Following the delayed start of the Monaco Grand Prix, Race Control has been criticised for being “worse than before.”
The FIA referees decided to postpone the Monaco race with the prospect of rain looming. The threat became genuine, and it was announced that the race would be postponed even more, starting an hour later than planned.
Many have criticised the first delay, with some claiming it deprived fans of the chance to see an exciting race in Monaco, which can be difficult given the difficulties of overtaking.
Race Control has been criticised by Spanish journalist Antonio Lobato, who claims that communication has broken down.
“There has been a mixture of stories because there is a part that we can’t judge, which is that they have said that they have had a power supply problem in the grid, that they couldn’t put the whole traffic light system,” Lobato said.
“We accept that because we can’t say otherwise either, but there were some very strange things, especially a lot of confusion when it came to sending messages.”
“I base myself only on page 3 of what Formula 1 sends us, which is the page where we have all the messages from Race Direction, which I would like to think is the same that the teams receive, although the teams must have other types of information via radio.”
“What appeared on that page was very little and very poorly explained and, in fact, the start of the race is a bit surreal.”
“The message of ‘The formation lap is about to start behind the Safety Car’ and then they do two laps, it’s no longer a formation lap per se, and yet the race time doesn’t start.”
“Then there came a moment when those of us who were broadcasting, Toni, Pedro and myself, had a doubt,” he added. “We said, ‘Let’s see, has the race started or hasn’t it started? Because the stopwatch didn’t move, it didn’t move a second and they had done two laps and that’s when the red flag came out and they went inside.”
Following Michael Masi’s dismissal, the race stewardship was restructured, and the new entrants have been considerably tougher, although Lobato believes this has made the issue worse.
“Michael Masi was ‘brushed off.’ What he did was very big but I don’t want to see a situation like that, like Abu Dhabi, in a Grand Prix because this has been a bit chaotic and I think they’ve lost the plot a lot.”
