Vettel calls for unlapping “solution” following Imola F1 marshal incident

Sebastian Vettel has called for an alternative to cars unlapping themselves under Formula 1 Safety Car periods following an incident with marshals at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Footage shortly after the race at Imola emerged showing several cars approaching the Acqua Minerale corner at Imola at considerable speed with marshals still on the circuit.

Vettel was one of these six cars who had been given the signal by race control to overtake the Safety Car and unlap themselves.

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix, Vettel has called for changes to the rules but revealed a limitation with the software the FIA uses means cars have to physically unlap themselves rather than simply dropping to their correct positions and taking a lap off.

“Well, I think we should probably focus more on the solution,” Vettel said. “I think the reason why we are physically unlapping ourselves is we can’t work out a software that actually just resets us so we have to do the extra lap which sounds quite embarrassing but I believe that is the truth. 

“I guess going forward we will just probably put some effort into software that the lapped cars are not forced to physically unlap themselves, you can just reset the lap on the screen and put them on the place that they are, I think that would be the solution previously.” 

Given the technological advancements in 2020, Vettel believes it should be possible to rectify the aforementioned software limitation. 

Vettel added: “As a consequence you have people trying to catch the field, also in other categories, crashing, and that can’t be safe under a full yellow course, to go out and crash, plus as you have seen in Imola people working on the track trying to do a favour for us, recovering the car that was stranded there, cleaning the track, they work in the contrary these two things and we should just focus on the solution which I believe is purely software related and given that it is 2020 I think it should be possible.”