McLaren CEO Zak Brown says Formula 1 must find a “better solution” to avoid a repeat of Sunday’s two-lap Belgian Grand Prix.
Heavy rain resulted in a three-hour red flag delay and no racing laps being completed at Spa, but led to a controversial decision to declare a result and award half points to the top-10 finishers.
F1’s sporting regulations dictate that in order for a result to be declared and hand out 50% points, a minimum of two laps must be completed.
It proved an unpopular outcome among several drivers, with Sebastian Vettel branding it a “joke”, while Fernando Alonso called the decision to give half points as “shocking”.
Posting a video clip on his personal Twitter account, Brown backed the FIA’s call to not run the race, but urged for a review over how many laps should constitute a grand prix.
“That was certainly a disappointing day,” Brown said. “We wanted to race, the drivers wanted to race, and of course we know you wanted to see a race, and that’s not what you saw.
“The FIA did everything they could to put on the race. They can’t control the weather. They do need to put the drivers safety first, the conditions were not raceable.
“The regulations state after you do a few laps, it can be called a race. I think that needs to be reviewed.
“I don’t think there’s anyone that would argue that the weather was safe to race in. But we need a better solution as a sport.
“When that type of situation happens, the outcome should not be a race after three laps, behind a safety car.
“That is what the rules say. But I think that now needs to be reviewed, by all of us, to learn from today and realise if we are getting this type of situation, what would we do differently to make sure the outcome is that everyone gets their racing – whether that’s the following day, whether it’s coming back.
“It’s quite complicated with the schedule, but I don’t think anyone would say today it felt right calling that a race.
“So we will get to work on this and hope that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
FIA race director Michael Masi later stated that F1 had “no ability” to consider postponing the race until Monday for a “whole range” of reasons.
Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton criticised the handling of the event, believing the two laps ran behind the safety car were to simply satisfy contractual obligations.
Speaking on the rule of how half points are awarded, Masi stressed a change to the ruling was something that could be discussed for next year.
“After this weekend, and at our next meetings for next year, we’ll look at a whole lot of things to see what everyone wants,” Masi said, as quoted by The Race.
“We’re at one of those points that the FIA works with all 10 teams and F1 to develop the regulations [for next year].
“And so we’ll go through all of the various scenarios and see what everyone thinks.”
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