via /u/Dexelele on the bad site
In the replay you can see him restarting the car over and over again and trying to get back on the track. The car even moves back and forth the whole time while he tries to reverse and turn around.
When asked about it in the interview with Sky Germany, Stroll said that he didn’t know the car was as damaged as it was and was trying to continue.
Apparently, that’s why the red flag took so long.
Sky Germany showed the full replay of him trying over and over again, did anyone manage to grab the replay of that?
Bullshit reason in my opinion. Of course Stroll would attempt to do anything to get back to the pits, that’s his job. And like he said, from inside the car it’s hard to see how broken it exactly is. But for anyone outside of the car is was obvious that car was destroyed and wasn’t going to come back on it’s own in any safe or timely manner. It should have been red flagged right away. Even if Stroll got it going and carried on to the pits, there would still be need for debris clearing and barrier repair. And with the state of that car, he would have put oil and debris all across the track in doing so, requiring even more clean up.
It should have been red right away. There have been so many issues this year where race control is slow to put out a flag or VSC. And weird choices when to use the SC and when to use the VSC. They need to do better in the future.
There definitely have been weird choices. But in general this is an actual thing: red flags come out when a car doesn’t move anymore in a dangerous position, yellow flags when it’s still moving.
Sure in general, if a driver can get back on track, it’s better to have a yellow. Not to interrupt the session and get going.
I think after Bianchi (RIP) they changed the rules that if there are people on track or they are needed on track, it needs to be red or SC before it’s allowed. And with the mandatory SC deltas for all cars. Later the VSC is introduced and got incorporated where under certain conditions a VSC is enough for a marshal to be on track. Like for example to get a bit of debris off the track with a brave person running out and grabbing it. With the damage to the barrier, people were required to be on track, so it should have been red as soon as possible to get that going.
And it’s a hard job, I fully get that and it’s hard to make the right call all the time.
But in this case, with the state of the car and the state of the barrier, I don’t see it as something that should depend on what the driver inside the car is doing. And we’ve even seen teams and drivers getting punished for trying to drive back cars in an unsafe condition.