What changes should be made to the rules for lapped cars in F1?

[JonoNic]

I guess some people have short memories and forget why the enforced blue flags rule was introduced.

With today's cars on today's circuits, without blue flags we'd have the leaders getting around to the back of the field and then stalling. Backmarkers are capable of circulating within 2 seconds / lap of the leaders. A delta of 2seconds is needed to be able to pass on many circuits with these cars. It doesn't take Einstein to see the result...

This was not a blue flag issue

[Big Tea]

I vote No Change. And my main reason is, in trying to fix this problem you make other things worse. I'm sure someone smarter than me will know the technical term for it, but everything has a consequence beyond your initial intentions. It is impossible to introduce a rule change for this, without accidentally impacting something else - I'll outline below why I think each of these options are worse.

No more blue flags - lead drivers race lapped drivers, all normal racing rules apply.
I like this, I do, but I also admit that it makes things more of a lottery, and I tend to like things which introduce at least a degree of randomness. But my biggest issue - you're then even deeper in to the realms of relationships with other teams. Red Bull using TR, Mercedes using FI/Williams, etc. It just becomes far too easy to use it tactically. If we think team orders are bad, wait till we see non-team orders.

No more lapped drivers - as soon as a car is lapped the race is over for them, return to the pits.
Too empty a track, even fewer battles, and teams scared to pit at certain moments leading to even more boring processions. Even stupid things like drivers taking a hit on the first lap will be unduly penalised. It's a race, not a knockout.

Blue flags for lead drivers - if a lapped car is quicker the lead cars are given blue flags and must let the lapped cars through.
A leader driver should never need to unduly slow down to let a backmarker through. It's just bizarre, you do not prioritise the people at the back over the people fighting for wins and championships.

Unlapping must be banned.
We then have even weirder processions. If there is a distinct difference in pace, just let the cars go their fastest.

In short - this barely happens. The vast majority of drivers are smart enough to ensure this doesn't happen, and it really takes two drivers to go wrong at once for this to happen. This in top of the already relatively rare occurrence of backmarkers having a pace advantage on the leading pack, and not needing to be concerned with any surrounding pack. Anything else will cause more problems than it will solve.

I took the 'no blue flags' option as return to the original use rather than completely removing them.
The blue flag was a reminder that faster cars are coming up behind, do not get taken by surprise and do not block them. Any skulduggery such as allowing one team to pass and restricting another team should still be dealt with as deliberate obstruction and a drive through or time handed out,as now. It can not be allowed that drivers of any team disrupt the race of any car that is not in direct conflict with them. As for the DRS 'flypast' I would also like to see that gone.

[Just_a_fan]

This was not a blue flag issue

Agreed, it wasn't. But people are voting for blue flags to be removed or the rules changes etc. Always useful to remember where we came from just in case we end up back there again.

[JonoNic]

This was not a blue flag issue

Agreed, it wasn't. But people are voting for blue flags to be removed or the rules changes etc. Always useful to remember where we came from just in case we end up back there again.

I would love to see a Senna-Irvine like punch up! (It was one-sided though)

[NathanOlder]

No change, drivers in P16 with no chance of points should know their place (and position).

Can you please acknowledge that ocon was 14th and was lapping 2 seconds a lap faster than p11 p12 and p13. He was about 10 seconds behind p11. So potentially he was 5 laps away from catching p11. Then it only takes 1 retirement from the top 10 (highly likely at this stage of the season with old PU's)
So his chances of points were half decent as long as he got to those guys in front of him before his tyres lost their edge. Add to that Max was driving to a delta and keeping Lewis a few seconds behind while looking after his tyres. does that not make sense to you ?

[GrandAxe]

Why should rules that are decades old be changed just to suit Max?

[Zynerji]

Black flag lapped drivers, leader gets 1 championship point for every car he black flags.

Player Killer racing!

[marmer]

Black flag lapped drivers, leader gets 1 championship point for every car he black flags.

Player Killer racing!

If you had it so all cars that past the point of where backmarker was lapped got an extra point some funny situations could occur like the lead car acting as a rear gunner for the slow car for his teammate in a championship battle if it stops a rival getting more points would be great to see a mercedes intentionally staying behind a Williams

[Andres125sx]

This poll is missing the obvious reply to me: un-lapping must be banned

While it´s not banned, this will continue happening, if it´s not banned there´s no reason a lapped car with new and soft tires will try it again, and IMHO it´s absurd because as soon as he loose the tire advantage in few laps, the leader will have to lap him again, causing him to loose time two times


I don´t think Ocon fault was that severe, it was his mistake obviously, but since he broke no rule he had to try

So what if a lead car has an issue or fuel savings are they just supposed to cue up behind until the lead car pits or retires

That situation can be easily solved with the lead car moving to a side and allowing the lapped car to un-lap himself, or even better, that decision should be made by Charlie, if a lapped car is obviously faster he gets permission to un-lap. Otherwise, banned.

