Safety car plays decisive role again in confusing end to chaotic race

This time, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was able to joke about a safety car having a decisive role at the end of a chaotic and dramatic grand prix.

Nearly five years have passed since Wolff watched his then driver Lewis Hamilton have a record-breaking eighth world title wrenched from his grasp as a result of the FIA race director failing to apply the rules correctly during a safety-car period.

Back then, Michael Masi - who was fired a couple of months later for his error - made that call to override his organisation's own regulations in a misguided attempt to not have the race finish under a safety car.

At Silverstone on Sunday, that's exactly what happened .

It might - for some - have been an unsatisfactory way to end a British Grand Prix that had gone from tense racing to extraordinary upheaval in the final few laps.

But as Wolff said: "I would have preferred for this to happen in '21. That was more important. It's good that the regulations have been followed.

"Sometimes it doesn't give for the most exciting final. But this is a sport. Show follows sport and not the other way around. So it's good the FIA made that call."

The late drama was enhanced because shortly before the cars approached the end of the penultimate lap, a message flashed up on the timing screens saying that the safety car was about to pull off, restarting the race.

This was one of the ways in which Masi messed up in Abu Dhabi. The rules say that the cars have to do one more lap behind a safety car before a restart once lapped cars have unlapped themselves, a process that was only just beginning at the time.

In Abu Dhabi, two errors were made - only some lapped cars were allowed to unlap themselves, and the race restarted as soon as those were out of the way, allowing Red Bull's Max Verstappen, on fresh tyres, to pass Hamilton on the final lap to win his first world title.

This time, a few seconds after the initial message, a second flashed up, that the safety car would stay out.

It led to a confusing end to the race - and a disappointing one for some, because a dramatic climax was in waiting.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc had been 20 seconds in front when the safety car came out for a high-speed crash by Verstappen's Red Bull. Now, Leclerc was leading, with Mercedes' George Russell right behind and Hamilton's Ferrari right behind him.

Leclerc and Hamilton were on new soft tyres, Russell on well-used mediums. As Wolff said: "Certainly from a spectacle standpoint, everybody would have loved to see Lewis on a soft against us and maybe fighting with Leclerc."

As for the timing-screen errors, Wolff said: "That's OK. Mistakes happen in situations like this. It was corrected, so that's fine."

What about the fact that the message was put out to the world?

"It doesn't matter," he said. "It was rectified."

The initial message, the FIA said, was caused by a software glitch in the system. Essentially, it got ahead of itself. Rather as Masi did, ironically. It will be investigated.

Russell, one of the many drivers who feel Hamilton was robbed in Abu Dhabi, said: "You go back to Abu Dhabi '21, and that is just how racing goes. Nobody can plan for somebody to have an incident, and the way F1 deal with it and FIA deal with it shouldn't be any different at the end of the race compared to the start of the race.

"Obviously, there was a lot of chat post-Abu Dhabi '21.

"If you actually look at the number of races that have finished under the safety car over the past 20 years, it's not actually a lot. So, it is a shame, but what can you do? I don't think it should be different."

Hamilton was clearly not willing to dig up the ghosts of a race that still haunts him, but said: "Yeah, same as George said. Not really much more to add."

The safety car confusion was just the final episode in a race that was always engrossing but had ratcheted up several notches in the final 20 laps or so.

Initially, the climax looked set to be Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli, the championship leader, chasing down and passing Leclerc, who had led from the start, having delayed his pit stop by 10 laps to attack the Ferrari on fresher tyres.

Antonelli was closing at such a pace that a win seemed inevitable, but then he radioed that something was wrong with his car and he couldn't steer.

Two pit stops followed in quick succession, plummeting the Italian down the field. In the course of that, Mercedes realised a wheel shield - a piece of carbon-fibre on the inside of the wheel used to condition airflow and manage heat from the brakes - had come loose.

They tore that off in the second stop and sent him out again, but the car still felt odd. He continued, in ninth place, from where he was demoted out of the points with a penalty for exceeding track limits while he was battling the steering problems.

Antonelli's problems left Leclerc clear out front and Verstappen and Russell, with a tyre advantage, closing on Hamilton in a battle for the podium positions.

Then Verstappen crashed with four laps to go, and Russell decided to stay out in the subsequent safety-car period, Mercedes gambling correctly that the race would not restart.

The result - Leclerc-Russell-Hamilton, with Antonelli not scoring - made a dramatic difference to the championship. Russell narrowed his deficit to Antonelli from 43 points before the race to 25, with Hamilton a further seven adrift. If Antonelli had won, the gap would have been more than 50.

In a stroke, the imbalance of reliability issues between the Mercedes drivers has been wiped out, as Russell acknowledged.

"I think probably a 25-point gap in his favour is probably correct," Russell said. "He has done a better job than me this year to this point, so he deserves to be ahead of me.

"Whether it should be 25 points, whether it should be 10 points, whether it should be 35 points, is a debate, but in that ballpark. I obviously lost 15 points as well in Monaco with the drive-through penalty. I think anywhere from 10 to 30 points behind is probably about fair."

And he acknowledged: "If I want to fight for the championship, the performances need to be better. I need to be better. I need to be working better with my team. We need to be maximising everything.

"We've got a close fight now with Ferrari, so it's not just Kimi and I. Lewis is still very close. It needs to be improved."

Leclerc's victory was Ferrari's second in three races following Hamilton's in Barcelona. Although Mercedes were faster, and Antonelli almost certainly would have won, Ferrari were much more competitive at Silverstone than they expected.

They already had the fastest car in the corners, and an engine upgrade introduced in Austria has cut the deficit to Mercedes on the power and deployment front.

Hamilton said: "It's amazing to see the pace that we've had this weekend at this sort of circuit. We definitely didn't anticipate it. So just phenomenal to [have a] strong weekend as a team and come away with really good points is really, really special."

Leclerc and team principal Frederic Vasseur, though, were cautious about their prospects of becoming consistent challengers to Mercedes.

"It's too early to say," Leclerc said. "This weekend was a particularly big surprise for the whole team. Not the win today, just the overall performance.

"We were a lot faster than what we thought, and I think as much as we need to analyse when things are going a lot worse than expected, we also need to analyse when things go a lot better than expected.

"Coming into the weekend, I remember the meetings that we've done on Thursday and we kind of thought we would be 0.6secs, 0.5secs off, minimum, and we were much better than that, and we actually won today. So, it's a very special feeling."

As for 19-year-old Antonelli, he was relaxed, as well he might be. Although the race turned sour, this was another weekend in which he was the fastest guy out there. The pace is coming to him much more easily than it is to Russell, he looks unbeatable if he doesn't hit problems, and 25 points is still a substantial lead.

"We lost a lot of points, but this weekend we showed the speed, and we showed as well what the potential can be," Antonelli said.

"When I'm in a good place, when also we're in a good place with the team, with the car, we showed what we are capable of.

"So the momentum is still there, and actually it makes the fire grow even more, to go out there, inspire and try to do even better."