The Safety Card

The late George Harrison once told me that Ayrton Senna's fatal accident was 'like a raindrop on a lotus leaf', meaning that the Brazilian's front wheel striking his helmet was a matter of pure chance.

Robert Kubica's accident in Montreal was the biggest we've seen in many years, and we can all be thankful that the raindrop fell the right way - the whole sport and not just the BMW Sauber driver had a very fortunate escape last Sunday.

By the end of the race the word had gone round the paddock that he had got away with a broken leg, the result of an erroneous report to race control from a circuit doctor (not the FIA's own Gary Hartstein, who had returned to track duty in the medical car).

Race control duly passed the message on to BMW and the other teams, so that the drivers knew that he was basically OK. Indeed the three podium finishers were fully informed and officially told that they were free to celebrate as they wished.

It was only later that, after speaking direct to the hospital, Dr Mario Theissen was able to report the astonishing news that in fact Robert wasn't injured at all. That left us free to enjoy Lewis Hamilton's wonderful maiden victory, and try to make sense out of the other remarkable events in what was one of the most dramatic dry weather races of recent times.

We could probably fill a book with the full story of the race, including how Alex Wurz jumped brilliantly from 19th to the podium despite his third assault from behind in six races, and how Honda and Red Bull both managed to get their strategies as wrong as Williams got theirs right, throwing away great opportunities to score big points.

Instead, let's look at how the unfortunate Adrian Sutil helped to set everything in motion...

The safety car time-bomb

Sutil's impact with the wall triggered a safety car on lap 23, and so commenced an extraordinary chain of events that turned the race on its head.

The first major shake-up in the safety car rules since its original introduction gave the teams much to think about over the winter.

The FIA had been looking for a way to stop people racing back to the pits, potentially putting marshals at risk. The solution was to have a closed pitlane to allow the cars to be bunched up, and in effect 'released' into the pits in a controlled manner.

The only problem concerned those drivers who were about to run out of fuel. They would be allowed to fuel, but would pay the price with a 10-second stop-and-go penalty. When the teams pointed out that this could be unfair, FIA delegate Charlie Whiting made the not unreasonable observation that they could maintain a safety margin of a lap or two of fuel in the car at every planned stop. But fuel means weight, so that didn't go down very well with most teams, although one or two have, apparently, adhered to that policy.

In Canada, McLaren boss Ron Dennis admitted it's a tough call: "A lap here was half a tenth, so in a 20-lap stint you're carrying a second of excess fuel, if you look at it that way.

"The thing is, if you've got a lap, what are you going to do? Are you going to go a lap longer and use it, or are you going to stop? With Fernando we had a lap of fuel. We'd made a lap, so we had a lap more than the stop. We worked to get that fuel, and you then don't say, oh well, we'll stop early.

"It's frustrating. It spoiled the race for several people. I don't think there's anyone in F1 who will not sign up to a reversion to the last regulations."

Some teams (including McLaren) have also consistently ensured that their drivers were not pitting a single lap apart, in order to ensure that a safety car wouldn't ruin both races. The downside of that is that one driver has a more significant weight penalty in qualifying than he would have had in the old days, when a lap was the usual difference.

Since the start of the season, the prospect of a safety car introduction in the middle of a fuel window has kept everyone on their toes. Against the usual form, there was no intervention in either Melbourne or Monaco, and the one in Bahrain came on the first lap, so the new rules had no impact.

On the grid in Montreal I joked with Dennis that there would probably be a safety car around lap 17, and he said that it would be 'a disaster'. In fact, had it come out then, the only impact on McLaren would have been to trim any advantage the two silver cars might have had (assuming they were running first and second), and possibly cost the second-placed car a couple of places as he would have to be stacked up in the pitlane.

But lap 23 really was a disaster, as it coincided with Fernando Alonso's first stop, and that of Nico Rosberg. Both men still had a little fuel in the tank - everyone does when they stop - but it was not enough to gamble on staying out, even allowing for the fact that by running slowly, they might be able to run for an extra lap or so.

With no way of knowing how long it would take to get the field together and for the FIA to declare the pitlane open, it was not a gamble worth taking. So both drivers headed straight into the pitlane knowing that they would later face a 10-second penalty.

