There was a new sight at the British Grand Prix this month as midway through the race Carlos Sainz Jr’s Toro Rosso pulled off to the side on the start-finish straight with the car smoking as its engine gave up the ghost.
It was well away from the racing line that the drivers were taking on the Silverstone circuit, yet the order came out for the first full use of the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) in Formula One to be used.
While marshals looked to move Sainz Jr’s car behind the barriers and well away from the cars still competing, the VSC sign flashed up around the track on electronic boards.
Traditionally when a hazard had been on the track, or close to it, and the race stewards thought it had caused unsafe conditions then the safety car would be deployed, which would cause the race cars to line up and drive slowly behind the Mercedes-AMG GT car until it was safe to get the race underway again.
There is no safety car on the track under the new procedure and at Silverstone every driver was expected to drop their lap times to a set speed.
Lewis Hamilton had been in a fierce battle with the Williams cars, but suddenly everyone reduced their speed to what was estimated at “35 per cent” of the normal.
The scheme is seen as a safer way of moving hazards away from the track while not disrupting the race too much, with the idea being that the gaps between the drivers remain the same as everyone slows to the same target lap time.
The VSC was the first major initiative to be launched by the FIA, F1’s ruling body, in the aftermath of the accident in Japan last October that caused the head injuries to Jules Bianchi that resulted in the 25-year-old Manor-Marussia driver’s death yesterday after nine months in a coma.
Tributes from across the world of motorsport flowed in for the Frenchman, but the best way F1 can remember him is by learning from the events that led to his death and doing their best to eliminate the chances of it happening again.
Bianchi crashed into a recovery vehicle under double waved yellow flag conditions at Suzuka as the vehicle was recovering Adrian Sutil’s beached Sauber from a gravel trap.
Doubled waved yellow flags warn drivers there is considerable danger ahead and they should slow but a FIA report into the incident found Bianchi “did not slow sufficiently” and that had led to him going off the track in the wet conditions.
The idea of the VSC is to take away drivers’ input into the speed they should be going so as to prevent a speed misjudgment in poor conditions, which is what the governing body believe happened to Bianchi and ended in him going off the track.
Another change since October has been the decision to change the start times of races in Asia back to more traditional start times.
A popular trait in recent years was to make races start late to suit European TV audiences.
But Japan, which started at 3pm last year, has been moved forward to 2pm for its next running in September and the races in Australia, Malaysia and China all started 60 minutes earlier than last year, to prevent a risk of races being run in fading light, which is what happened in Japan.
Heavy rain, caused by a nearby typhoon, delayed the start and then led to it being red flagged, so dangerous were the conditions.
The race finally started almost 35 minutes late and it had begun to get dark.
The rain then returned, which caused Sutil to spin off and start the deadly chain of events.
Only Bianchi would know if the fading light played a part in his crash, but ensuring that drivers do not race so late without floodlights on the track, is a good thing.
F1 has always adapted after tragedy. Following the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger in 1994 the FIA ordered cars to be redesigned for safety purposes, with the sides of the cockpits among the changes made.
The sport involves high speeds and will always have an element of risk to it.
The FIA’s role is to minimise it as much as possible and while watching cars traverse slowly around Silverstone on their own was slightly surreal, it was a welcome sight in that it demonstrated that the lessons of Suzuka 2014 had been heeded.
gcaygill@thenational.ae
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