Formula 2 boss Bruno Michel says the series made the call to carry out rolling starts at the next four races on safety grounds, though understands why “half the drivers are pissed off” at the decision.
Drivers have struggled with the clutch system on the new-for-2018 Formula 2 car, with problems ongoing despite several tweaks having been put in place.
An additional 15-minute session took place on Friday morning while drivers were permitted to carry out an extra practice start following the conclusion of the usual practice session.
It was decided on Friday evening that both races in Austria and Britain will begin behind the Safety Car, with a rolling start – as per a usual race restart – given after a single lap.
Opinion was split in the Formula 2 paddock, with some drivers taking to social media to criticise the call, and others defending the decision.
“This is F2,” tweeted Santino Ferrucci. “We now start under Safety Car, very professional I must say. Why can’t we just bring the V8 engine back??? I get we have to move forward with technology but we clearly miss understood [sic] the word “forward”.”
Added Louis Deletraz: “The F2 clutch isn’t harder to manage than last year. Teams/drivers trying silly things or doing mistakes, then stalling and complaining. I understand the safety issue but this is not the answer to it.”
Replying to Deletraz, series leader Lando Norris said: “Do you not think that, maybe, not just the few stalls, but the very high number of stalls, might give it away that, it is harder?… and there is an underlying problem… which there is.”
Austria Feature Race pole sitter George Russell commented that “Some drivers are happy with their starts, some drivers are struggling, therefore I think it’s safer for everyone to do this until we find a solution after Silverstone.”
Michel, speaking to Motorsport Week, explained the decision, and pointed to a heavy crash involving a staller at last weekend’s F3 race at Norisring as justification.
“What we have been doing before Paul Ricard we really thought we had sorted 90 per cent of the issues, we have been working on the clutch, clutch control and engine behaviour,” he said.
“At the end of the day you saw what happened at Paul Ricard [at the start]. Since we had [just] one week, we did some changes on the engine behaviour and had some additional practice starts.
“I was not convinced it was going to be enough to make sure we didn’t have stalling on the grid.
“And to be perfectly honest when you see what happened at Norisring in F3 it’s the last thing you want to happen.
“We went to see the FIA and the FIA said we should do a rolling start this weekend, and next weekend [at Silverstone].
“It’s just the time, three races back-to-back doesn’t allow us to put validated answers.
“It’s not ideal, it’s quite funny as when you announce something like this half of the drivers are very happy and half of the drivers are pissed off, and the ones that are pissed off are saying the other ones don’t know how to start and they never stall.
“But it was the right decision to take, definitely, and it gives us some time to work out as we have quite a lot of people working on this subject this weekend and gives us the time to sort it out for Budapest.”
MP Motorsport’s Ralph Boschung nonetheless warned that drivers still have to get the car going on the formation lap.
“The thing is that what we forget is we’re still going to be on the grid to go to the formation lap, and we’ll all be standing, so there’s a risk we’ll stall,” he said.
“But yeah, it’s the right call, let’s just hope we get those clutches in place that we can do normal starts.
“It’s a bit of a late call and I think the crash in Norising in F3 woke them up and saw that if this happens in F2 with the problems we had before it’ll be too late, so a good call.”
