Are Safety Cars Really Safe?

We’re all familiar with this scene – you’re watching your favourite motorsport event on TV, and a driver has worked hard to build a substantial lead over their opposition. All of a sudden, there’s an incident involving a couple of cars in the mid-pack, and they’ve come to rest in dangerous positions. The Safety Car comes out onto the track, all the cars bunch up and the race leader’s advantage is nullified.

The Safety Car first made an appearance in Formula 1 in 1973, although it was not officially introduced to every round of the world championship until two decades later.

Closer to home, the Safety Car (or Pace Car) was first used at the Bathurst 1000 in 1987, and since then it has become taken for granted as the best method of controlling a race during an incident or a sudden change in weather conditions.

I’ve written about this topic before, on social media and in the Benalla Auto Club’s monthly magazine, but following the events of the recent Symmons Plains V8 event, I’ve decided it was time to re-open the discussion.

At Symmons Plains, in the Sunday race, there was a situation where the Safety Car was deployed due to an incident on the circuit. Because the Safety Car fell during the window when teams were able to complete pit stops, the situation emerged where cars were racing flat-out for well over a lap before actually coming under control.

This raises some pertinent questions, some of which were raised by Mark Skaife and Neil Crompton on the TV commentary: are Safety Cars really fulfilling their intended purpose? Or are there alternatives that may be both fairer and safer? Respected journalist and motorsport historian David Greenhalgh attempted to answer this question with an excellent article in the annual Bathurst magazine a couple of years ago, analysing the history of Safety Cars in the Bathurst 1000 and other international endurance races.

Greenhalgh made a number of valid observations on the drawbacks of Safety Cars, including:

• The time when the Safety Car is first deployed is the time when any stranded drivers are in the most danger, yet this is the time when drivers are racing flat-out to join onto the back of the queue behind the Safety Car, or racing into the pits to gain an advantage by completing a pit stop under Safety Car conditions.
• In races with pit stops, it is a common occurrence for the Safety Car to pick up the wrong car, unnecessarily disadvantaging competitors.
• Drivers lose any advantage they have built over their rivals.
• To reference a motorsport cliché, “Safety Cars breed Safety Cars” – i.e. because of the field compression, drivers are highly motivated to pass their rivals immediately following a Safety Car restart, which can lead to them taking risks on cold tyres and causing incidents, resulting in further Safety Car interventions.

Another problem with Safety Cars, specific to multi-class races, is that a Safety Car deployment can severely disrupt a battle for class position. Consider the following scenario:

The outright race leader has lapped all the cars up to second in a particular class, and the Safety Car is deployed. Because the Safety Car picks up the outright leader, all the lapped cars are trapped a lap down, but the class leader, yet to be lapped, gets to continue around the track and join onto the back of the queue, thus gaining almost an entire lap on its class rivals.

The detrimental effects of Safety Cars on the racing competition are questionable on their own, but what are particularly glaring are the potential risks of cars continuing around the circuit at race pace, and we were all treated to a graphic indication of such hazards in the 2014 Bathurst 1000 when Dale Wood, racing at full speed to join the tail of the queue behind the Safety Car, slammed into the back of team mate Andrew Jones.

A similar incident happened between the Audi TT of Glyn Crimp and Ferrari 458 of Jim Manolios at last year’s Bathurst 12 Hour.

Even more serious was the incident with Jules Bianchi colliding with a recovery crane during the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix; while the incident did not occur under Safety Car conditions, it highlighted the dangers of cars continuing around a circuit at unabated speed while a recovery is in progress.

In his article, Greenhalgh proposed a couple of alternatives to Safety Cars, which are not without merit and definitely warrant further investigation. Some of these alternatives are already in use, both locally and overseas.

One of these options, “Slow Zone”, was introduced at the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hour. In a Slow Zone, drivers are restricted to a speed limit of 60km/h and Slow Zones are used in specific parts of the circuit, rather than the full course.

Another alternative is “Code 60”, used at the Dubai 24 Hour. This is similar to Slow Zones in that drivers are speed restricted, but it applies to the whole circuit. A very similar system to Code 60 is the “Clampdown”, used at Queensland Raceway. At the Dubai Autodrome, drivers are notified of a Code 60 by purple flags while all drivers competing at Queensland Raceway must wear race receivers, allowing the clerk of the course to talk to them directly. More recently, Formula 1 has introduced the Virtual Safety Car (VSC), which is essentially the same thing as a Code 60 or Clampdown but under a different name.

Because a Code 60, Clampdown or VSC is activated immediately and cars must slow down straight away, the danger of drivers continuing to race at full speed is eliminated.

Similarly, there is no field compression so margins between cars are not lost and there is no danger of competitors being advantaged or disadvantaged by the Safety Car picking up the wrong car.

Another advantage – and this would be particularly useful at a long circuit like Mount Panorama, is that once the incident is cleared, racing can restart immediately rather than having to wait until the end of the lap.

Perhaps the most glowing endorsement for this system of having a full-course caution has been the first two 24 Hours of Lemons Australia events, held at Wakefield Park and Winton late last year and early this year. These endurance events, open to cars costing no more than $1,000, tend to attract drivers with little to no racing experience. On both occasions, the clerk of the course for the event opted for a Code-60 type caution system because he didn’t want to bunch the field up with a Safety Car and risk further incidents at a restart in which the field had been compressed.

Of course, there are still those who like the excitement of restarts with the field bunched up following a Safety Car, especially when it happens late in a major race such as the Bathurst 1000.

And at a more grass-roots level, the grandstand finishes we have been treated to in recent Valvoline Winton 300 endurance races (check out the 2014 finish below), would have not occurred without late-race Safety Car deployments on both occasions.

But this raises the question: is the Safety Car actually for safety, or is it in fact for entertainment? Comment below with your thoughts.