Backmarkers hate seeing their tyre temperatures drop when they slow to let the leaders by. Of course drivers complain about the blue flag rules all the time. One notorious example from 20 years ago illustrates this: Sauber driver Norberto Fontana delayed Jacques Villeneuve during the 1997 championship decider after Ferrari’s Jean Todt had instructed his team, who were using their engines, to help them. The temptation to abuse it would be huge. However if F1 were to relax its rules on how quickly backmarkers had to let traffic by it would place a huge amount of power in their hands. It would be nice to think backmarkers could work in a similar way in F1, naturally delaying the progress of the race leader to keep the battle at the front close. The second race in Detroit earlier this month was enlivened in the closing stages when leader Graham Rahal spent lap after lap trying to get around Ryan Hunter-Reay while he was being chased down by Josef Newgarden. Ind圜ar has much stricter rules on blue flags which make it harder for the leader to get through traffic. But when it comes to the blue flag rules I see little realistic chance for improvement over the present situation by changing the rules. The counter-argument to this is that the rules have evolved the way they have over many years and it’s easy to forget why they’ve turned into what they’ve become.īlaming blue flags can be a convenient scapegoatI don’t always agree with that – for example, when it comes to the horrendously complicated rules about tyres. I’ve often said F1’s rules are too complicated and need to be simplified.
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