The safety system behind the Australian GP on-track recovery vehicle scenes

A little-known FIA system was behind the decision to send recovery vehicles on-track during Formula 1’s Australian Grand Prix, according to information gathered by Autosport.

The incident in the Melbourne race produced a notable split in opinion, with many observers puzzled as to how the scenes had unfolded while the drivers were unconcerned. The discussion arose after Fernando Alonso crashed his Aston Martin during the season opener and his wrecked AMR25 was loaded onto a recovery truck that was then driven around part of the course while the pack continued to lap behind the safety car.

This stood in contrast to the scenes in FP1 in Melbourne, where that session was briefly halted due to an aerodynamic part falling off the Alpine of home hero Jack Doohan.

The use of recovery vehicles on track is steeped in controversy in F1 – after the death of Jules Bianchi following his accident at the 2014 Japanese GP and Pierre Gasly’s near-miss with a tractor at the same Suzuka track in 2022.

Both of those events took place in wet conditions, as did the Australian race, albeit with spray far less of an issue as most of the rain fell on Albert Park ahead of that contest.

Post-race in Melbourne, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen said, “if you crash into that, behind the safety car, then you’re really stupid”, with race winner Lando Norris of McLaren adding, “You shouldn’t be in Formula 1”. George Russell, one of the two actively racing directors of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, said he thought “it was fine”.

The topic then rumbled on to this weekend’s Chinese GP, where Alonso was amongst the drivers asked to give their opinion on what had occurred.

“Melbourne is not an easy track to recover cars,” Alonso replied. “At some point, they need to go onto the track. We have a different system now than what we had in the past. Even behind the safety car, in a yellow flag zone, you have to respect a slower lap time.

“So, if you respect that time, you should not be too fast in that zone. I understand the sense of the question, but I don’t think there was anything crazy. I think it was under control.”

Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto – speaking in the same press conference setting as Alonso – said: “I agree, the double yellow area, that you need to follow the delta, and you go very slow there. If the [race control officials] decided like this, for sure, they were keeping an eye on it, after what happened in the past. They wouldn’t try to make a mistake like that again.”

The system the drivers use is a specific part of the delta lap time procedure, which is a set time to control speeds they must follow when not on flying laps in practice or qualifying and particularly when following the safety car.

For that latter aspect, this is done to ensure they do not go faster than necessary in potentially dangerous situations and was refined in the aftermath of Bianchi’s accident – mainly to reduce speeds over a whole track and is best exemplified in the virtual safety car system.

But from 2024, the delta system was updated so that mini-sectors of a track that are being covered by double yellow flags are isolated and covered by a temporarily even slower delta time than the rest of the circuit.

This slows the cars further and was developed in response to an incident at the 2020 Turkish GP, when a crane was still clearing the crashed car of then Williams driver Nicholas Latifi when Q2 commenced.

As well as the refined delta system, the teams are also informed a recovery vehicle is entering the track via messages on a dedicated page of the FIA’s timing screens and some squads are understood to have specific automatic audio cues to warn drivers.