Friday, March 09, 2007
Safety First
Whilst our focus has been taken up with the tyre and engine regulations, we have seemingly overlooked another introduction this year: new safety car rules. From now on drivers will not be allowed to pit for fuel from the moment a safety car period is announced until all the cars are lined up behind it and the message 'Pit Lane Open' is displayed. This rule seems deliberately designed to take the fun out of safety car periods. Now teams will get a few minutes to decide if it's worth pitting or not. It will be a calculated affair. There'll be no more do or die decisions - lone backmarkers deciding to stay out there and see how far up the grid they can get, or brave midfield runners being the only ones to pit and hoping it pays off by the end. Now, I suspect, either everyone will pit or no one will pit. It won't be a contest of strategies and scheming, but one of science. Also introduced this year is the idea that lapped cars will overtake the safety car and rejoin at the back of the train. Is this good or not? Certainly it frees up the front runners to race with each other rather than battling for the first laps of a restart to overtake slower cars. But I always slightly agree with whoever it is that says blue flags should be banned and the art of lapping cars reintroduced to the sport. If they can't overtake them, what hope is there that they'll come close to their real rivals?
Comments:
<< Home
I too have always been a sort of "thems the breaks" when people complain about the way that a backmarker got in the way. They've made it reasonably likely that the backmarkers get out of the way.
On the subject of banning backmarkers I've always kind of supported it because it's the kind of thing that doesn't lead to stupid situations happening where at somewhere like Monaco you could get a backmarker in between the lead driver (because of where they exited the pits) and the driver in second place. While your point holds that if they can't overtake the driver then what hope do they have but at Monaco the situation is that it is very hard to overtake anyone, and so even with teh biggest speed advantage it might take 10 laps to do it, and in that ten laps the race might be over - or certainly the leader might be a long way down the road.
But the other side of things is that if there wasn't a blue flag then the race leader will be held up at the back which will also cause the second place man to catch up to him. Perhaps it would cause more overtaking even between drivers on the same track because a) the drivers would get more practice of overtaking and b) the leader would find it harder to scamper off.
Post a Comment
On the subject of banning backmarkers I've always kind of supported it because it's the kind of thing that doesn't lead to stupid situations happening where at somewhere like Monaco you could get a backmarker in between the lead driver (because of where they exited the pits) and the driver in second place. While your point holds that if they can't overtake the driver then what hope do they have but at Monaco the situation is that it is very hard to overtake anyone, and so even with teh biggest speed advantage it might take 10 laps to do it, and in that ten laps the race might be over - or certainly the leader might be a long way down the road.
But the other side of things is that if there wasn't a blue flag then the race leader will be held up at the back which will also cause the second place man to catch up to him. Perhaps it would cause more overtaking even between drivers on the same track because a) the drivers would get more practice of overtaking and b) the leader would find it harder to scamper off.
<< Home
