Vettel may have a solution for "embarrassing" safety car procedure

During Emilia Romagna's Grand Pirx on the Imola circuit, a dangerous situation arose behind the safety car, which subsequently receved a lot of criticism from the race management. Among others, Lance Stroll drove past some marshals at high speed in an attempt to get rid of a lap behind.

During a safety car phase, drivers who are already one lap behind are often given the opportunity to get rid of that backlog. They are then passed by the safety car and have to accelerate considerably in order to rejoin the back of the queue. Sebastian Vettel thinks that this must and can be done differently.

'Software development must be possible in 2020'

"I think the reason why we are physically un-lapping ourselves is because we can’t work out a software which actually just resets us," said Vettel at the press conference prior to the Turkish GP to, among others, RaceFans.net. In the eyes of the Ferrari driver that shouldn't be too difficult anyway.

“So we have to do the extra lap, which sounds quite embarrassing, but I believe it’s the truth. So I guess going forward we would just probably put some effort into software that the lapped cars are not forced to physically un-lap themselves but you can just reset the lap on the screen and put them in the place that they are. I think that would be the solution.”