During the race at Paul Ricard, George Russell pressed Sergio Pérez for a long time for third place and overtook him at the restart after the virtual safety car (VSC) was cancelled. After the finish, Pérez claimed a glitch in the VSC system had robbed him of the podium – the team told him the race would continue when he got to corner eight, and in fact it happened in 13th.
The regulations say that after the VSC termination message, the race will resume at any time in the next 10-15 seconds. But there was a hardware failure. The race did not resume, the VSC period continued – and the system automatically switched to reserve. The procedure for ending the VSC period was launched for the second time – the teams again received the VSC termination message, followed by a restart.
“The second VSC termination message was sent due to a hardware issue that resulted in an automatic failover to the backup system – exactly as per procedure. All teams receive these messages at the same time. The time until the restart is always arbitrary,” the FIA spokesman said after the race.
During VSC mode, the maximum lap time is determined, faster than where the riders can’t go. To ensure that they keep to this time throughout the round, the difference (delta) between the set and the actual time is measured periodically. Before the restart, riders keep a close eye on these intervals and try to close or close the opponent’s gap, without crossing the delta.
After receiving the first VSC final message from the FIA, Pérez’ race engineer Hugh Bird informed the driver, who was ahead of Turn 8. Sergio accelerated to give himself the greatest possible advantage over Russell, but the race did not resume and Russell again overtook Perez. “Why didn’t the restart happen?” Perez asked, as Bird reminded him of the need to respect the delta.
As Pérez passed Turn 12, another VSC termination message came from the FIA. Bird told Perez about it. Russell received the same message. Both riders accelerated, but Sergio had a skid and George took the lead.
Source: F1 News
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