Enforcing speed reductions under yellow flags

[Steven]

I have previously commented that I personally believe safety cars are brought too often on track, and the British GP now has made that even more obvious for me.

A short conversation with Gary Hartstein however puts this into a different perspective, as he pointed out the SC is mainly needed as we cannot rely on drivers sufficiently slowing down to ensure the safety of track marshalls. Nico Rosberg's purple sector under yellows enforces this point.

However, as I think SC is detrimental to racing, I was wondering if we could think of other measures to enforce drivers to respect yellows. Clearly, they are all worried to lose time on the cars ahead and behind, so they're all still going as fast as possible.

This first idea I get originates from personal experience in karting. I found out that one guy at the track has a remote control that cuts the engine when he thinks you're misbehaving. It's not what we want, but think about this for a moment. Would it not be possible to devise a system that would limit engine performance (or simply limit the top speed) considerably, but equally for each driver when they are driving in a sector where yellow flags are waved. The FIA could even enforce this for safety reasons. With standard ECU's this can't be that difficult to realise, especially because cars already know if there's a yellow flag (since the drivers have warning lights in their cockpits).
I believe it would resolve the issue of drivers pushing too hard, while it will also be equal for everybody.

Any thoughts? Or alternatives?

[zonk]

use of pit limiter under yellow flag

[WhiteBlue]

This is an old issue that got discussed many times. You have to consider that you introduce certain risk if you take the speed control away from the driver and make the car go to a safety car speed automatically. That is not to say it can't be done. But it would be over kill in my view.

I thought the actions by race control in today's race were appropriate. I was expecting a red flag at some stage and it was reported that Charlie Whiting almost pulled the plug indeed.

[Mika1]

Today wasn't that bad? A SC after 3 tyre failures and one after Vettel parked his car. I think during wet conditions they are overreacting with SC periods.

[dtabrom]

Hypothetically, if you wanted to incentivise a driver to slow down, these might be possibilities (not all sensible ones):

- Limit air supply to the engine - limits the combustion at any one time, although might stress the engine if the driver doesn't adjust driving style to compensate. Limited air cooling might be more risky if a driver doesn't realise that they need to slow down lest the engine give up
- 'Low power' engine mapping (?)
- Pit lane speed limiter-esque system as mentioned above - although such a low speed might be detrimental to the cars for prolonged periods (although that could apply to most of these)
- Cut fuel flow rate to minimum feasible without stressing engines
- Limit drivers to use of the first couple of gears
- Force cars to run on 4 (or 2? for next year) cylinders in designated zones
- Disable turbo (if that's even feasible? For next year)
- Only allow cars to run on stored electrical energy (from ERS) through certain zones (only feasible for short periods followed by harvesting - although more feasible from next year) - might need everyone to adopt Audi-style Stop-Start engine tech. Still the issue of entering a zone too quickly to retain momentum if engine is cut, but then you would just need to set the start of such a zone earlier.
- Make a driver listen to a horrendous beeping sound a la Tom Tom sat nav if you go over the speed limit

[Cam]

I have issues with consistency of penalties. Lets look back to 2012:

Michael Schumacher was investigated for speeding through a yellow flag zone in the closing laps of the European GP after Mark Webber – who was behind him – saw that his DRS flap was open.

Webber reported back to his team and the FIA duly took a look at the situation after the race.

The DRS/yellow flag saga goes back to Suzuka last year, when an incident occurred and several drivers were seen to have used DRS and in some cases KERS.

After that drivers were told that a repeat would be frowned upon by the stewards, and in Barcelona this year both Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa received penalties after they drove through a yellow zone with their DRS open and without backing off.

Granted DRS was used too, but the overriding aspect is not slowing down. Now two Mercedes drivers have escaped punishment, while others have been punished. Why? It is clear that all drivers know that rule, it's been emphasized, yet a reprimand is deemed satisfactory. This goes against the safety push message.

Conspiracy theories flourish when inconsistencies abound. Merc seem to have a knack for only ever getting a slap on the wrist.

[mnmracer]

The purpose of the safety car is to bunch the field up, so that the stewards have time to clean up the track without cars zooming by at 100 mph. To get that kind of safety with cars still scattered all over the track, passing the 'danger zone' every 10 minutes, you'd need to limit them to something like 30 mph. I'd just prefer the SC then to see cars drive quarter-throttle in first gear...

[Kiril Varbanov]

Pit limiter - yes, but not at 80 or 100 km per hour. Sometimes the drivers need to run high gear, high rev and perform various steps to cool the engine.

