Frederic Vasseur isn’t sure if the red flag rule for qualifying is clear, as Charles Leclerc reveals of discussions post F1 sprint.
The crash for Carlos Sainz in Q2 of F1 Chinese GP qualifying raised queries after the session when Aston Martin protested the results. Their argument was about the Spaniard being allowed to continue even though the marker remarked him as ‘STOP’.
Their protest was dismissed due to lack of clear rules in the context of the length of the car being stationery. Sainz did stop but managed to get going rather quickly than taking a lot of time, which saved him but the FIA agreed to have a look into the rules to be more clear.
Post-race, Ferrari team boss Vasseur concurred. The Frenchman noted that the sporting regulations are such that one will always find loopholes and only when something happens is when people realise about it. Only then they can take action to rectify it.
“I don’t know if it’s clear, but for sure we need to have some understanding, what happened, we asked the director if we can restart, he said yes, and it was the end of the story,” said Vasseur. “Because the wording, to stop on track, that told me that 10 cars stop on track when you spin, we have to define exactly the situation, but for sure what is true, and I don’t want to make any comment on this, is that the regulation is more and more complicated.
“When I started the job, the sporting regulations were 20 pages, today it’s 75, and you will always find loophole, because you have a cross article. I remember a couple of years ago, when Kimi spun on the outlap in Imola, we had two different articles, reporting to the same case, one saying black, and the other one saying white, it’s tricky, because I think also the teams are getting bigger and bigger, with more and more lawyers, and perhaps a good test of the procedural approach, and at the end of the day, we are in this situation.
“It’s exactly the same on the technical regulation, we are all trying to find a loophole, and the regulations are more and more complicated, but I think on this one, we will find an easy clarification,” summed up Vasseur, who had another headache of Leclerc and Sainz fighting hard in China, first in the sprint and then also in the main race.
Although the latter was far less than the former but it was going into the discussion list from Vasseur side anyhow. The sprint hiccup was discussed before qualifying as Leclerc revealed. Both the drivers were a bit hard and did admit about the fight being a bit more than they envisaged.
“We spoke briefly before qualifying and much longer after qualifying with Fred and everything is fine,” said Leclerc. “I won’t go into the details, as I said, sometimes I went over the limit, sometimes he went over the limit, it is part of the game. We have had the discussions and it is fine.”
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