The consistency problem highlighted by F1’s Australia red flags debacle

Formula 1 officiating shouldn’t feel this ad hoc. But too often waiting too long for too debatable a decision gives the impression that there’s someone in FIA race control frantically flicking through a printout of the sporting regulations mid-race, trying to put their finger on what to do next.

Consider the Australian Grand Prix. A third red flag created a scenario where a processional finish behind the safety car was required (although the clear intention was to have one last go at a green-flag finish). The order for this one-lap act of ceremony, which therefore decided the race classification, was determined by the previous red-flag restart grid minus crashed cars. As such, the 56th lap, when said cars were wiped out, seemingly both did and didn’t count. 

Haas protested, arguing the FIA could have used the running order from the approach to Turn 1 as a more up-to-date measure. While this case was thrown out on the fair basis it might encourage drivers to dive past under braking when there’s a red flag, the route to reaching the right conclusion was less robust. Relying on the old grid was the best outcome “in the time available”, wrote the stewards. But that isn’t good enough. It implies a grey area, that with less pressure a different outcome would have been possible. When there’s this much at stake, there needs to be uniformity.

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Wind back to the prior round in Saudi Arabia. Aston Martin successfully overturned a penalty to reinstate Fernando Alonso in third place by highlighting inconsistent precedent. The FIA reckoned events in Jeddah exposed a “specific circumstance”, but the team citing seven past examples suggests otherwise and theoretically allows old results to be thrust into varying degrees of doubt. While the FIA argues it is under-resourced, Aston could successfully protest because it had a sporting director who knew the rules sufficiently to find a loophole and argue a convincing case. If a team can know the exact letter of the law, the lawmaker has no excuse not to as well.

Niels Wittich and the FIA's F1 race direction team have still faced scrutiny despite changes since the Abu Dhabi 2021 saga

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

It used to be that after every GP, the race director would invite media to question their decisions. This guaranteed a degree of transparency and some form of explanation, however unsatisfactory. But these Q&As were knocked on the head after Abu Dhabi 2021. Largely for protection, Michael Masi’s successors have been taken out of the public eye and anything that might constitute a distraction deleted from their schedule. Now it feels like a layer of scrutiny has been lost and that there’s a lack of justification for some contentious decisions. 

Admittedly, you can largely anticipate the FIA reply. Nine times out of 10, it will rightly argue it has deployed this safety car or that red flag on the sound grounds of safety.

The 2022 Italian GP finished behind a safety car, rather than the race being red flagged. That anti-climax was met with fan outrage. The rules haven’t changed since but seven months later, the handling of a similar late-race scenario was vastly different

But largely unaccountable events in Australia only fuel the combustible debate regarding whether the top flight is primarily ‘sport’ or ‘entertainment’, since it felt as though priority number one was to get cars racing – no matter if the order in which they lined up was fallible.

Remember that the 2022 Italian GP finished behind a safety car, rather than the race being red flagged. That anti-climax was met with fan outrage. The rules haven’t changed since but seven months later, the handling of a similar late-race scenario was vastly different. It doesn’t really matter which way is better, so long as there is consistency. Regardless of how high F1 gets on its Netflix fix and all the bucks that popularity brings, there cannot be the impression that rules are enforced on whims for the sake of a dramatic spectacle.

F1 has bad memories of late safety car rule and decision changes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images