[jz11]

why is there no option to vote for removal of the mickey mouse tyres, "one" engine per season and fuel flow rules? these rules directly led to the problem in the first place (apart from the obvious "unexperienced" Max with 70 F1 races behind his back tangling with a back marker), drivers driving ultimate race cars to delta times which happen to be much slower than P16... so much for the pinnacle of motorsport...

adding even more rules will require not just stewarding, but an army of lawyers to figure out who was allowed to do what on the track... and remember who was the reason for the idea of changing/introducing new rules again - non other than Max "I didn't move under braking" Verstappen

[marmer]

This poll is missing the obvious reply to me: un-lapping must be banned

While it´s not banned, this will continue happening, if it´s not banned there´s no reason a lapped car with new and soft tires will try it again, and IMHO it´s absurd because as soon as he loose the tire advantage in few laps, the leader will have to lap him again, causing him to loose time two times


I don´t think Ocon fault was that severe, it was his mistake obviously, but since he broke no rule he had to try

So what if a lead car has an issue or fuel savings are they just supposed to cue up behind until the lead car pits or retires

That situation can be easily solved with the lead car moving to a side and allowing the lapped car to un-lap himself, or even better, that decision should be made by Charlie, if a lapped car is obviously faster he gets permission to un-lap. Otherwise, banned.

So in a roundabout way you have made a situation take longer and slow both cars down than it does now after you realised a major flaw with your original idea great stuff. And if a lead car refuses are the FIA really going to punish them for not letting the backmarker past I doubt it the backlash the moment they do would be horrific

[zac510]

You should not take seriously any idea for changing F1 unless the poster can list one negative point about the idea. Without one negative point you can tell that it has not been thought through. All ideas have a negative point, you just have to find it before you click 'Post'.

[Big Tea]

one alternative is to get lap times back up to around 1:40- 2 min

There are 3 ways to do it, 2 will be frowned apron.

[Godius]

When a faster lapped car comes and unlaps himself, the same applies. The leading car should think twice about racing the car that he is unlapping himself because they aren't really racing. It should be a formality. For some reason, Max didn't want to let Ocon unlap himself, despite seeing him for 1.5 laps coming closer and closer from behind. When Ocon attempted the pass on the long straight, Max even went off the racing line to the inside, the dirty side of the track to seemingly defend his position. Why? He was over 2s ahead of Hamilton at that point (gap increasing), on better tires in what clearly was the quicker car. Instead, he decided to race Ocon for position and both ended up going side by side into the Senna-S curves before they made contact.
The real problem about the Brazil incident is the fact that Max feels he needs to fight hard for every single position, even against cars he isn't really racing.

This logic is flawed this incident is not about feelings, if your argument was true the stewards would have noted it as a racing incident and they did not. Max has every right to do what he did according to them. Max lined up to the inside because he knows that's is where the grip in turn 1 lies, on the inside of the corner. Max was momentarily behind going into turn 1 because of the speed difference but came out ahead of Ocon going into turn 2 (Senna S). You can also say that Ocon drove himself into a blue flag situation again by being momentarily ahead of Verstappen going into turn 1. This makes the penalty for Ocon: 10 sec stop-and-go + 3 penalty points on his super license fully justified.

It surprises me that people can't seem to look at the incident apart from the emotional side or could have, would have, should have mentality like the stewards did.

[TAG]

Ocon did nothing legally wrong, he made a textbook overtake attempt that would under any other circumstance have been successful. But it was Max driving the other car.

Scenarios given here about banning cars from overtaking is ridiculous. How about a race leader stuck on slicks which under changing conditions and someone who is a lap down because they dove into the pits to put on inters, then cannot overtake the leader?

There is nothing wrong with the way the rules are. You may not like the entirety of the blue flag situation but that's not what's being discussed here. Ocon got a penalty because he crashed with the race leader, not because he did anything wrong. Anyone that has watched the sport more than one year knows the FiA and race stewards have an entirely different unwritten set of rules for the favorites in the sport.

If you watch the on boards and judge it merely as two cars racing, remove ALL other factors, then it's clearly Max's fault, at worst it's deemed a racing incident. Anything else being discussed is someone fooling themselves. Max Verstappen lost the race lead of a GP because he wouldn't accept being overtaken by a Ocon, that's all.