The FIA has released its 2015 F1 Sporting Regulations, which included a revised section about restarts. Next year, a safety car period (except at the begin and end of a race) will be concluded with a standing start. When the safety car is deployed within two laps of the previous (re)start, there will be a rolling restart.
The idea behind these restarts is simple: shuffle the field such that slower cars get ahead of faster cars. In theory this will lead to more overtakes and according to classical FIA logic, more overtakes equals more excitement. Furthermore, it will produce some unexpected results, making the championship closer.
Let’s start with the good news. At least the FIA didn’t miss the obvious flaw of letting a standing restart be followed up by a standing restart: cautions breed cautions, as they say in the US. But then again, the idea is littered with other flaws.
Now, let’s look at some situations. We have a car leading the Grand Prix by thirty seconds with just ten laps to go. Now the safety car gets deployed. At the standing restart, he slightly messes up his clutch setting and he drops to fourth. Is that fair? Seems like a severe punishment for what is essentially a small error – he deserved to win that Grand Prix, yet the rules prevented that.
We now have a car that is doing a longer stint and has nearly completely destroyed his tyres. Just as he is about to pit, the safety car gets deployed and this car stays out. At the restart, all the cars around him are on much fresher tyres: as a result, he drops five places as his tyres just don’t seem to get any grip.
On the other hand, it would be quite interesting to see a car with phenomenal acceleration, a bit like the Renaults from ten years ago. These cars will jump a couple of cars at every restart, meaning that they could potentially climb from eleventh to first within three restarts.
A more sinister one: we have a team with one driver in second place, ten seconds behind the leader, and a car in twelfth position. Now, this team principal has no respect for sportsmanship whatsoever and asks the driver in twelfth place to do a Piquet. The safety car gets deployed, the race is restarted and the driver in second place takes the lead.
So yeah, there are quite some issues here already. The main problem I have with it is that it’s completely unnecessary, just a gimmick to make things more exciting. It’s weird that the same organisation that introduced slow-zones in the WEC earlier this year introduces a system in Formula 1 that does the complete opposite.
Sadly, standing restarts seem to be another Abu Double: everyone hates it, yet the FIA decides to ignore the criticism and do it anyway. It’s astonishing how the FIA keep getting away with things like this. The only difference with Abu Double is that standing restarts aren’t linked to one specific event, making it more likely that the change will be undone during the next WMSC meeting in Beijing on September eleventh.
In itself, standing restarts are stupid, illogical and unsportsmanlike, but nothing more than that. What’s worrying here is the trend: after DRS and dodgy tyres, this is the third Mario Kart-style gimmick that directly influences the races. Suddenly that sprinkler idea doesn’t seem that far-fetched anymore…
andae23's F1 ramblings 