A day to forget for F1!
Normally, Motorsport fans spend so much of the year dreaming of a wet race, for all the drama and chaos it causes, but after the events of yesterday, or rather lack of event, I think many of us will settle for as many dry races as we can get!
Let’s begin by tackling the root cause of all the problems, the weather. It was the perfect storm of conditions, as it rained consistently for about 10 hours at the track, waterlogging the entire facility. There will be many people who believe that they should have raced in those conditions, however, when you are driving at those speeds, on a dangerous track like this, you need visibility more than ever. We have seen horrific crashes at this track in the recent past, and the FIA made the right decision to not risk any lives. Corners like Eau Rouge are already being seen as too dangerous right now, and if a car had hit the barrier and bounced back on to the track, the cars behind wouldn’t have had a chance to avoid it.
Ironically, the best conditions seemed to be at the scheduled start time of the race, and in hindsight we should have tried to start the race then, but I can see why the FIA thought it was marginal, and assumed there would be a break in the weather soon. I don’t think you can blame them for not racing on Sunday, yet my first issue with how things turned out, is that the possibility of racing on Monday was not explored enough. Yes, there would have been a herculean amount of work to do to get it done, but for all the work that has gone into this event, and all the fans who turned up, they deserved to have all the options looked at.
The decision to get two laps done and call the race, is what has angered fans, drivers, and teams alike. It was a cop out, a way of satisfying obligations, without satisfying anyone. In fairness, when they announced the restart, the track did seem to be better, however it was not the case when the drivers went out on circuit. I would rather they had cancelled the race, as this was not a race at all. At the time, I was just glad it was over to be honest, as I was sick of waiting, and it was nice to see Russell get a podium, and for the title fight to close up, but looking back now, it is not the way we want it to happen.
The only performance I can really review is the FIA’s, as they were the busiest really. As I said, their weather calls were correct in my view, as they were just following what the drivers were saying, which is what they should do. However, you could see that there was not enough communication from them to the teams about the situation. During the delays we were hearing teams asking Masi various logical questions, which the FIA should have told them anyway. The choice to call the race, you cannot blame entirely on them, as a decision as big as that, will involve FOM and other parties as well. The thing I can come down on them hard though, is that they didn’t even follow their own rules, as the race was only officially 1 lap, not 2. So, we could feasibly see a team challenging the race result, and probably winning it in court, making this all a waste of time anyway!
Briefly talking about the drivers, Perez lost the easiest points of his career, though a costly lap to the grid error, not what he wanted after signing a new contract. If one person deserved the points they got, it was George, as his lap on Saturday was spectacular. Verstappen will take the points gain on Hamilton, whilst it may actually have been damaged limitation for Mercedes, as their low downforce probably wouldn’t have worked if it had been raceable wet conditions! You can still see though why Lewis didn’t want the race to be called.
To end, I want to give a shout out to the fans who stayed at the track until the end, in utterly appalling conditions, they earnt the right to a race more than anyone else. Partial refunds would be justified I feel, not full ones, as they still got most of the racing action this weekend, I doubt it will happen though. Let’s pray the fans at Zandvoort get their money’s worth next weekend!
-M
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