The FIA has changed a key word in the Safety Car regulations to avoid a repeat of the controversial ending at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
With the championship hanging in the balance, race director Michael Masi, who has since been replaced, made a decision to only allow the five lapped cars between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to pass before immediately restarting for the final lap.
Then, with a significant tyre advantage, Verstappen would overtake Hamilton at Turn 5 to claim the win and the title.
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Mercedes immediately protested the result arguing Masi had not applied the Safety Car restart rules correctly, but this was dismissed with Red Bull pointing to Article 55.13 of the regulations.
This previously stated that, if the clerk of the course considered it safe to do so, ‘ANY lapped cars will be required to overtake those on the lead lap and the Safety Car’.
As a result, Red Bull’s case was that ANY did not mean ALL, an argument the stewards agreed with.
However, now that sentence has been rephrased to ‘ALL lapped cars will be required to overtake’, ensuring the decision Masi took in Abu Dhabi can not happen again.
The fallout from the finish at Yas Marina has been significant with not only the departure of Masi but also a new FIA race management structure being put in place, incorporating a ‘VAR-style’ remote race control to assist the race director.
A final report into the events of Abu Dhabi is set to be published to the World Motor Sport Council on Friday in Bahrain.
