F1 is doomed to safety car starts

As I said in my previous article after the British Grand Prix free-practice sessions on Friday, Formula 1 in general lacks a visual appeal but that all came right on race day. It was a really exciting race, even if the FIA tried its hardest to spoil it by leaving the safety car out for far too long.

Not only does starting the race behind the safety car destroy one of the great spectacles - that first-lap ducking and diving - it also eliminates the opportunity of someone taking the risk of starting with intermediates, because you must use full wets when it's a safety car start.

If it's required for safety reasons, fine. But when more or less every driver is complaining about how long the safety car stayed out, it just shows that the guys driving these cars know a little more about what the track conditions are really like than those sitting in an office watching a TV screen.

When the safety car came in after five laps, the pitlane turned into chaos with everyone coming in and changing onto intermediates almost immediately.

I've no idea what the procedure is in race control, but once under the safety car I would be getting the teams to ask all the drivers on track who have won a world championship for their views on circuit conditions, and then make a decision from there.

Unsurprisingly, this aquaplaning problem has always been with us and there were ways to deal with it in the past. However, as usual, the FIA shot itself in the foot.

The current regulations do not permit car set-up changes after qualifying, and only allow for cooling changes if the climatic conditions have changed.

In the past, if it rained, teams could alter the set-up. Normally, it would involve a reduction in rear-roll stiffness, possibly softer springs, reduced camber (especially at the front) and an increase in front and (if it was really wet) rear ride height.

The softer springs, rear-roll stiffness and reduced camber went in line with reduced braking and cornering forces, and the increase in ride height was to reduce the risk of aquaplaning, and it worked fairly well.

Currently, the wet tyres are a slightly larger diameter than the slicks, but when it's wet it's not enough. I hate the safety car starts, but because of the way the regulations are written if we didn't start the race this way we could lose half the grid on the first lap because of this self-inflicted aquaplaning.

Even after all the ducking and diving as the track conditions changed, and numerous spins, before Nico Rosberg got his 10-second penalty the top five were in the same position as they qualified. So although it was exciting on the way, the end result still shows that the fastest car on Saturday is usually the one that's going to see the chequered flag first on Sunday.

Radio communications were inevitably a major talking point after the race, with Rosberg penalised because the team told him how to resolve a gearbox problem.

What's confusing for everyone is why the people who are responsible for the rules can't have the same understanding of those rules as each other. The difference in Mercedes' and the FIA stewards' interpretation was fairly obvious, so if an appeal had gone ahead it would have been interesting to see who came out on top.

Everyone will have a different opinion of what's right and what's wrong as far as the radio communication is concerned. I agree with the more extreme interpretation of the rule demanding that the cars be driven "alone and unaided", but when it comes down to a car being potentially eliminated from a race because of reliability reasons, then I believe it should be acceptable.

If it's about performance, coaching drivers to brake 10 metres later or get on the throttle earlier or telling them about other teams' strategies, then I don't think it's acceptable.

The pitboard is there to give information about where you are in the race and the gap to the car in front and behind. And you don't even have to give information about those close to you - it can be relative to anyone in the race.

So if you're leading and the guy behind isn't catching you, but the one running fifth is on a different strategy, with the possibility of becoming a pain before the end of the race, then you can inform your driver. It's down to him to take that information on board, absorb it and do something about it.

And while we're on the subject of the regulations, I thought the track limits being enforced during the qualifying sessions was great. It was just a pity that it wasn't done for every corner and for every infringement. The exit of Luffield onto the old main straight was one area that wasn't under scrutiny, but we saw plenty of cars going off with all four wheels there.

If the FIA could just police it consistently and rigorously for a few races, the drivers would soon learn that it's better to leave that small margin and be sure to keep their lap time. After all, they're all capable of doing this in the wet or at Monaco when the price for overdoing it can be severe.

Silverstone is one of those tracks that drivers love, but the designers and engineers love it even more. If you can get your car to produce a fast lap time here, then you've done a great job. This makes it an excellent track for judging car performance, particularly in terms of the aerodynamics.

Another thing that makes it more than just another circuit is that it's the home of Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams, Force India, Haas, Manor, Lotus and McLaren. Ferrari, Toro Rosso and Sauber are the only real visitors.

In reality the 'home teams' definitely came away with the bragging rights. But what does the order of the top five teams in the championship look like at a real race track?

Taking each team's fastest lap time from Q3 and converting it into a percentage, we get the following picture.

MERCEDES: 100.000%
(1st: 335 points)

Mercedes is the class of the field, lapping fastest in qualifying and just over half-a-second faster than the rest.

Some fine-tuning of the aerodynamic package has definitely delivered some extra pace. Mercedes seems to have a real handle on both power unit and chassis performance.

No one individual can take credit for that, but it was good to see John Owen, the chief designer, on the podium to accept the constructors' trophy on Sunday.

FERRARI: 101.785%
(2nd: 204 points)

For Ferrari to be this big a percentage off shows just how much Mercedes has moved forward - and how Ferrari has been unable to keep up the pace of development.

I keep hearing from Ferrari comments like "this circuit doesn't really suit our package". Well, I have news for you: if Ferrari is ever going to win another championship, the team needs to work out why.

Nowadays, you need to be competitive everywhere and Ferrari isn't. In fact, it seems to be going backwards, and we've yet to see this magical race weekend where the track really does suit its package.

RED BULL: 101.149%
(3rd: 198 points)

At a circuit where aerodynamics are the dominant force in performance, I expected more from Red Bull.

I think Mercedes' latest developments have caught Red Bull out; the factory needs to get its head down and it's probably time to concentrate on the F1 chassis as opposed to exotic road cars.

WILLIAMS: 102.542%
(4th: 92 points)

This was not just a bad weekend. This was a dismal weekend for Williams, and things just seem to be getting worse.

There was a fundamental lack of performance from the chassis. The writing has been on the wall that this was going to happen, and now is the time to react.

The team talked about tyre-temperature problems. Every team struggles to get the ideal tyre temperature and hence balance, but it depends on what the inherent balance of your car is.

If a car has got inherent understeer, you will struggle to get the fronts working quickly enough and they will lose temperature, increasing the problem.

If it has inherent oversteer, you will get more oversteer and again struggle to get the tyres up to temperature.

Mercedes seems to have a good handle on how to get its car balanced in all situations and can then switch the tyres on, but Williams struggles.

FORCE INDIA: 102.949%
(5th: 73 points)

With its base about 400 metres from the pits, this really is Force India's home race. The team's performance in qualifying was just about where it is - knocking on or just inside the top 10 regularly is acceptable.

This is what I would expect from a smaller team. It doesn't have the manpower to analyse in detail what's happening, but at least it does actually get on top of it most of the time.

What else did we learn? For all of the complaints about the slow start to the race, it was an interesting grand prix to watch, with cars going off when we did eventually get going.

So perhaps we should do the 'in' thing and have a referendum on implementing Bernie Ecclestone's random sprinkler system?

Perhaps the fallout from that might change things at the FIA and give it the teeth needed to sort out the 2017 regulations to improve the on-track spectacle and get costs under control properly.