an ultimately meaningless addition to the Formula One calendar therefore strictly speaking there were no red flags shown in the Contemporary F1 races in the 50s nor in the 60s in fact the first occurrence of a red flag in a race occurred in the 1971 Canadian Grand Prix the reason for that red flag missed and even now I can already hear the faint Whisper of the social media Warrior I can hear it say soft well calm that if you want but when visibility is down to a point where you can't see the end of the corner it kind of does present some pretty obvious challenges what's more and the formula for support race before the Grand Prix local competitor Wayne Kelly slammed into an ambulance and lost his life you would imagine that they would want to avoid a repeat of this and this was the 1970s by this stage emphasis on driver and spectator safety had rapidly gone up as especially at the behest lots of Jackie Stewart and moon and bitching wounds all you like but it was ultimately for the better the next race to be red flagged occurred two years later which was fair enough considering half the damn grid dies and Andrea de animage almost literally dies with multiple cars spewed around the racetrack and no safety cars back then to speak of at least ones that didn't screw up the race it was better to stop the race rather than having Marshals running across a live race track whilst F1 cars attempted to avoid the world's most expensive and deadly game of whack-a-mole in the main it was either Paul weather or major accidents that would cause races to be put under red flag conditions and when I say major accidents I mean major in the year 2023 a stranded car on the racetrack would constitute at least a virtual safety car maybe a full one or such as in 2021 Baku a full-on red flag but back in the 70s and the 80s the race would continue on as per normal unless of course multiple cars are piled up and left the track virtually blocked or if Spectators had been killed like in Ralph stomolan's crash in Spain 1975 or in instances where a driver was killed such as with Ronnie Peterson in 1978 Ricardo paletti in 1982 ayerton Cena in 1994 Jo Bianchi in 2014 or the near-fatal crash of Nikki louder in 1976 but even then sometimes the race would still go on despite the erroneous nature of what the hell's going on here such as 1973 zanford or 1977 kyalami Roger Williamson and Tom Price died before everyone's eyes but the race went on and I don't think it's a bad thing that we're past that some of these races would get back underway some would not some would resume with limited lights run most were absolutely justifiers although some would argue weren't the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix the race was stopped Jackie X who was officiating that race claimed it was stopped just in case someone drowned and what was quickly descending into a Lamborn boat race but the more cynical people would say that IX a Porsche Factory driver would be inclined to allow alarm Prost who was racing with a Porsche engine to win the race cross clamored for the race to be red flags and while his reasons were as I'll detail in another video just X could see what Pros could not bet I heard on sinner in the tommen was rapidly catching him and Stefan belloff and the turtle was rapidly catching him so it might have been a safety thing or it might not have been cars would still be left stranded on the side of the road in these days as you can see here in 1984 Dallas but it was clear that people were becoming more and more safety conscious up until the 2020s red flags were dished out in relatively the same amount but it wasn't as if they were thrown out for the smallest possible reason in fact the last race to be stopped in the 2010s was the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and there would not be another red flag shown until September 2020 and lots seemingly would change their day the 2020 Italian Grand Prix throw up a memorable result the debut win of Pierre gasly a result we all remembered well and one that we all cherish if you ignore the fact that a red flag bought out earlier had shaken up the whole damn order something that was bought out after Charlotte clear got a little bit too friendly with the barrier and his vain attempt to make use of a Ferrari effort spearheaded by Matia bonato the damage inflicted to the tire barriers meant extensive repairs were required thus the race was stopped then it caused a commotion with sir Lewis Hamilton turned colorblind and gave us a wacky result which really no one complained about at all but perhaps it gave us a taste of what would happen when a wrench was thrown into the equation under a red flag there are two things that are slightly indigestible first is the ability to make effectively a free pit stop under these conditions it clear unfair advantage and it can ruin the race and the efforts of people who up to that point played the game right and were punished through no fault of their own it is a stupid damn Rule and it does need to be changed but it's not gonna be changed because any logical governing body would have done it by now but you know that's who we're stuck with right now the other aspect is the process of getting the race back underway again and this is where the standing restart comes in beginning in the year 2015 Formula One devised a brilliant plan whereby a restart from a red flag period should become a total freaking Lottery 20 cars barreling down into turn one in what was effectively a winner takes all Sprint for the victory what could go wrong on that occasion nothing did turn out wrong but fast forward to the 2023 Australian Grand Prix and a lot did go wrong three cut them three red flags in that Grand Prix one to clean up the mess made by Alex Alban one to pick up a Rogue tire left by Kevin magnussen and a third time with the remaining portion of that grid attempted to kill each other knowing that there were only three laps separating them from eternal glory on the account of those first two red flags one could argue it was Overkill that these incidents could have been solved under a safety car or even a virtual one and this dust leave people to question whether these red flags are down to safety or entertainment the improved safety standards other times certainly mean that we do have to be more careful but the nature of some of these red flags does raise questions over whether they were totally necessary there have been some races stopped near the end so that the race could finish under green flight conditions which I am 100 for but again that plays into the entertainment aspect of it at what point have you gone too far at what point Have You compromised someone's hard-earned race and to send it down to a two-lap shootout where it could be utterly ruined beyond your control and with sprint races and other proposed gimmicks being set forth this does play to their argument and I'm not sure there is something we are 100 for I mean let's be real we watch races to be entertained but we also want fairness but Formula One is a very strange place to look for fairness ultimately however in the interest of safety you can't compromise imagine if a driver struck a damaged barrier what would the consequences be a driver injury fatality a car jumping the fence whether it would have been from leclaire's crash in Monster 2020 or so lots of lots crash in magella the same year Raman grosjean in Bahrain MX Schumacher and Monaco 2022 this ain't something you could take lightly so going back to the question pose at the start of the video are there too many red flags in Formula One nowadays honestly it's a double-edged sword on one hand safety is Paramount on the other hand officials do seem to be trigger happy and Keen for their entertainment aspects above everything I guess the best person to summarize this is the person that started this whole debate in the first place take it away Pete well Josh like all popular sports formula one should be run with a fine balance between safety fairness and entertainment for the most part it is but there does appear to have been a notable swing towards the entertainment side from Management in recent years mostly at the behest of fairness but also somewhat with safety in the past three years we've had one less red flag than the previous 20 years combined and Monza 2020 was a game changer this red flag was Justified on safety grounds due to the damage to the Tech Pro barriers from monsula Crash but coming just after a safety car that mixed the grid up combined of Hamilton's penalty and a standing start instead of revolving one as standard which serves no purpose other than for entertainment and drama and was also the first time that a standing salt had been used for a race restart held after the first four laps since iwila 1994 turned what was until then a snoozefest into a modern classic and gave us one of the most unexpected podiums in many a year standing restarts became very trendy in 2021 as well as Red Bull and Mercedes trying to haggle He Who Shall Not Be Named for the most opportune grid order at said restarts and now they're just par for the course even though as we've seen in Australia they only open up opportunities for further red flags a veritable feedback loop of DTS drama that actually summed up the point a lot better than I did shows you how much of a linguistic extraordinaire I am [Music]

Channel: Josh Revell

Views: 127,126

Keywords: f1, formula 1, f1 red flags, f1 red flag, formula 1 red flag, 1973 british grand prix, 2023 australian grand prix, 2020 italian grand prix, red flag, red flags, red flag racing

Id: CfV2eLeVZvU

Length: 10min 5sec (605 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023