F1 Midweek: Racing in the Rain

One notion that accompanies the sport of Formula 1 is that rainy conditions act as a great equalizer. The idea is not so much that the faster cars are somehow suddenly compromised or the slow ones somehow amazingly gain an advantage. Instead, the idea is that the two might be brought closer together but, more importantly how teams adapt (or don’t, if it’s Ferrari) provides the basis for strategic innovation that brings about changes in what might be considered the normal pecking order. There are two things worth discussing regarding the rain: strategy and safety.

Of course, managing wet-weather races can go either way. Aside from taking jabs at Ferrari, which is a cottage industry unto itself, we can look at the 2021 Russian Grand Prix as an example of a team losing all sense of how to call a race. Oddly enough, the same team that threw away that one played strategy to perfection this past weekend in Australia.

At Sochi in 2021, Lando Norris scored not only his first career pole but also McLaren’s first since 2012. The team and driver had every reason to be jubilant. Of course, the fact that the team had struggled to run up front in recent years may have been part of its failure as it was unaccustomed to making decisions from the lead.

Though Norris lost the lead to Carlos Sainz at the jump, he overtook the Ferrari on lap 13 and proceeded to hold position for the next 36 laps. Norris looked ready to earn his first win and become the sensation that he had been touted to be. But the rain started to fall on as the race headed to its 53-lap conclusion, enough that drivers swapped out slicks for intermediates on lap 48. Norris stayed out. On lap 49, the next group of drivers came in for wets. Norris remained on track.

Lewis Hamilton, who had also been playing a similar game, finally dropped the charade of trying to control his Mercedes in ever-increasing wet conditions and grabbed intermediates. Meanwhile, engineers from the paddock kept wondering how long the rain would last and if they had made the right call. Their decision was confirmed when Norris remained on track and looked more like he was piloting a raft down a river than the sophisticated race vehicle in which he found himself. Finally pitting the lap after Hamilton, Norris and Co. blew their shot at the win and showed everyone how to make the wrong call.

In this instance, the teams are the ones making the call, left to their own data, conjectures, anxiety and hubris. The notions of decision-making avow that we make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time – conceding that hindsight always offers us 20/20 clarity. But what about when the decisions are left to the organizing body?

One of the challenges that motorsport faces is determining what are considered unsafe conditions. In NASCAR, the oval tracks coupled with slick tires push for the recognition that a damp track is a deadly track. With IndyCar and F1, the wet track can provide some wonderful racing – to a point. The rain can cause beautiful moments but is never too far from providing a chaotic, calamitous and altogether unsavory product.

The balance is the tricky thing. We got a taste of that this past Sunday. The information may not be overwhelming but there was enough of it to argue that perhaps posting a red flag and waiting for improved track conditions may have been a solid call. For a season-opener, that may be the worst possible beginning.

Consider that Isack Hadjar wrecked on the formation lap. Mark that one down as a rookie mistake and it is easy to take off the tally. Fine, no problem. And sure, then throw out fellow rookie Jack Doohan’s crash on the opening lap, leading to a DNF with zero laps completed. Pundits can find it easy to explain away these two failures as mistakes coming from inexperience. That works as plausible reasoning. However, watching Carlos Sainz trash his Williams, one in which his teammate Alexander Albon drove to a fifth-place finish, provides a little more recognition that perhaps that wet and greasy track should have encouraged a little more patience before opening it up to the daredevils who often ignore their own safety in the push for results.

One of the things that F1 seems hamstrung by is its desire to put on the show at the prescribed time under almost any circumstance. With a worldwide audience, such a push makes complete sense. The problem arises when the conditions afforded a grand prix do not cooperate in providing the desired spectacle.

The 2021 Belgium Grand Prix stands as the pinnacle of asininity with only one lap of racing officially being completed and Max Verstappen grabbing the win. If ever an asterisk needed to be employed in F1, this circumstance gave the golden opportunity. Yet, the results stood and F1 went about its merry way much to the chagrin of the fans.

That race was never going to be run to its conclusion that day and running it on Monday would not have happened and the organizing body thought that a safety car parade would somehow satisfy the requirements and the desires of the people.  They could not have been more wrong. Canceling would have been the best outcome but who wants to return money from the bank?

The 2025 Australian GP, however, was not going to face that issue. Perhaps recognizing that the conditions made for unsafe racing at the start and allowing the track to dry just a little would have been in the best interest of making for a better product – rather than waiting for the 10-minute red flag that followed Hadjar’s unfortunate outing. The trouble comes when recognizing how history does not create meaningful change but instead a template for repetition. Fingers crossed for a clean grand prix in China.