"Running one of our cars out of fuel behind the safety car didn't seem much of an option," said Dennis. "To give you a clear understanding of Fernando, we had less than a lap's fuel when the safety car was deployed. What you have to then work out very quickly is how much fuel are you actually going to be able to conserve behind the safety car, and we worked it quickly as a little over two laps, which we thought was too marginal.

"So we knew we were going to be penalised, but that was better than running out of fuel. As it happens we probably would have had an egg-cup full left, and made it, so with the benefit of hindsight the wrong call, which is why some of us don't feel great, because it effectively made his race very difficult."

The rule is the same for everybody, but it's no comfort for the teams and drivers involved that their races were ruined by an element of chance over which they had no control.

"We just got caught out with the safety car," said Rosberg. "It's strange, I just happened to not have fuel any more, and that lap, 13 seconds before I went into the pitlane, the safety car was deployed.

"It's a bit strange that I get penalised so badly for that situation. I was empty. I would have had one more lap or whatever, but it doesn't help me now. In my situation it was shit - why did I deserve that? What am I doing wrong? It's just bad luck and coincidence and everything; my race is messed up. It doesn't really make sense."

In an ironic twist, McLaren guaranteed Hamilton's win by pulling the same trick that so frustrated the Briton - and created a media furore - in Monaco. At both his pitstops in the principality Lewis was called in early because the positions were stable and he had little to gain by running his fuel load down, and everything to lose if he went as far as he could and a safety car happened to come out.

He made his second stop in Montreal with a significant amount of fuel in the car, and again he had nothing to gain by staying out.

"We were covering [Nick] Heidfeld," said Dennis. "We had a lot more fuel, we could have gone another six laps I think. But if the safety car had come out in a situation where we were penalised as we were with Fernando, he would have lost the race. The only thing that could lose us the race was the safety car in respect of Heidfeld, so we just covered Heidfeld, which was the logical thing to do.

"We could have gone much further, and then you think, the only way we can lose this race is a safety car. The problem was that stopping that early, you're then on the option tyre, so we then had the fuel to optimise the tyre use, but we couldn't use it because of the safety car. So then Lewis really had to look after his tyres, and he really did that well."

It's a quirk of the new rules that will cause teams to adjust strategies all season and means that often we will never be quite sure when the cars were due to stop and thus what fuel loads they were carrying. Indeed, I have a strong suspicion that Hamilton's first stop last weekend was also earlier than originally planned, and his qualifying performance might have been even better than it looked.

The other big factor at play in strategy choice was the need to use both types of tyres at some point in the race. In effect nobody wanted to get on the supersoft because of graining issues, but they had to find a time to use them. Cleverly, Renault got Heikki Kovalainen on to them for a short stint in the middle of the race, so he was on the preferable harder prime when it mattered at the end.

Williams took a huge gamble by putting Wurz on supersofts for the last 40 laps of the race on a suitably heavy fuel load. The Austrian had a few problems, but the extra safety car periods helped him nurse them, and again when it mattered at the end he had gone through the graining period and was in better shape than those on fresh supersofts, including the likes of Alonso.

"Fernando was super quick," said Dennis. "But what you needed to be was under that to hold the tyres in good condition. As soon as you pushed, you grained the tyres and you got monster understeer. That was the problem.

"He fought well, and it was disappointing at the end that his tyres were completely finished, because he'd pushed so hard, which is why he was a sitting duck."

Red light spells exclusion

Going through a red light at the pit exit is one of the most basic mistakes that an F1 driver can make, and yet two experienced drivers from two top teams managed to get it wrong when that first safety car came out, and they paid a heavy price. In both cases it seems that their teams missed the opportunity to warn them.

The way it works is quite simple. The red light comes on as the safety car queue approaches the pit entry, and it goes off when the last car in the queue passes the pit exit. It is triggered manually by the FIA's Claudio Garavini, who watches the races from the start/finish line.

There's a simple reason why the light stays on until the queue has passed - if not, a car could potentially leave the queue, make a pitstop, and emerge in the middle of the pack. If it drives straight through the pitlane it could even emerge in front. Oddly, some people couldn't quite grasp this concept on Sunday, including Felipe himself.

