Fernando Alonso cracks missing F1 Safety Car case with ‘problem’ identified

Fernando Alonso believes the drivers not pushing to the max is the reason Formula 1 hasn’t seen a Safety Car in nine races. After all, they’re faster if they only drive at “90 per cent”.

Formula 1 last deployed the Safety Car at the Canadian Grand Prix, round nine of the championship, when Logan Sargeant spun out at the Turn 3/4 chicane before it made a second appearance for Carlos Sainz’s crash with Alex Albon.

Formula 1 has not deployed the Safety Car in the last nine races

Since then, Safety Car driver Bernd Mayländer has been limited to recon laps during practice and qualifying red flags for rain.

It’s a peculiar drought, the longest since the 2003/2004 seasons with the Safety Car having been made a permanent feature in Formula 1 in 1993.

Alonso believes it could be because the drivers just aren’t pushing as hard as they would in the years before the ground-effect aerodynamic cars.

“These cars are not easy to drive, but I think the problem of these cars as well is to extract the 100 per cent,” he said as per Motorsport.com.

“So if you drive at 90 per cent, sometimes you are faster because you don’t put the platform in an inconvenient angle or ride heights. You are not pushing the limits, and it’s where everything falls apart.

“So sometimes driving at 90 per cent is fast.”

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The Aston Martin driver went on to explain that the current F1 cars are extremely unpredictable, baffling the drivers as to why they suddenly have pace or don’t, especially in qualifying.

“Baku was a very good example,” he stated. “I was P15 in Q1, with Lando’s problem. If not I was starting 16th in the grand prix and out of Q1.

“Seven minutes later, I put on another set of tyres, and I was P5 in Q2. I improved like 1.1 seconds. I was driving the same.

“I was braking at the same points. It was the same preparation in that lap, but I was able to improve 1.1 seconds. And some of us did the opposite: they were very fast in Q1 and very slow in Q2, and sometimes we don’t find explanations of when we are fast, when we are slow, and why.

“If you go into the details and the unlimited number of sensors we have in the car, we can spot the small differences when the car is slow. We put the car in different attitudes that maybe the car is just not happy and this kind of thing.”

But when it comes to the race, he reckons the cars don’t want to be pushed to 110 per cent.

“That’s why sometimes in the races, because we all drive at 90%, we have to take care of the tyres, the fuel economy, all these kind of things, we don’t see too many problems and we don’t see too many Safety Cars or accidents,” he added.

“The cars are happier when you drive at that speed. It’s a little bit against the instinct of the driver which is that you put a new tyre, you go to qualifying and you drive 110% if you can. But, with this car, sometimes it is something that you have to manage.”

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