The FIA‘s Race Director Charlie Whiting has said that he is not confident that a heavy revision to the blue flag system in place in Formula 1 will be met with a majority agreement, however he is willing to discuss the matter.
Introduced to the sport in 1995, the blue flag has forced backmarkers to make way for faster moving traffic within three marshal posts; any transgression of this rule brings a suitable penalty to the offending driver. However, despite the system preventing slower cars from affecting the race unfairly, there are several critics who have said that the flags should leave F1 – suggesting that traffic management is an integral skill for a top driver.
When asked about his view on the matter at the Spanish Grand Prix, Whiting said that a potential revision would be “hugely unpopular” with both drivers and teams, but has not been discarded altogether.
“There’s been talk about that, it’s been proposed a few times,” Whiting said. “[It would be] hugely unpopular with teams and drivers, of course.
“It’s something that is on the agenda, so to speak. It’s not been rejected completely.”
Whilst remaining open to the possibility, Whiting said that the decision would have to be thoroughly examined, in order to make sure that it cannot be “overly exploited”. Scuderia Ferrari‘s Sebastian Vettel has been a vocal critic of the current Virtual Safety Car procedure, saying that drivers take highly different racing lines in order to keep a positive delta.
“It’s something we’d have to look carefully at to make sure that it wasn’t overly exploited,” he added.
“But I think the principle, there are many forms of racing in which they don’t have such a luxury, is something that we are open to discuss.”
Whiting concluded by estimating that the chance of the rethink happening is “less than 50 percent”.
“[The probability is] less than 50% I would say,” Whiting speculated.
“It’s not popular. It would be quite something to get that through. But I think we need to think it through carefully.”
