The FIA has recently admitted to a mistake in its management during the sprint qualifying of the Singapore Grand Prix, described by the director of single-seaters, Nikolas Tombazis, as “the worst” for the organization.
After the accident of Sergio Pérez, the final phase of qualifying was affected by a series of failures in race control. Initially, the overtake mode was not reactivated as planned and, later, it was briefly activated for 27 seconds before being deactivated again.
The drivers were bewildered by the lack of power, and those eliminated in this first phase felt they were unfairly disadvantaged. Tombazis pointed out that the circumstances in race control became complicated, with many tasks needing to be managed simultaneously.
He explained that normally reactivation is a manual process to ensure safety, but in this case an alert on one of the screens went unnoticed during a moment of intense pressure. “The result was an error that not only affected safety but also fairness in the results,” he lamented.
The director acknowledged that at that moment an incorrect decision was made by briefly reactivating the overtake mode, not fully considering fairness in the process. The situation led to “a certain level of confusion, which evidently disadvantaged some drivers more than others.”
With this incident, which occurs less than a week after the issues with power units in the Bahrain Grand Prix, the FIA underscores the importance of thorough analysis of these errors to prevent them from occurring again in the future. Tombazis made it clear that safety and fairness must be their top priorities, and that human errors are part of a complex system that needs constant improvement.
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
