FIA ‘clears the air’ regarding VSC glitch that cost Sergio Perez a podium finish at French GP
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The FIA after the end of the French Grand Prix has come up with an explanation regarding the late Virtual Car incident that caused a controversial delay.
Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou’s car came to a halt during the dying stages of the Grand Prix and the FIA came into action by deploying a VSC to give the track martials time to clear the car off the track.
After getting the car clear, the FIA informed all the teams that the Virtual safety car was ending.
As per F1’s sporting regulations, the race is supposed to start at “any time between 10 and 15 seconds later.” after which the drivers are allowed to race.
However, this did not happen after Zhou’s incident and the race stayed under VSC for a longer period. This forced FIA to come up with a second VSC ending message and that created a lot of confusion for the drivers on the track.
Sergio Perez was caught out by FIA’s second VSC message
One such driver was Red Bull’s Sergio Perez who was caught out by George Russell. The Mexican was not sharp enough on the throttle and that led to him losing out on a potential podium finish.
At the end of the Grand Prix, Perez while dwelling over the result said, “I mean it’s a shame the virtual safety car interfered with the result, to be honest. It shouldn’t be the case, but today it was the case.”
“It [the message of VSC ending] was totally wrong, there was something going on because it said it was going to end out of Turn 9 and it only ended out of Turn 12.”
The FIA has revealed that the delay was caused by a problem with its computer system that forced them to go for a different solution. “A second VSC ending message was sent due to a hardware issue, which led to an automated switch to backup systems that worked exactly as they should in that scenario.“
“The same information is supplied to all teams concurrently. The VSC ending countdown time to the green light being displayed on the trackside panels is always random.”
The French Grand Prix’s VSC incident is something that FIA should learn from, there are still 10 races to go in the season, and given the battle between Ferrari and Red Bull, the FIA can’t afford to have another such incident during the closing stages of the 2022 F1 season.
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Rishabh Negi
(3244 Articles Published)