That's a tough topic, I admit, but electronic control of some form is what springs best to mind.

[Mandrake]

At the 24h race and VLN races on the Nordschleife where many corners are blind, the track is narrow and a lot of accidents happen they've introduced a GPS "surveillance" system.

Once the marshals radios in a double waved yellow flag, the yellow zone is activated and measures the speed of each car entering that zone. Cars exceeding 60kph in the double yellow zone will be looked at in detail and possibly get a penalty for speeding.

There, we have to manage up to 200 cars, should be easily managable for F1 with 22-24 cars only. IMO a lot better option than SCs. Also: due to the multitude of cameras available at an F1 venue, videoproofing in case of a misbehavior should be no problem at all.

[MOWOG]

Granted DRS was used too, but the overriding aspect is not slowing down. Now two Mercedes drivers have escaped punishment, while others have been punished. Why? It is clear that all drivers know that rule, it's been emphasized, yet a reprimand is deemed satisfactory. This goes against the safety push message.

Conspiracy theories flourish when inconsistencies abound. Merc seem to have a knack for only ever getting a slap on the wrist.

Well said. With the performance of the Mercedes cars take a huge leap forward after the "secret" tire test, it is no wonder that some people are questioning whether they are not receiving preferential treatment from above this year.

It does seem with the sophistication of today's ECU, some sort of rev limiter or fuel limiter provision would be easy to do. And the GPS suggestion is an excellent one.

[Steven]

At the 24h race and VLN races on the Nordschleife where many corners are blind, the track is narrow and a lot of accidents happen they've introduced a GPS "surveillance" system.

Once the marshals radios in a double waved yellow flag, the yellow zone is activated and measures the speed of each car entering that zone. Cars exceeding 60kph in the double yellow zone will be looked at in detail and possibly get a penalty for speeding.

There, we have to manage up to 200 cars, should be easily managable for F1 with 22-24 cars only. IMO a lot better option than SCs. Also: due to the multitude of cameras available at an F1 venue, videoproofing in case of a misbehavior should be no problem at all.

If possible with GPS I'm all for it. I'm also very much supporting the distinction with double yellows, as a speed limit for single yellows is probably not suitable (currently they are bot somewhat identical, although the rules say that for double yellows, drivers must be prepared to stop their cars).

I agree that SC at Silverstone was still reasonable, there are worse examples. I think though they are called on track too soon, and when on track are held there for too long as well. It's a particular problem when people are allowed to unlap themselves. That usually takes another 2 or 3 laps extra before the SC gets off the track (but I know this is somewhat off topic now)

[krisfx]

Apparently, the system for DRS isn't even working properly and isn't stopping usage of it when it should be, so it's down to the drivers to not use it under yellows/before 3 laps etc. According to Brundle when he's commentating.

If this is the case and the FIA can't even get something working after three years when it was previously working, then how can they implement a system to slow the cars down without that messing up.

I think they need to concentrate on all current rule/technology failures before they commit to yellows really. Setting a purple sector under yellows is wrong, but shouldn't the stewards be aware of this and duly punish at the time of the incident, not hours after the race?

It's just a complete mess!

[WhiteBlue]

Btw. the system they use at the Nürburgring 24 h is called code-60 zone. You will find it under that name if you google it.

[andartop]

Considering how much easier and cheaper it would be, compared to introducing a whole new system to police the drivers, the first thing I would do is to enforce the current regulations in a consistent and transparent manner. Then I would also increase the severity of the penalties and would make it easy for the stewards to detect and quickly act on any violations of the sporting regulations. If this happened one day, I am sure all drivers would be much more careful with yellow flags. Instantaneous disqualification from the race would be a strong enough motive for any driver to avoid doing purple sector times under yellows by mistake, but only if they knew they would get caught and punished.

[krisfx]

Considering how much easier and cheaper it would be, compared to introducing a whole new system to police the drivers, the first thing I would do is to enforce the current regulations in a consistent and transparent manner. Then I would also increase the severity of the penalties and would make it easy for the stewards to detect and quickly act on any violations of the sporting regulations. If this happened one day, I am sure all drivers would be much more careful with yellow flags. Instantaneous disqualification from the race would be a strong enough motive for any driver to avoid doing purple sector times under yellows by mistake, but only if they knew they would get caught and punished.

Agreed, it's a black flag offence when we're karting, why shouldn't this be echoed at the top? - If you lightly punish a driver, every other will push the limits. Again agreeing with the fact that the regulations should be enforced properly. We're going through daft times with the rules I think!