"Everybody was stopping at the same time to change tyres and fuel," he rued. "The pitlane was open, and then when I go out the light was red. I didn't even look because I never expected to stop and change tyres when the pitlane was open for everybody to be disqualified for a thing like that. For me it's a kind of a joke.

"They [the FIA] need to be clever enough to see that the pitlane was open, everybody was stopping at the same time. We saw in the past that some drivers were disqualified because of that, but they were stopping alone, they were stopping when the safety car was coming. I was behind the safety car, the pitlane was open, and I stopped. I never saw something like that. It's a bit of a strange situation."

Suggestions by Massa that the light should not have been on or that the penalty was unfair were frankly wide of the mark. Having said that, at most circuits the red light would probably have turned green as Felipe, the first man to leave his pit, approached the exit.

But the layout of Montreal means that the red stays on for longer than normal, because the safety car and the queue have to negotiate the tight first corner complex. The pit exit represents a significant shortcut and brings the cars out in the middle of Turn 2.

And that of course is exactly what happened to Juan Pablo Montoya at the very same track in 2005. Furious because a radio miscommunication meant he got caught behind the safety car, he came in the next lap and charged out of the pits through a red light. When he got to Turn 1, he barged his way into the middle of the queue, almost banging wheels with David Coulthard in the process.

A black flag and an inevitable exclusion soon followed - that was based on precedents set in the cases of Jarno Trulli in Austria in 2001, and Heinz Harald Frentzen in Australia a year later.

You would have thought that with the Montoya example still relatively fresh in people's minds that teams and drivers would have been on top of the situation, but clearly not all of them were.

Massa got the end of the pitlane and didn't even look at the lights, and just blasted straight out. Behind him Fisichella hesitated, but in effect reacted to what Massa was doing and followed. It was the less experienced Kubica who did the right thing and stopped.

Massa's error wasn't quite as blatant as Montoya's, but the back of the queue was still making its way through the first couple of corners, and after checking his speed, he slotted in at the back behind Tonio Liuzzi.

As you will have heard from team radio transmissions over the years, teams always frantically warn drivers to avoid crossing white lines at the pit exit, and yet in the heat of the moment neither team seemed to have done that in the case of the red light. Perhaps because all the cars had gone past, their natural assumption was that the exit light was no longer an issue, but as noted, Montreal is a special place.

"He did not pay attention," said Ferrari boss Jean Todt of his driver. "He was concentrated on going out, and not having any car passing him. And we did not tell him anything. It's in the rule, if you have a procedure where you say be careful, you will have the red light, you don't have to see it. We did not say [anything] to him, and he did not pay attention."

"If the safety car is going past, then the red light should be on," said Renault engineering boss Alan Permane. "When the last car goes past, the green light goes on. That's it. [Fisichella] kind of followed Felipe out, he did hesitate, and then just went. I'm sure it was a bit of brain-fade. To be honest, I don't want to go too much into it..."

Intriguingly, both teams mentioned that thanks to the slightly curving pit exit, they could not see the lights from the pit stand, from where all messages are of course sent. It would thus make sense that next year in Montreal (and at any other track where there are similar visibility problems), teams ensure that one crew member in front of the garage is charged with keeping an eye on the lights, and passing that information to the pit wall.

Montreal may be an extreme case in terms of the red light delay, but the issue could crop up again elsewhere this season. In the past, when the safety car came out, people came straight in and there was always a very good chance that the light would be green for the simple reason that the safety car could be pretty much anywhere on the track, and the queue would be forming behind it.

Under the current rules we're going to see a lot more examples of groups of cars leaving the queue, dashing into the pits, and racing each other out. And there will be other tracks where the track layout or the tardy pace of a couple of stragglers trying to join the queue mean that the red light will again be on...

The Pole's position

The first safety car period also led directly to Robert Kubica's accident. As mentioned, he dutifully waited at the red light, despite the temptation to follow Massa and Fisichella out. However, when it turned green he was overtaken by Jarno Trulli, who was still moving and thus had momentum on his side.

Losing a place by obeying the rules would not have pleased Robert, who was well aware that he was much quicker than the Toyota, and had to get back past it as quickly as possible - and the best chance would be the first lap of the restart. That is why he was urgently trying to find a way past the Toyota driver on the approach to the hairpin.

