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🇯🇵 F1'22: R18 - Failing in the spotlight

Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen wins his second world title, but the sport as a whole didn’t cover itself in glory on Formula 1’s return to Japan for the first time since the pandemic. 

An early wake up call for a lot of F1 fans was not necessarily rewarded by the weather in Suzuka, with driving rain causing streams over part of the track. But, to F1’s credit, they went ahead with a standing start as normal. Major chaos was avoided by most, but the biggest incident was Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, who spun, bounced into a wall and almost got hit by numerous drivers on their way past - they may not have seen the stuck driver. 

TRUCKS ON TRACK 

This caused a safety car, and eventually a red flag. But in the Sainz incident, an advertising board was loosened onto the track, which Pierre Gasly drove over, causing him to pit and fall far behind the rest of the pack. While he was speeding to catch up, a red flag was thrown. 

And that’s when the sport found itself desperately looking for leadership.

If you’re new to Formula 1, or even if you’re not, take a few moments to Google Jules Bianchi. This isn’t the place to go into the full details of what happened, except to say that in 2014, in similarly wet conditions, Bianchi crashed into a recovery vehicle that was off the track, and later died. 

One thing the sport committed to at the time was to make F1 safer. And they’ve succeeded in some respects. The halo has been an essential change that has saved the lives of drivers, despite some media opposition when it was introduced. But a halo wouldn’t have saved any driver crashing into a recovery tractor at any speed. Something that has been acknowledged.

And yet, in wet conditions, on the same track, a driver’s life was endangered by exactly that. Gasly was emotional in the red flag period and spoke at length after the race about what could have happened. Not that that stopped the FIA, who went on to punish him with a 20-second penalty and two penalty points.

Regardless of the driver’s speed, questions must be asked about why it seemed right to put a vehicle on track during a safety car period. They’ve done this before - it happened in the closing laps at Monza for example, but it was sunny there, with visibility not an issue. And of course, the tragic precedent of Bianchi in 2014. 

But if you thought that was going to be the end of the errors, think again. 

  
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CALCULATOR TIME 

Throughout the race, we were told by the commentators that the race won’t be awarded full points. We’re into different columns depending on how many laps are completed. The title goes to Austin. It can’t be won here because we’re not doing full points today. No worries. Unless, they’ve misread the sporting regulations, which feels like a big miss for a normally very good broadcaster and storyteller. 

It turns out they had. Charles Leclerc cut the final chicane, with a five-second penalty dropping him to third. Under partial points, Verstappen doesn’t win the title, under full points, he does.

If you’re the world-famous pinnacle of motorsport, maybe you should be listening to the world feed and sending them a fairly urgent note to say that you need to check your sums. Maybe there should be someone in the sport’s administration team that liaises with the media during the race to make sure they know that if the race gets full points if there’s a chequered flag. 

Yes, it’s a job for someone that could be an email, but this is a title-winning situation and the millions of fans are relying on you to be the global authority to provide some excitement and to conclude the narrative that has been sold all season. In fact, the way it was delivered by Johnny Herbert - cutting short an interview with Checo Perez - put fans into a state of confusion. 

No disrespect to Herbert either, but it very much sounded like he was announcing the winner of a particularly good home-made jam at a county fair rather than a second consecutive F1 world title for one of its most prominent stars. 

Compare this to the emotion from Christian Horner last season - that’s the level of emotion this - and any - winning championship deserved. Verstappen was dominant in the championship, and the Suzuka race was a case study as he won a shortened race by almost 30 seconds - making it 12 victories this season and beginning to threaten the single-season victories record (although yes, they have many more races now. Michael Schumacher won 13/18 in 2004 and Seb Vettel took 13/19 nine years later.

So with Formula 1 going on to another flyaway race in Texas, some serious questions need to be asked on just how safe a tractor can be in the rain on a racetrack, and whether they’ve managed to act as the true authority the sport needs in the chaos. For all of F1’s improvements and innovations in the past few years, there are occasional reminders that actually, there's a long way to go.

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