Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle has his say on the Belgian GP washout, a tough balancing act and what Formula 1 could have done differently, as he calls for a rules rethink after the two-lap 'race' with no racing
Tuesday 31 August 2021 18:40, UK
I am struggling to remember, weather wise, a more consistently miserable weekend at a motor racing event. It really felt as if somebody upstairs controlling a massive hose pipe and sprinkler was watching for umbrellas to be finally closed before switching the water on yet again.
The area was already sodden due to recent floods and a rainy summer and so the campsites and surrounding areas were a quagmire by Friday, and yet still the fans loyally blanketed the normally picturesque banks and valleys of this usually magnificent racetrack.
When we finally had a podium procedure four hours or so after the scheduled race start we should first have selected three representatives from the crowd as a symbolic gesture. I would be pretty sure some kind of compensation will be sorted out for those fans attending on race day.
Many did see track action with Formula Three, W Series and Porsche Supercup in equally awful track conditions. So why could they race I hear you ask? Well, they are at least half a minute a lap slower, with considerably lower top speeds, and don't kick out as much spray from narrower tyres and way less downforce.
Also they do not have superstar drivers using globally transmitted car to pit radios and listened to by millions including Race Control. Walk a mile in race director Michael Masi's wellington boots on the day, and be honest, if the world's finest drivers were telling you via their pit wall that the track conditions are impossible and unacceptable to race, would you throw the green light?
It's about now that I would say that I and hundreds of other F1 drivers have raced in much worse conditions than that in cars, and on circuits, which were much less safe. I can remember standing on the grid in Adelaide 1989, where the drivers were all feeling unhappy about the waterlogged circuit, when a certain Mr Bernard Charles Ecclestone walked along the grid and said to us one by one 'get in the car, the race is starting'.
So we did and only Alain Prost elected to immediately pit. It was scary but I continued until a simply possessed and flying Ayrton Senna ran into the back of my Brabham in a ball of spray.
Suzuka 1994 was just horrendous but the race started. I remember something flashing past my left-hand side on the pit straight which turned out to be Johnny Herbert in a Benetton pointing the wrong way. That was just before I aquaplaned off the road and hit a marshal who was attending to another similar incident. When I eventually stopped sliding along the grass I ran back to help him and his tibia bone was sticking out of his overalls.
And so on, which usually generates thoughts or words along the lines of 'yeah yeah old man, back in your day' and so you tend to stay quiet.
The fine balancing point is this, you have the best drivers in the world in the finest and fastest cars in the world, on tyres which are even called Extreme Wets. So should it be 'get out there and earn your glory and money and put on a show whatever the conditions, if it wasn't difficult then everyone would do it and there would be no saturated fans trackside or sitting at home online or watching the TV?' Probably not.
On the other side of the coin, we have a responsibility to the marshals, drivers and trackside fans not to recklessly put their lives or good health at risk, because no show is worth that of course.
And so back to my point about the radio calls, nobody can take that risk if the majority of drivers are saying the track is unsafe, and the gravity of these calls needs to be fully considered going forward.
What can we do to change this? We could have initially left the cars out on full course yellow VSC Virtual Safety Car to help clear the track of water without being so confined by safety car speed, and at least the race would have been clearly underway with cars and tyres which can lift up 60 litres of water per second at high speed.
We regularly trust both the leader and the following pack on safety-car restarts in all types of conditions. The problem is that drivers will be under different pressures to start the race depending on their car and grid position. The actual safety car can always be briefly reintroduced for a final FIA sign off before letting the cars go.
Le Mans has a system of 'Slow Zones' to control parts of a track which is approaching double the length of Spa. With over 60 cars and 180 drivers of varying ability in the race these work largely fine, although how you enter and depart the slow zones can generate some advantages which F1 controls could easily nail down. In this way if the problem is Eau Rouge and the Kemmel Straight then make a slow zone around that, still enabling the cars to retain sufficient heat elsewhere on the lap. It keeps the show on the road and helps avoid puddles forming.
Just covering an area with double waved yellow flags in F1 doesn't work as the drivers are still at high speeds with different interpretations of what is a suitable lift of the throttle.
There's not much you can do with two-metre-wide cars, fat open wheel tyres and open cockpits to help visibility, other than simply slowing down which poses risks with dramatic closing speeds.
The absolute bottom line is that if the cars are aquaplaning up on top of the water and the drivers cannot begin to see where they are going, there's no skill or bravery involved, it's simply a question of luck and waiting for the inevitable crashes and hoping nobody is hurt or killed. And that is where we found ourselves on Sunday.
I reasonably regularly read the 99-page F1 Sporting regulations, including just the week before during some downtime at Le Mans as it happens. On race morning Crofty and I agreed that it would be a safety car start and while I was in the presentation team for the opening of our Sky F1 show he would refresh himself with the procedures, which he duly did.
I have commentated on F1 for 25 years now and I have never remotely been so confused about the status of the race, whether it had officially started or not, and how many laps were remaining after the delayed start messages.
For me a 'delayed start' to the whole procedure is entirely different to an 'aborted start' where for example a formation lap has taken place but then a driver stalls on the grid and they go round again. We had gone from a 44 lap race to 39 laps remaining without ever having started the race. No wonder numerous team managers were dialling into Race Control to try to understand the actual state of play.
Underneath all of this a three-hour clock (as per the regulations) was counting down but not available to be seen, although the Stewards used Force Majeure to stop this deadline with an hour to go in the hope of generating at least some entertainment and racing laps.
In the middle of all this Red Bull repaired the car which Sergio Perez crashed going to the grid and were eventually told they could take the start from the pitlane for a race which was already five laps down but had not yet started.
It must be said the whole process did follow the rules, it's just that the rules are unfathomable and need to be simplified. The trouble is in Formula One that every rule change always has unintended consequences and opportunities, and so they end up being so convoluted. Every so often they need a reset and that moment is here.
So after two token laps behind the safety car we effectively ended up celebrating qualifying from the day before, and those that made it to the startline, with half points and a podium procedure. Qualifying itself was brilliant and hugely challenging in equal measures and so there's some merit there.
It's the sixth half-point race (less than 75 per cent race distance) in F1 history, and easily the shortest, the others being Spain 1975 (accident) and Austria 1975, Monaco 1984, Australia 1991, and Malaysia 2009, all due to rain.
Because it was due to circumstances outside F1's control it was not quite so embarrassing as Indianapolis 2005 where we had six cars start due to bloody mindedness when a solution could have been found. But at least we had a race that day.
Ironically because of the countback procedure on a red flag finish, the official results are obliged to declare it a one-lap race which rather sums up the day. I rode my motorbike back to Norfolk after the race and heading out west I can tell you that we were never going to get any respite from the rain before darkness fell.
I am sorry to all the fans who wasted their heartbeats and money waiting for that race, but there was nothing to be done and F1 and the massive supporting cast is simply not geared up to race a day later.
F1 has provided incredible entertainment during the pandemic and hopefully we have some credit in the bank as the circus heads to Zandvoort.
