Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Trulli backs safety car rules change

Jarno Trulli has backed growing calls for Formula One's safety car regulations to be changed - but believes that revised rules about restarts are more important than sorting out the issue of backmarkers

A number of drivers have said they want to speak to the FIA to consider revising the safety car rules in a bid to prevent the interference of backmarkers at restarts.

There are suggestions of letting lapped traffic pass the leaders, so as to ensure that fights for position are not ruined towards the end of races.

While Trulli has welcomed debate on that matter, he thinks it is more urgent that the FIA does something about changing how cars restart at the end of a safety car restart.

He is unhappy about the way in which race leaders are allowed to brake and accelerate at their own free will, which can lead to confusion among the following pack.

Drivers fighting for position sometimes find themselves needing to take avoiding action to prevent a collision, while lapped traffic behind the race leader often opts to drop well back to stay out of trouble.

"The biggest issue we have at the moment with the safety car is the restart," said Trulli. "As usual, the restart is a bit difficult because the driver that is in front gives the restart, but you don't know when this comes.

"Obviously the drivers behind try to be as close as possible to be ready, and that is why sometimes accidents happen between the drivers.

"If we can fix it so that we say you can only restart from a certain point of the track, and from that point on you cannot weave anymore, you cannot deliberately brake and so on, it would be much easier. Otherwise it is a bit of a jungle."

Trulli said he was non-committal about the possibility of letting backmarkers through.

"We have always talked about this problem in the past," he explained. "But we always decide to leave everything as it is because if you let the other drivers go through, then you should let all the drivers from the back of the grid overtake the drivers which had lapped them, and then rejoin them on the same lap.

"It is not so clear and you cannot say to the drivers in front to slow down in this case. It is a bit confusing and I don't know. We are going to talk about it."

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article Davidson fastest in practice 1 - US
Next article Q & A with Jarno Trulli

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe