FIA defends restart procedure after smash
The restart crash that led to the first red flag was the most contentious issue of the race, with those at the rear of the field blaming the leaders, and the podium finishers saying the chaos came as a result of the safety car’s lights going off too late.
Leader Valtteri Bottas was cleared of wrongdoing by the stewards. He had used the late location of the control line – at the start lights – to delay his getaway in a bid to reduce the effect of the tow to the cars behind as he proceeded towards San Donato. Further back in the pack, several drivers left big gaps that they accelerated into, and then had to brake when they realised the leaders were not yet racing. The resulting clashes removed four cars from the race: Carlos Sainz Jr’s Mclaren, the Alfa Romeo of Antonio Giovinazzi, Kevin Magnussen’s Haas and the Williams of Nicholas Latifi.
The stewards opted to give warnings to 12 drivers, with only the leading trio of Bottas, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, and the three at the very rear of the field – Romain Grosjean, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel – staying clear of censure. Three drivers were formally called to see the stewards: Magnussen, Daniil Kvyat and Latifi.
FIA race director Michael Masi gave the safety car lights theory short shrift after explaining that the teams were notified through the FIA’S messaging system that the safety car was coming in as the initial part of the normal four-stage restart process, and that all the drivers had been warned about their responsibilities in their regular briefing.
“They can criticise all they want,”said Masi. “If we have a look at the distance perspective, from where the lights were extinguished to the control line, [it’s] probably not dissimilar, if not longer, than a number of other venues.
“So, at the end of the day, the safety car lights go out where they do, the safety car is [then in the] pitlane. We have the 20 best drivers in the world. And as we saw earlier
[on Sunday] in the F3 race, those drivers in the junior category had a very similar restart to what was occurring in the F1 race and navigated it quite well, without incident.”