What is the point of the safety car?

[MitchT]

Am I missing something or is the safety car a bit pointless? The VSC achieves the same effect in slowing the field down when a hazard is present and, in my opinion, is a better way to maintain an authentic compeition because it doesn't result in drivers' heard-earned gaps being closed down. Is it just there to add a bit of theatre to the restart by closing the field up, or is there a technical reason why it's needed?

[oyster]

Full SC allows the field to all be contained within a part of a lap, to enable recovery work to take place (perhaps for 90ish seconds) with no danger from passing cars. Safety car can also slow further at the scene of a recovery which VSC can't do.

Full SC can also take cars through the pits if needed.

There's probably many other factors.

[thepawbroon]

MitchT said:

Am I missing something or is the safety car a bit pointless? The VSC achieves the same effect in slowing the field down when a hazard is present and, in my opinion, is a better way to maintain an authentic compeition because it doesn't result in drivers' heard-earned gaps being closed down. Is it just there to add a bit of theatre to the restart by closing the field up, or is there a technical reason why it's needed?

The "real" safety car can gather the field together, and slow them down around the area of an incident where response vehicles / marshals are on / adjacent to the track and require a lower risk situation. The tragic incident that eventually claimed Jules Bianchi showed that VSC was inadequate in those situations. The VSC seems to be best for imposing quickly, to then allow a more informed decision about SC or Red Flag.

[Brainpox]

VSC is a set pace with no direction other than to remain in the delta on the steering wheel. If the field is spread out then there will be a car approaching every corner making it risky for marshals to be in front of the barrier despite the reduced speed.

A full safety car allows full control of the pace, option to take cars through the pitlane if the incident is on the start/finish straight, and by bunching the pack up allows a 90ish second window (depending on the length of the circuit) where no cars are approaching the incident for marshals to be out and do what they need to do.

[Muzzer79]

MitchT said:

Am I missing something or is the safety car a bit pointless? The VSC achieves the same effect in slowing the field down when a hazard is present and, in my opinion, is a better way to maintain an authentic compeition because it doesn't result in drivers' heard-earned gaps being closed down. Is it just there to add a bit of theatre to the restart by closing the field up, or is there a technical reason why it's needed?

VSC allows the drivers to run to a lower-but-still average speed, designed to keep the delta distance between cars.

A full safety car controls the actual pace of the cars - down to walking pace if required, were there a case of an obstruction on the circuit - for example.

VSC would not be suitable for extreme weather, for example.

[MitchT]

All makes sense, thanks.

[Teppic]

thepawbroon said:

The tragic incident that eventually claimed Jules Bianchi showed that VSC was inadequate in those situations.

The VSC didn't exist then. It was actually the tragic events of Japan 2014 that saw the introduction of the VSC for the 2015 season. Before then it was double waved yellows and up to the driver to control their speed past an incident. Although double waved yellows means "Slow down and be prepared to stop", an awful lot of drivers though that "slow down" meant only going past about 1mph slower than usual, rather than a lot slower, as if they did slow down and the car behind didn't they would be at a huge disadvantage after the incident. Hence the decision to introduce the VSC and control the drivers' speeds.

[Diderot]

I often wonder whether a better system than the VSC would be the Le Mans style 'slow zone' where cars are limited to a set speed, so no one can abuse it or profit from it.

[DarkVeil]

I have a different question. When a safety car period is ending, why aren't the gaps between drivers at the start of the safety car period reinstated?

[entropy]

DarkVeil said:

I have a different question. When a safety car period is ending, why aren't the gaps between drivers at the start of the safety car period reinstated?

Too long and complicated to sort out.

Under the old red flag rules you had the aggregate system whereby the timing from pre-red flag and restarted race is added together. The problem with that was the timings didn't correspond with what actual on-track action. A good example of this is the 1994 Japanese GP when Alesi and Mansell were battling but it wasn't for overall position.

[StevieBee]

Diderot said:

I often wonder whether a better system than the VSC would be the Le Mans style 'slow zone' where cars are limited to a set speed, so no one can abuse it or profit from it.

