Former FIA president Max Mosley insists the governing body were not at fault in anyway for Jules Bianchi’s crash during the closing stages of the Japanese Grand Prix.
The FIA has come under scrutiny for not deploying the Safety Car for Adrian Sutil’s stricken Sauber, with many believing double-waved yellow flags wasn’t enough to prevent another accident as happened in this case when Bianch went off and hit a recovery vehicle dealing with the first car.
“I think what happened in Suzuka was very unfortunate, a freak accident, and I can’t really fault any of the people involved – the marshals, or the race director, or any of those people,” he told Sky Sports. “Everything was done as it should have been.”
Mosley suggested the blame most likely lays with Bianchi for possibly not slowing down sufficiently under double-waved yellow flags which tell a driver to ‘slow right down and be prepared to stop’.
“The first thing that happens when there is an accident is that your first line of defence are yellow flags. So you get stationary yellow flags, waved yellow flags and then double-waved yellow flags, which are increasing degrees of caution to the drivers.
“You deploy the Safety Car if the obstruction, or the danger as such, cannot really be dealt with under double-yellow flags and you need the Safety Car.
“It would appear he [Bianchi] didn’t slow down as perhaps he should have done. Why that happened remains to be seen, but it’s certainly the case that the yellow flags were deployed, so he should have slowed down and there should have been no risk of him going off, but that doesn’t seem to have happened.”
Note: It has been highlighted that double-waved yellow flags were not being shown at marshal post 12 (the post just after Sutil’s accident) in the moments before Bianchi’s crash. In fact a green flag was being shown, therefore at this time, it would be wrong to put any blame on Bianchi for failing to slow.
