Drivers voice start safety fears

Sergio Perez is one of several drivers in China to voice concern over how the current regulations endanger them at the start.

The Mexican was right behind Franco Colapinto when he somehow managed to weave his way past a struggling Liam Lawson at the start of last week’s race. Had the Argentine got it slightly wrong there was the potential for disaster, which would no doubt have involved the Cadillac behind.

“It’s a shame,” the Mexican told reporters in Shanghai. “It’s a shame that I say, but it’s just a matter of time before a massive shunt happens.

“These power units are very difficult to start,” he continued. “You can have a good start or you can have a bad start, by so many different factors. You can get anti-stalled, like what happened to Lawson, and that can be very, very dangerous, because the speeds that you end up doing within two to three seconds are extremes.

“It’s a difficult one,” he admitted, “because I don’t know what you can do in that regard. It’s just these new engines are very difficult to start.”

The powers that be were already aware of the potential for such incidents, and ahead of the second pre-season test in Bahrain introduced the revised procedure used last weekend, and while this helps the situation it hasn’t resolved the inherent threat.

“When I started to see the onboards after the race, it was even closer than what I thought, even more sketchy,” said Colapinto. “Generally it’s things that we were expecting that would happen and things that we knew that were there and issues that everyone was getting, every team,” he added.

“We talked in many different situations that these things were going to be a thing to look at and possible dangerous situations. It happened, luckily I could manage to escape from it and manage to do the whole race.”

“It was a scary one for sure for Franco,” said Esteban Ocon. “This is something that we are all aware can happen, especially in this early stage of the year. It could have been dramatic, that’s for sure, and it’s probably something that we are going to be talking about further to make sure that this is not happening.

“We don’t want to see F2 starts happening in F1,” he continued, “and they should not happen in F2 either, but they are, more or less for the same reasons that they happen.

“I made a lot of places, Pierre (Gasly) made a lot of places, Fernando as well,” he added. “It was enjoyable to race, but we don’t want to see somebody stalling in front of you and then suddenly appearing from nowhere, because that’s probably one of the worst crashes you can have, so yeah, something to bear in mind.”

“Starts at the minute are a lottery,” said Gasly, “because Liam had an issue which wasn’t down to his procedures. We had a very good one, but I think we all know what we do inside the car, but when you see the outcomes at the moment, it’s more a consequence of the PU and whether it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, et cetera, so you have big variation.

“I think we came as all winners last week. I have no idea whether it’s going to be the case. I might do the same procedure this weekend and lose five places. So, there is definitely that unknown with these cars compared to the past. Does it bring excitement? Yes, because you can still fall on the right side of it and make crazy numbers of positions on a dry start, which we haven’t seen since maybe the ’80s when I look at the documentaries. It’s been quite rare to see that much performance difference.

“Is it fair for all of us? Maybe not. So yeah, I think that’s definitely one thing. And I think on Franco’s situation, clearly it was scary. I thanked him many times again this morning when I saw him because we’re quite short on parts, and I think for all of us in the team it was definitely a scary one, but especially for him, and I’m glad that everyone was okay out of it. It definitely needs some stuff to be fixed because you qualify… Liam did a decent job in qualifying, then his race was over from something which wasn’t in his power, which should not really happen.”

“There are a few simple solutions,” claimed Max Verstappen, “but they need to be allowed by the FIA with the battery-related stuff because, yes, starting with a 0% battery is not a lot of fun and also quite dangerous.

“We are in discussions with them to see what can be done because you could see, I mean, we almost had a massive shunt in Melbourne. Now, some of that is related to batteries. Some, of course, can happen with an anti-stall. But you could see a lot of big speed differences because I was not the only car that had almost, let’s say, no battery, or 20, 30 percent. This is something that I think can be easily fixed.”