During the qualifying for the
Turkish Grand Prix there was a remarkable moment. At the beginning of Q2, there was still a recovery vehicle on the track, which reminded many drivers of the fatal accident of Jules Bianchi. Did
Formula 1 learn anything?
Bizarre situation
The first session on Saturday had already been stopped several times by red flags and the rain had caused the session to run on for a long period of time. Q1 was due to be immediately followed by Q2, but due to
Nicholas Latif's spin, this was not possible. The recovery vehicle was still on the track and that resulted in a dangerous situation, especially in the rain.
After the session, a lot of reaction was given to this. Marcus Ericsson wondered if they hadn't learned anything from the past and
Sebastian Vettel thought that mistakes like this shouldn't be tolerated.
Masi acknowledges the mistake
Meanwhile, race director
Michael Masi is aware of the error, but let
Motorsport-total.com know exactly what went wrong.
''For each circuit/country, a competent person will be appointed who will determine when a safe situation is restored. He let me know that we could just start and I relied on that," says Masi.
However, the situation turned out not to be safe at all and so Masi bridged the gap with a double yellow flag on that part of the track. It took another two minutes before the truck disappeared.