Stewards make appeal to FIA race committee after dangerous incident

It was quite a scare for Mick Schumacher during the second safety car phase of the Australian Grand Prix. The Haas F1 driver almost crashed into Yuki Tsunoda, reason enough for the stewards to urge the race committee to discuss the incident during a driver briefing.

Schumacher, like all the other drivers, was busy keeping the tires and his brakes up to temperature. The German briefly went full throttle, because he wanted to stay within ten car lengths of predecessor Tsunoda as the regulations require. At that moment, however, the driver of AlphaTauri decided to apply the brakes. It almost resulted in a touché.

Preventing dangerous situations in the future

No penalties were handed out by the stewards. However, they did write in their statement, "This needs to be a point of emphasis in future driver briefings, to ensure the drivers collectively agree on how best to address this challenge before an unfortunate incident occurs.”

The stewards would not think it a crazy idea to make an adjustment to the sporting code. "It is clear that the speed and braking capabilities of F1 cars, especially while trying to maintain required temperatures in tyres and brakes, are in tension with the ten car length separation behind the Safety Car traditionally specified in the regulations.”