F1 News
'Bottas and Hamilton only ones who did nothing wrong at restart'
- GPblog.com
The restart after a safety car period on the circuit of Mugello last weekend resulted in an enormous chaos. Immediately fingers were pointed at all kinds of guilty parties. The race management did not go free either. According to one of the stewards himself, most of the drivers were also responsible.
On Sunday, Mika Salo was one of the former drivers who was allowed to judge the actions of the drivers. He has seen all the onboard images and dates explains to Ilta Sanomat what he saw. Special attention was paid to drivers who did not keep up a steady pace.
Salo defends Mercedes duo, but that is not mutual
"We saw that Valtteri did nothing wrong. He applied the throttle evenly and was not on the brakes. The same goes for Lewis. Then the pumping of the brakes started," says Salo. With this repeated braking, drivers tried to increase the temperature of the brake discs or they wanted to drop a hole so they could make a run for it. That pumping of the brakes is not allowed behind the safety car.
"Nobody was punished, but they were all guilty, except for the first two", Salo explains. The Mercedes drivers pointed to the FIA as co-guilty afterwards. According to them, the lights of the safety car stayed on for too long, which meant that they could not get on the gas before the last corner. They would do this to make the front cars vulnerable to attack and thus make a better show of it.