Martin Brundle spots loophole in F1 safety car rules after British Grand Prix controversy

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Martin Brundle has offered his reaction after Sunday’s British Grand Prix controversially finished behind the safety car.

Some Silverstone fans were heard booing after the safety car stayed out for the final lap of the race. Charles Leclerc led a procession over the finish line ahead of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton.

The FIA had initially indicated that the safety car would peel into the pits at the end of lap 51, setting up a grandstand finish. However, race control subsequently said it had been redeployed.

Martin Brundle: The lapped cars don’t need to catch the field

After the FIA allowed the lapped cars to overtake, they were obliged to wait one racing lap before the restart. This was the explanation given in their official statement.

However, Brundle, reading from the regulations, says there’s nothing in the rulebook about those lapped cars needing to catch the field. As long as they were out of the way of the leaders, he felt it was right to restart.

What are your thoughts on the British Grand Prix ending behind the safety car?

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With so little time remaining, Leclerc and co. wouldn’t have ended up in a blue-flag scenario if those cars were far enough ahead.

“Whatever the regulations say, it’s not right to wait, especially on a long circuit, for the lapped cars to get through,” said Brundle on Sky Sports F1.

“The whole reason that came in was to stop lapped runners getting in the way of a big grandstand finish and it sometimes brings players back in and they are part of the race again, so there’s a show element to that as well.

“The regulations say ‘if the race director considers it safe for them to do so’ and it was safe because it was a dry day and wasn’t pouring with rain and there was no debris, ‘the message lapped cars may now overtake will be sent to all competitors’.

“It then goes on to say in the many pages of regulations ‘having overtaken the F1 cars on the lead lap, the Safety Car will extinguish its lights’.

“It doesn’t say they have to be back of the queue. There’s nothing to say you have to wait until they have arrived to the back, it just says ‘you have to proceed at a reasonable speed’.”

The debate could hinge on the precise timing of the ‘lapped cars may now overtake’ message. If it arrived on lap 50, they would have been able to restart.

The FIA say that the ‘safety car in this lap’ signal was sent out due to a software error, so they never planned to get going again.