The TV pictures didn't show the immediate build-up to the contact, but Trulli says he wasn't aware of the BMW Sauber's presence on his right.

"I didn't move, I kept my line," said the Italian. "The last time I saw Robert he was on the left hand side, and apparently he turned to the right hand side, so I have no idea what he has done. I just know that I kept my line and I haven't done anything. Honestly, I spent my race with my head thinking about this accident. I know that I am a driver, but I am also a human being, so obviously I was shocked."

Robert hit the Toyota's right rear tyre at full tilt, and that pushed the front of the BMW up. Losing part of the front wing at such a speed didn't do much for aero stability, and tyre marks showed that the front wheels bounced twice on the tarmac before he headed on to the grass, where an access road again caused the front to rear up, and air to get under the car.

At this point there is a gap in the wall to allow retired cars to be retrieved, and indeed Scott Speed's Toro Rosso was sitting there. Naturally, the second part of the wall is at a much sharper angle to the track than would be normal, but if you stood on the spot you would probably agree that the chances of anyone hitting it were not that great.

And yet Kubica managed to find it with uncanny accuracy. Indeed his trajectory was so precise that he first clipped the very end of the first part of the wall with the right front wheel. Thankfully, this first impact caused the front to drop down, but it also appeared to flick the car a little tighter to the right, meaning he hit the second wall a little earlier and squarer at a point where it was curving round.

We'll never know what would have happened had that first impact not lowered the front, but without it there was at least some chance that he would have hit the second wall with the bottom of the car rather than the nose, and the result might have been very different.

Had the car or large items such as wheels cleared the wall, they might have bounced across to the cars leaving the hairpin on the other side. As it was. Mark Webber says he saw a piece of debris flying across.

"When I was exiting the hairpin I saw the impact on the wall and part of the car came over," he said. "Then I saw it on the big screen. The next few laps round there you're just making sure that the extraction is going OK, and hope that he's all right."

We can also probably be thankful that he hit a concrete wall and not a metal barrier - the forces involved would very likely have flattened it and sent him over, in much the same way that Allan McNish took flight at Suzuka a few years ago.

The tumble that the car suffered after the initial impacts looked horrific, but all the while the car was dissipating energy. However, the lack of wheels and sidepods at that stage meant that any bumps were going straight into the chassis, and hence the driver.

The key thing was that he did not suffer a further heavy front-end impact, because as pictures show, his feet were extremely vulnerable by that stage. When he hit the metal barrier on the other side it was a glancing blow, in part encouraged by the fact that by pure chance a wheel that had been bouncing down the road happened to land in the right place, and act like a buffer.

Right at the end of the incident, the foam headrest came out of the car. That may lead to some extra attention being paid to fixings by the FIA in the future.

Nevertheless, it had done its job, as had the HANS device and the new generation lightweight composite helmet, all things that have been pushed through by the FIA in recent years.

It was a great testament too to the FIA's incessant push for more stringent crash testing, and the teams' willingness to comply. Indeed, the forces involved in Sunday's impact were far greater than that mandated by the FIA. Some 30cms of the BMW chassis, behind the nosebox, was destroyed.

However, there was also a lot of sheer good fortune involved. Senna was killed by a flying wheel, as were the marshals who lost their lives at Monza in 2000 and Melbourne in 2001. Kubica's car lost three of its wheels on Sunday, and any of them could have cleared the fences at a point where the grandstands are extremely close to the track. Tonio Liuzzi's on-board camera also gave a good indication that it was fortunate that other drivers, and particularly Trulli and Kimi Raikkonen, were not affected.

It can't have been easy for the drivers to pass the scene for lap after lap.

"I didn't know who it was," said Rosberg. "And I just tried to switch it off, so from that point of view. It's pretty worrying that that's able to happen, because all he did really was go out straight in a corner, and then he hits a concrete wall like that. It's not great. The FIA is responsible for making a safe track. It's fine as long as the concrete wall follows the track, and doesn't come in that way."

Nico makes a good point, and indeed FIA insiders made that same observation on Sunday. Expect to see changes in that area of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve for next season, with the wall closer to the track and a debris fence to protect marshals and stop any debris from affecting any cars coming out of the hairpin.

Sunday was a wake-up call for everyone - and anything that results from it can only be good for the sport.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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