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Brundle: 'Maybe the pit walls should have been reminding drivers during restart

Brundle: '"Maybe the pit walls should have been reminding drivers" during restart

14-09-2020 17:23 Last update: 20:41
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GPblog.com

It was a spectacle at Mugello because of several incidents. The biggest one on Sunday took place on the straight after the safety car restart. Drivers were confused when the race had restarted and this caused a pile-up. In the end, a lot of drivers got a warning because of varying speeds and Bottas was 'acquitted' as he was allowed to set the pace.

Angry Grosjean

Through the onboard radio and later in interviews some criticism was expressed. Romain Grosjean, for example, was pretty fierce on 'the one in the front'. But in the end, everything went according to the rules and Martin Brundle states in his column at Sky Sport that the pit wall could have been more adequate.

"It was his prerogative to control the pace as leader and accelerate when he wanted. Those in the second half of the grid were so hair-trigger watching each other they were underway before the leaders and met with horrible energy in the middle," Brundle said. 

"It was the perfect storm in a way. The safety car lights went out reasonably late but we don't want that out on track one more lap than necessary after clearing up incidents, and in any event the distance from the finish line down to the first corner ensured anyone leading would not accelerate until the last moment in the certain knowledge they would be swamped by slipstreamers into turn one otherwise."

With this, Brundle says that anyone could've predicted that Bottas would go late. That didn't go well and that's due to the drivers, but the pit wall could have helped here as well.

That's how Brundle ends his opinion: "Maybe the pit walls should have been reminding them that the acceleration point could well be late, and perhaps they should have known."