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The FIA has explained the reason behind the second part of Turkish Grand Prix qualifying beginning while a recovery vehicle was still in use.
Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams at the end of Q1 at the fast Turn 8 quadruple left-hander in wet conditions.
When Q2 began, the recovery vehicle was still in the run-off area and that part of the circuit was put under double-waved yellows.
Drivers were baffled why the session had been allowed to begin, though it seemed to be related to the time pressure to complete the already-delayed qualifying before light faded visibility got too poor.
“That wasn’t very good. I imagine that we were trying to make sunset. And we rushed everything. But that was silly,” said Red Bull’s Alex Albon.
“I’m sure we could have waited another five minutes for a crane to move.
“I think there must have been some misjudgement between them, because there’s no way they did it on purpose.
“It was just hard to understand where the decision came from, because the crane was still on track, lifting Latifi, and we got the call out to go on to the track and wait at the end of the pitlane.
“I was expecting a five-minute signal. But it was one minute to go to green.”
“I remember my engineer, I think he saw it on the TV and he said there’s still a yellow for Latifi. To be honest, I was so intensely focused on the session it didn’t cross my mind at the time but you have just reminded me of it,” said Daniel Ricciardo.
“With that knowledge, I’m quite surprised there was a green. I don’t know what the rush was, I guess they were worried about light but I don’t think that should be happening. I’m quite surprised with that.”
The FIA says the recovery vehicle was moving to the escape road and the clerk of the course had said it would be clear of the track before the cars on their outlaps reached Turn 8.
That means the cars could be released from pitlane slightly earlier than waiting. However, there was a delay in the recovery vehicle moving into the barrier opening so double-waved yellows were deployed to slow the cars on-track down.
“Clearly this is not a scenario we want to see, and with the benefit of hindsight we would have done it differently and held the cars until the recovery was completed,” said the FIA.
“We will review our procedures to minimise the likelihood of similar incidents in future.”
