FIA rewrote Verstappen and Hamilton's software under parc ferme: what happens if it rains in Singapore?

The trouble started on the formation laps of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on 4 October. A bug in the FIA's wet-weather energy settings left several cars crawling or stopped, Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari among them.

During the delay, teams had been instructed to re-upload wet-weather software code supplied by the FIA to their power units before the new race start, which is technically a break of the rules as the cars are under Parc fermé conditions.

Parc ferme is there to stop teams modifying their cars between qualifying and the race. Under these conditions, only minor adjustments such as tyre changes, refuelling, bleeding of brakes and minor front wing adjustments are allowed. As such, teams cannot make major set-up changes between qualifying and race day. The long-standing exception covers a change in climatic conditions, where the Race Director will give teams permission to make appropriate changes to their cars.

The FIA's post-race statement did not mention parc ferme. It said the technical department removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors through an updated software release distributed to all competitors during the race delay caused by heavy rain, enabling teams to make the necessary changes to the power unit before the start of the race.

Nikolas Tombazis made clear that the FIA was in charge of the whole process. "After some discussions, the teams had to update the software on the cars; they still had a few questions, and we had to ensure that everyone had completed this work," he said.

The software reload was not the only call under scrutiny. The FIA also ignored its own restart rule, which it cited as Article 57.3, because it took some eighteen minutes after the red flag was thrown for race control to confirm the order of the cars for the restart. And it would be the original order as set during qualifying and after penalties.

The relevant procedure as Article B5.14.1 is that the pit lane order is subject to change by the time the race is properly restarted, which is what allowed Hamilton to reclaim his second place.

Fernando Alonso finished eighth but was not satisfied. Asked whether letting the stopped cars restart was unfair, he replied:

Every car runs the same code. Tombazis said "It's clearly FIA software." He described it as jointly developed by the FIA, the standard ECU provider, teams and engine manufacturers. If the wet-weather settings misbehave at Marina Bay, then, no single team carries the problem.

Sepang showed that the FIA's answer to a software failure during an event was to push new code to the whole grid with the cars under parc ferme, and to start again from the original grid order.

As GPblog reported in FIA software fix faces immediate test as Verstappen and Hamilton brace for rain, the FIA has not said whether its full review will be finished before Sunday.