I stood at the Porsche Curves last year at the beginning of an activated slow-zone. How cars didn't pile into the back of one another is beyond me. Many touched and plenty of frantic locking of wheels. But it does sort of work at LeMans - but the reason is you have a 8.5mile lap. And in theory, the double-waved yellows in F1 should achieve a similar thing.

[GlobalRacer]

DarkVeil said:

I have a different question. When a safety car period is ending, why aren't the gaps between drivers at the start of the safety car period reinstated?

How on earth would you do that? It would take forever to sort out. It's just part of racing. Sometimes it goes in your favour and sometimes it doesn't.

[DarkVeil]

GlobalRacer said:

How on earth would you do that? It would take forever to sort out. It's just part of racing. Sometimes it goes in your favour and sometimes it doesn't.

Easily. Line them up on the grid (or end of the pit-lane) and release them at the intervals that were in place at the end of the last lap before the safety car was called.

Same thing for red flags.

[Sandpit Steve]

Another advantage of the physical SC is that it contains a regular driver and an observer, who can feed back to race control either about track conditions or the scene of an incident.

[John D.]

DarkVeil said:

Easily. Line them up on the grid (or end of the pit-lane) and release them at the intervals that were in place at the end of the last lap before the safety car was called.

Same thing for red flags.

[StevieBee]

DarkVeil said:

GlobalRacer said:

How on earth would you do that? It would take forever to sort out. It's just part of racing. Sometimes it goes in your favour and sometimes it doesn't.

Easily. Line them up on the grid (or end of the pit-lane) and release them at the intervals that were in place at the end of the last lap before the safety car was called.

Same thing for red flags.

This would be impossible to achieve. Each car would need to set off at precisely the right time and not suffer any wheel-spin, clutch slip, etc and require the drivers to react with a reaction time of zero. Different cars would accelerate at different rates and if one has a wobble, then all cars behind would fall out of sync, negating the effect of the approach.

And what if there were five cars literally nose to tail at the red flag. How would you start them from a standing start to retain the same gap?

[DarkVeil]

StevieBee said:

DarkVeil said:

GlobalRacer said:

How on earth would you do that? It would take forever to sort out. It's just part of racing. Sometimes it goes in your favour and sometimes it doesn't.

Easily. Line them up on the grid (or end of the pit-lane) and release them at the intervals that were in place at the end of the last lap before the safety car was called.

Same thing for red flags.

This would be impossible to achieve. Each car would need to set off at precisely the right time and not suffer any wheel-spin, clutch slip, etc and require the drivers to react with a reaction time of zero. Different cars would accelerate at different rates and if one has a wobble, then all cars behind would fall out of sync, negating the effect of the approach.

And what if there were five cars literally nose to tail at the red flag. How would you start them from a standing start to retain the same gap?

Obviously the timings wouldn't be perfect, but far better overall and less luck based than the current system.

People just like the entertainment value of a safety car being able to turn a race on its head like in Abu Dhabi 2021.

[Roofless Toothless]

As an ex-marshal I can sure you that it is not funny to be allowed out into the track to help sort out an incident to find a car being driven full chat past you by a driver desperately trying to catch up with the end of the safety car crocodile before everything goes green again.

I don’t think it helps that the SC board is displayed alongside yellow flags around the whole circuit, as this devalues the local yellows at the scene of the incident. Perhaps it could make it safer to devise another way to do this.

[vaud]

Roofless Toothless said:

I don’t think it helps that the SC board is displayed alongside yellow flags around the whole circuit, as this devalues the local yellows at the scene of the incident. Perhaps it could make it safer to devise another way to do this.

For F1 there have in car flag indicators as well as the flags and light panels by the track?

[Sandpit Steve]

vaud said:

Roofless Toothless said:

I don’t think it helps that the SC board is displayed alongside yellow flags around the whole circuit, as this devalues the local yellows at the scene of the incident. Perhaps it could make it safer to devise another way to do this.

For F1 there have in car flag indicators as well as the flags and light panels by the track?

Yes the light panels show local yellow and double yellow with a higher priority than SC board. Plus there’s a physical SC board at each marshal post, and (in F1) the drivers’ dashboards change to show the target sector times.