F1: Risks in spa, very high to risk safety
The rain was a matter of conversation again, but most agree that the FIA did a good job
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium-while raining on one of the most venerated circuits of automobile in the middle of Sunday, the best pilots in the world waited in their boxes to be the approval to start the race.
The rain began to fall almost as soon as the pilots left boxes for the usual half hour on the grill before the race. Shortly after, he raised pitchers; The Belgian national anthem was sung under a torrential rain, although it seemed to rise as the local start time approached, 15:00.
Excess stagnant water and continuous rain, although at a slower pace, made the return of formation of the Belgium Grand Prix of Formula 1 It will develop after the security car. Even at a significantly reduced speed, the pilot’s reaction was similar: visibility under dense rain was terrible. THE POLEMAN Lando Norris commented to McLaren I barely saw anything and that I could only imagine how bad the cars would be further behind the platoon. The FIA I had already heard enough. At the end of that return, the security car led the group back to boxes. The regulatory body indicated that a weather calm was coming and that it would delay the exit until then.
That explanation did not satisfy everyone. When he later asked when the race should have begun, the current world champion, Max Verstappenhis opinion made clear.
“At three o’clock … right away,” he said. “It was not even raining, and of course, between curves 1 and 5 there was enough water, but if you had given two or three laps behind the safety car, it would have been much clearer, and the rest of the track would be ready for the race.”
Max Verstappen He won a classic wetting race in Brazil last year and is perhaps the greatest talent of the grill under those conditions; It would be easy to suggest that the best opportunity of the Dutchman to defeat the McLaren It was a career with that climate. But given the disappointing competition that finally followed, it was also easy to coincide with its evaluation.
90 minutes passed from the moment the start of the race was planned until Norris finally led an exit. In that interval, the pilots remained in their boxes with boring appearance, while engineers and producers carefully watched the meteorological radars to see the movement of the clouds in the circuit. Nothing from the other world, especially when many considered that conditions were good enough to compete.
It was difficult to avoid the feeling that F1 He had ruled out a possible classic competition when waiting so much to start, especially considering the location of the race. The unstable climate of the region has transformed many SPA races, such as 1998, full of accidents – perhaps the most dramatic wet competition of all time -, in instant classics. By the time the delay ended on Sunday, the possibility of a repetition seemed to have vanished.
The improvement of conditions when the races finally began was fast. At the end of the eleventh round of the 44 assigned, Lewis Hamilton He made the first stop to change the intermediate rain to smooth. Everyone else did the same in the next three laps. By the time the conditions stabilized, the drama was minimal; Hamilton shone at the beginning with a comeback, but even that lasted little.
“It’s a shame. Of course I knew they would be a little more cautious after Silverstone, but this was not meaningless,” Verstappen insisted on Sunday night. “Then it is better to say: ‘Do you know what? We hope to dry completely,’ and then we start with smooth, because for me this is not really running wet.”
The reference a Silverstone It was a good example of the challenge facing those who make decisions when it rains. Earlier this month, the FIA It seemed to advance the entrance of the security car when the rain got worse in the Great Britain Prize. Almost as soon as the race resumed in Tour 17, Isack hadjar He crashed at the rear of the also rookie Kimi Antonelli, whose Mercedes He did not warn due to the growing fog.
Lewis Hamilton He also referred to that moment when asked about the delay and suggested that the pilots, who meet every Friday of the race week with the career director, had mentioned that decision when talking about the possibility of rain for Sunday’s race.
“I think it was just a reaction to Silverstone… we sat and talked about, and the pilots said in the last race that we should not have restarted, “he said.” So I think they only focused on visibility. As soon as someone said later that the visibility was really bad, which was not very good … it was not as bad as in the last race, and I think they simply waited to be safe. ”
“Even so, I think they did a good job. Of course, we lost some races with extreme rain, which I think would have been pleasant. But for some reason, the splash here is really … well, at least this year, it’s like going through fog. I don’t know what we’re going to do to try to solve it.”
In another interview with Sky SportsVerstappen reiterated: “Of course we talk about it after Silverstoneto be a little more cautious because there was enough water there, but for me this was the opposite end. He also ruined a beautiful and classic wet career. ”
The spa legend also clouded the decision on Saturday afternoon, as well as the radar confirmation that a clear and prolonged period of dry time was coming.
Verstappen had mentioned “between curves 1 and 5” as particularly wet, and that section is perhaps the most legendary part of the circuit, which begins with a slow fork, the source, followed by a uphill section that leads to the legendary Eau Rouge, which catapults the pilots up and then on the crest of a hill in Raidillon to the Kemmel line. It could be the most revered asphalt stretch of the Formula 1 calendar, even if modern cars have eliminated part of the curve mythology. It is still one of the fastest sections of any circuit in the world. That, added to the possibility of strong splashes and Raidillon’s blind spot, undoubtedly represented excessive risk.
The pilot of Mercedes, George Russelldirector of the Association of Pilots of Grand Prizes and who has regularly defended security as a key topic, referred to those sections of the spa circuit to justify the delay.
“As a pilot, you always want to start. You love to drive in the rain,” Russell said. “But the reality is that, when you go more than 320 km/h leaving Eau Rouge, you can literally see anything; it is as if you will carry a bandage in your eyes. It is not a race, it is stupid.”
“So, considering that it would clearly be dry from 4, I think I made the right decision.”
As expected, in a career where a security focused on security dominated the holders, the worldwide broadcast offered a moving reminder of what was at stake.
During the event, the cameras focused on the mother of Anthoine Hubert, who died during the career of Formula 2 In Spa-Francorchamps in 2019. Hubert left the track in the blind area of the hill in the Eau Rouge section and was rammed by another car when bouncing against the walls. The accident occurred in a dry race.
Nathalie Hubert was in Alpine’s box watching Sunday’s career with the mother of Pierre Gaslywho starts every week of races in Spa, leaving flowers at the point of the track where his friend hit the tire barrier. Gasly has also led the career annually by Anthoine, which has become a usual event in the years since its accident.
The perspective of heavy rains in spa, especially in that part of the circuit, could understandably generate nervousness. In 2023, the young Diatano Van’t Hoff died in a race of the European Regional Formula Championship little further from the hubert’s accident, in a race that took place under intense rain. Images at the foot of the track showed the incident in the middle of a cloud of dew while a group of cars passed at full speed. Like Hubert, Van’t Hoff’s car received a lateral impact when bouncing against the track.
With the highest risk of discarded accident, Oscar Piastri and Norris, from McLarenthey comfortably achieved a double. The team director McLaren, Andrea Stellaperhaps offered the most reasonable summary of the delay in his own press conference on Sunday night.
“I think today the FIA He managed the race very intelligently, because we knew that a lot We even knew how long the race would last, and we knew that there could be wet conditions again at the end. ”
“So, from our position as a team, we always praise the work of the FIA When he deserves it, and I think this is one of the cases in which it is worth it. Because I understand that it would be very entertaining to see cars rolling in wet, but we must all be careful, since the average speed in spa is so high that cars move so much water that it is impossible to see. ”
“We saw in Silverstone That a car hit the gearbox of another, because it was impossible to see it, it was slower and there was less water (of which there would have been in spa). So we do not want the same to happen in Spa, so well done by the FIA!
