The shortest ever Grand Prix in distance?

Correct. Previous record was Australia 1991.

 

I think this 2 lap rule needs to be scrapped, I'd never even heard of it. It's absolutely ridiculous to award half points for 2 laps behind the safety car. Should have been cancelled altogether and no points handed out.

As a fan, I’d say to call this a race is more of a farce than Indy 2005. At least that actually had some green flag action. The fact you can award any points for two safety car laps is a joke. They’ve ticked the boxes just to make sure they don’t have to refund anybody or breach any contracts. But a race this was not.

The truly annoying thing is the conditions were far from the worst ever and it could've started on time with 5 or so laps behind the safety car. It would've been red flagged about 30 mins later but would've had some decent running at least.

As Brundle said the throttle moves in both directions but it seems ever since Bianchi there has been excessive fear over rain.

I'm very much in favour of safety but this was overly cautious

Since he got fastest lap does that make Mazepin driver of the day?

I can see that the stewards were fearing a Bianchi situation.

I think I drove faster in the wet on all weather tyres down the autobahn in a 1 litre Golf than they did today.

They could have just declared it null and void.

:nono: :ph34r:

 

@1432049276348243974

Wtf

 

This is insane

There was no race how can he get a Penalty for something that didn’t happen?!

There was no race how can he get a Penalty for something that didn’t happen?!

 

By strict application of the rules there was a race, it just all took place behind the safety car. Therefore changing the rear wing whilst under parc ferme rules is illegal and incurs a penalty.

When they changed Stroll's rear wing they had to know it would be a penalty once the race restarted and with Perez assumed to be out it would only have dropped him one position so was arguably worth it.

Whether the rules are right is a different conversation entirely.

 

 

As races go though I've seen duller ones.

I really hope the fans get their money back.

I really hope the fans get their money back.

I'm in two minds over that. Obviously anyone who went on the Sunday has every right to feel hard done by BUT there always the risk of a race being abandoned or red flagged early and that is clearly stated on the ticket. That being said, without the fans buying tickets the sport is unsustainable and they need to be looked after.

Which brings us to the problem, if they refund all the fans then the circuit faces a massive loss, after all it is the venue that will be responsible for the refund. This doesn't sound bad until you remember that the owners of Silverstone made it clear that the circuit would've been bankrupted had the fans not been allowed in this year.

 

So who refunds the fans?

 

Can the owners of Spa afford to (they are already spending £80m on remodeling Raidillon), and if they can't is it up to Liberty Media? They themselves took a huge financial hit last year and the reason for their insistence on a 23 race calendar this year is very much about keeping the sport in the black. Something that is still not guaranteed. So fine are the margins financially this year that anyone who has to pay out a refund to 75,000 fans is looking at a major outlay against their projected budget. It's why the 'race' was always going to go ahead today.

 

Personally if I'd spent £500 on going to Spa for the race this weekend I'd be pretty pissed off to come away with no race but would I give that money up to keep the circuit on the calendar?

 

I'm not sure I can answer that objectively but my heart is veering towards yes.

 

 

I'd rather they gave Spa 2 races next year and every ticket holder from today gets free entry to one of them. That way the circuit keeps this years cash to sustain it, guarantees income for next year and the fans get their race

but it's a weekend ticket, not a daily ticket, so technically you could have seen lots of stuff with the qualies and the other races on Sat

but it's a weekend ticket, not a daily ticket, so technically you could have seen lots of stuff with the qualies and the other races on Sat

Not necessarily, many people by tickets for raceday only.

With Spa there is always a major risk that it’s a rain affected race. Everyone who enjoys F1 enough to buy a ticket for Spa does so knowing this risk.

 

 

The rules need to be changed to give them more flexibility to race on a Monday for example. We can’t tent a circuit so we will always have to deal with wet tracks, so I would like to see them try and learn about if doing X laps behind the SC or under quasi VSC conditions will dry out the track enough for us to start to see a bit of a useable line. I suspect tho that because Spa is so long that is a bit impossible because by the time you come back around again the track is probably exactly as it was before.

 

I do agree with Fernando that no point should be awarded for a race that never happened. F1 pushing Russell on the podium hard on social media really leaves a very sour taste because they didn’t earn that at all. Sure they had a great Saturday but every team says every race that you don’t earn points on Saturday and yet here we are. It’s like Truli in The Toyota. Could always stick it up the pointy end of the grid but it was woeful in the race. Even under wet racing conditions that Williams wouldn’t have made it 5 laps in the top 5. Either coz Russell would have binned it (we’ve all seen him crash out behind a safety car) or it would have been picked off by one of the more than a dozen faster cars immediately behind. Like yeah sure it’s nice to have a Williams podium again but not a single person earned their points or podiums

and doing the podium ceremony was the lowest point...

 

think it was all to throw a bone to the atendees which were the majority Verstapen fans

so they don't ask for their money back

It's clear that they're looking at alternative ways of dealing with it in the future and I think this needs to include driver behaviour too. It's telling that a number of former drivers (Brundle, Berger, Dornbos for example) have stated the race would have gone ahead in their day and I can think of about 10 where conditions were much worse, off the top of my head. 10-15 laps behind the safety car followed by a rolling start and they could have raced but simply lifted off where relevant. However, it seems likely that the Eau-Rouge/Raidilion/Kemmel section was the big worry yet one answer to that is to have double waved yellows in that section (at least until track conditions improve), of course a problem with that is that one of the contributing factors in the Bianchi incident is that Jules didn't slow down as much as the regulations suggested (he wasn't alone here) and it has become an increasing problem recently that drivers are failing to follow yellow flag procedure properly in the quest for fine margins.

 

The FIA, F1, Liberty, the teams and the drivers all need to work together on this otherwise it's only a matter of time before racing whilst it's raining is a thing of the past.

Incidentally Bianchi's is the only serious wet weather crash I can think of since Didier Pironi's which is almost 40 years ago

Was definitely Eau Rouge/Radillon that swung in in favour of not racing imo, off the back of the Norris crash in qualifying and various others in different disciplines. The lack of visibility at that corner should a car spin off, hit the wall and bounce back onto the track was the biggest issue.

 

I do agree with your sentiment that wet weather racing could be an eventual no-goer. Specifically, I don't see why they ever need the full wet tyres given whenever it's wet enough for them to be more effective than the inters, the red flag is always moments away. Seems the only time they ever race in rain is when it's very partial and then it's only ever the inters that are needed.