Last Updated on November 3 2024, 2:10 pm

The scheduling of the Sao Paulo Grand Prix will once again come under scrutiny given that the month of November in that part of the world sees heavy rain every three days. Qualifying on Saturday was delayed several times until light became an issue which forced the session to be postponed until Sunday morning.

The last word from Sky who were broadcasting late into the evening on Saturday was that qualifying would most likely be run at 9am local time. Race control in fact made the late decision that qualifying would begin an hour and a half earlier at 07:30 and the Grand Prix was moved two hours forward, one more than the Sky F1 team had predicted.

As qualifying commenced it quickly became clear why the session was abandoned on Saturday evening, as in the much improved conditions on Sunday, chaos reigned. Red flags were rife with Franco Colapinto exiting early in Q1 after a mistake in the wet.

 

 

 

Most red flagged F1 qualifying session

Once considered the rainmeister, Lewis Hamilton was the high profile victim of the first session failing to post a time quick enough to make it out of the bottom five.

The second part of qualifying became contentious as both Carlos Sainz and Lance Stroll brought out red flags which ended their session. Stroll’s was late in the session and he hit the wall at turn three with no hope of recovering the cars.

Despite the high level of risk to the stricken driver, race control took over fifty seconds to red flag the session, by which time there was no time to restart it. The time delay between the Colapinto crash and the red flag was just 12 seconds and had race control reacted with similar speed, both Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez were inside the top ten.

Yet the incremental delay allowed a number of drivers to improve their times then came the blow to Red Bull’s hopes for the weekend as the red flag came just seconds before Verstappen could complete his lap. Verstappen fumed after the session accusing race control of taking a “ridiculous” amount of time before the session was suspended.

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Verstappen fumes

“If a guy goes straight into the wall, it is a straight red,” Verstappen assembled media. “I don’t understand why you need to take 30, 40 seconds for a red flag to come out…its just bullshit.”

I was suggested to him that the delay was to allow certain drivers to complete their laps, Verstappen retorted: “I don’t care in all honesty, it is so stupid to talk about. It’s ridiculous.”

A number of media personnel in the paddock questioned the delay together with the reasoning that time was allowed for drivers to complete their laps. The primary role of race control when a car hits the wall is to make a decision based on safety and not decide which drivers get to complete laps and which don’t. The time elapsed was in fact 50 seconds, almost enough time to complete an entire lap.

With rival Lando Norris going on to claim pole position and Max Verstappen starting P17, after his engine penalty, this was the weekend Red Bull dreaded where Norris makes a big haul of points while Verstappen is nowhere.

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Horner accuses race control of negligence

Christian Horner was visibly irate when asked for his thoughts about the delay to issuing the red flag. “It’s hugely frustrating,” Horner told Sky. “A session like that there’s obviously a huge amount going on. We don’t understand why it took so long for it [the red flag] to come out.

“It was obviously a big accident, one of the most dangerous corners on the circuit, 40 seconds it took to throw the red flag. It’s the second day in a row now that we have had very late calls, whether it was the VSC yesterday or the red flag today. The other red flags were all instantaneous.”

The Red Bull boss is referring to the late VSC in the Sprint, some two laps after Nico Hulkenberg had come to a halt at the side of the circuit. The delay in posting the VSC allowed McLaren to switch their drivers handing the Sprint win to Lando Norris who closed the gap to Verstappen in the drivers title race. This would not have been possible had the VSC been announced in more regular fashion after the Haas break down.

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Horner demands FIA explanation

“Very, very harsh but it is what it is and we’ve got to try and fight back this afternoon,” continued Horner.

“As soon as you have an accident like that it should be an immediate red flag. If they had red-flagged it immediately Max would have been 10th and he would have had time for another lap.

“We would like to understand the thinking of the race director to understand why it took so long to throw that red flag.”

Horner is crystal clear in his accusations against the FIA race control that their behaviour cost his driver a place in final qualifying, arguing the officials had failed to put Stroll’s safety first and engineered the result of the session. If true this is clearly negligent and the FIA have a number of questions to answer at the conclusion of this weekend.

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Williams to field just one car

Norris himself admitted he was fortunate to even make it out of qualifying one as he was falling down the order as the clock ran down. With seconds remaining Yuki Tsunoda put in a stelar lap putting Lando on the cusp of a Q1 exit, but behind him Lewis Hamilton failed to get a decent lap in, later describing his car as “the worst I’ve ever driven.”

Hamilton had been publicly critical of F1 supremo Stefano Domenicali, telling him on camera that  had the teams still been allowed to use blanket warmers on the extreme wets, the qualifying could have taken place on Saturday evening.

Albon’s late crash in Q3 destroyed his Williams car and the British born Thai driver told viably, “I’m out [of the race] for sure. There’s no way…”  Williams are yet to announce whether both cars will be ready for the Grand Prix and should there be just one fit to race, which driver will they select? 

Their Argentine young driver Franco Colapinto has attracted thousands of fans to the only South American F1 event, many of whom will make a 60 hour return bus journey to their first ever F1 weekend. The last time qualifying was held on a Sunday morning the FIA mandated a four hour turnaround time prior to the start of the Grand Prix. Here Williams will have just two and a half hours to try the impossible and repair both cars in readiness for the pit and closure as the grid is assembled.

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Verstappen & FIA “inconsistent” decisions as Leclerc gets a wrist slap

As Oscar Piastri claimed pole in Sau Paulo Sprint qualifying with his team mate making it a McLaren 1-2, the big story of “swear gate” rumbled on in the F1 paddock. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is the first driver to be summoned to the stewards for swearing since Max Verstappen in the latest crack down instigated by the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem in there run up to the Singapore Grand Prix.

At the Thursday FIA drivers’ press conference in the city state Max Verstappen dropped the F-bomb whilst describing how bad his car was in Baku to the assembled media. He was immediately sanctioned by the stewards but with the unusual penalty of community service, something which got under the world champion’s skin as he refused to answer questions properly in further “official” sanctioned press events across the weekend.

Last time out at the 2024 Mexican Grand Prix, Charles Leclerc found himself in similar hot water as he explained in the post race FIA press conference how he saved his car from a huge smash along the start/finish straight. “I had one oversteer and then when I recovered from that oversteer, I had an oversteer from the other side and then I was like, ‘f**k’.”.. READ MORE