The Melbourne race had to be stopped 3 times. On the last lap, there was a delay of 30 minutes until they decided what should happen next. In the end, all surviving cars had to come across the finish line in order of their restart, which was a bit disappointing for drivers who got eliminated.
Pierre Gasly, who drives for Alpine in the race, was really mad and walked away from the interview when his competitors drove on the final lap even though he was not able to gain any points. Despite following the standard rules of the track, people are asking if those same rules should be changed so that a situation like that would not happen again at Albert Park.
Alpine’s Szafnauer said that it is impossible to make rules that cover every situation, so he believes that the existing rules are good enough. He argued that if you made rules based on certain situations it could result in unintended consequences.
The rules we have in place can’t be changed when it comes to racing. At the end of the year, it’s up in the air whether these rules are good or bad. They could help us or get in our way, depending on the situation we’re in. So overall, I think the rules we have now are fine as they are.
What I believe is that we should set rules first, and then keep to those rules. If after that, we’d like to take a look at them =that’s okay too. Let the sports directors review it all. After the race, marshals removed the broken car of Esteban Ocon from the track and this was captured in a picture taken by Simon Galloway for F1Flow Images.
He joked that if he could change the rules, he’d make the race 55 laps instead of 56. When asked if Alpine wanted to end the race because they were in the points, Szafnauer replied “Yes, we definitely pushed for it”.
At the start of Turner 1, safety car line two was in place, so Pierre would have been in fourth position or somewhere close. We asked them to do this because we weren’t sure what would happen next. But everyone agreed that following the rules was the right decision.
– Alonso thinks the order of teams in F1 will be different when the European races start.
