Replace the safety car

[Phil]

You raise a good point. Maybe the safety car was less of a problem when there only was the safety car. Now, when a crash happens, it could be a virtual safety car or a safety car. Both have advantages and disadvantage. But now they have also introduced red-flags and standing starts too, which shuffles the whole deck, which makes it even less predictable for teams.

I don't mind "the chaos" when it is born out of a fluke and in a non-artificial way. Then it becomes a bit of luck - just like rain can have that effect. Teams can account for that and if a team risks everything and gambles on a certain scenario, fair play if it works out. But perhaps, the way the race director can use these elements to alter the show, makes it more artificial and I don't agree with that and think it is good for the sport.

[El Scorchio]

You raise a good point. Maybe the safety car was less of a problem when there only was the safety car. Now, when a crash happens, it could be a virtual safety car or a safety car. Both have advantages and disadvantage. But now they have also introduced red-flags and standing starts too, which shuffles the whole deck, which makes it even less predictable for teams.

I don't mind "the chaos" when it is born out of a fluke and in a non-artificial way. Then it becomes a bit of luck - just like rain can have that effect. Teams can account for that and if a team risks everything and gambles on a certain scenario, fair play if it works out. But perhaps, the way the race director can use these elements to alter the show, makes it more artificial and I don't agree with that and think it is good for the sport.

Absolutely! And i think VSC has muddied the waters a little bit. There are times I definitely feel when one or the other was more appropriate than what was chosen and couldn't help think if the decision was driven by an honest assessment of the situation or something else. And the amount of red flags in the last couple of years feels like multitudes more than I can ever remember.

However, I do think safety has become more prevalent in the last few years so I can't fully blame them for erring on the side of caution and I think most of the red flags have warranted being thrown, but ask yourself this- what's usually the most entertaining and gripping part of a race where lots of action happens? That's right- a standing start....
What's one of the other ones? A safety car restart.... VSC is comparatively far less eventful.
I'm not sure it's coincidence that in the Netflix and Liberty age there have been more and more of the first two and less of the third one.

[Big Tea]

There also needs to be some correlation between how fast the safety car can lap and how slow the tyres can lap. Every time we get a SC someone id calling the tyres too cold, and the first corner after release is obviously going to be taken as fast a s possible. I dont think allowing the cars to run a lap before restarting would help as it would be jockeying for position and probably slower than the SC

[Stu]

I think that is why they introduced the idea of the VSC. If a race requires the safety car for ten laps, for example, why wasn’t the decision made to bring out the red flag? A VSC should be a temporary thing, anything that requires a serious amount of barrier rebuild work requires NO cars on track.