In the US GP. there was a before and after. Fernando Alonso was penalized for driving the car in unsafe conditions after losing a mirror during the race, losing the epic seventh place that he will have achieved after a brutal comeback.
The Asturian went to overtake Lance Strollwhen the Canadian crossed him and the Alpine went flying through the air, crashing into the wall laterally. He looked like he was going to retire, but he pitted just to change the front wing, and he was able to finish the test.
During the race, in an overtaking of Kevin Magnussen, his right rear view mirror shot out, so the Oviedo finished the race with a mirror. After the race, the car received the ‘OK’ from the FIAbut a few hours later he was sanctioned after a haas protest. Finally, Alonso’s sanction was removed being already in Mexico and recovered his seventh place.
And it is that Kevin Magnussen suffered the black and orange flag in as many as three separate races previously. In Canada, Hungary and Singaporethe Dane suffered damage to the ‘endplate’, forcing the FIA to stop in the pits to change the front wing after removing the black and orange flag.
The meaning of this flag is that the driver is forced to stop in the ‘pit’ because his car has damage that could be a risk for the rest of the cars. A Yuki Tsunoda in Azerbaijan The DRS did not work and his team asked him not to use the rear wing for the rest of the race, but the FIA did not rule.
charles leclerc in Silverstone He also ran without the ‘endplate’ and the FIA did not force him to stop. The criteria of the FIA did not seem the same with some pilots or others despite the fact that the problems were the same. That is why the FIA has changed its vision with this flag and, especially, since they realized their mistake with Fernando Alonso in USA.
“We would not show a flag…”
Nikolas Tombazis, FIA technical chiefexplains in ‘Motorsport Week’ that after the incident with alonso have changed their vision: “We revised our criteria on the black and orange flagsince Mexico (with case alonso) onwards and we saw one or two cars after that that weren’t shown the black and orange flag.”
They point out their mistake with Tsunoda in Azerbaijan:” We analyzed it and we think we overreacted a bit, We had a situation where baku where a car was allowed to run with damage that the car really shouldn’t have been running with: One of the AlphaTauri with rear wing damage taped up. That was a big risk. That’s where we were wrong.”
“So I think that created an overreaction where we started to see the cars as unsafe even when they were on the edge, let’s say, so we went in the wrong direction and We took some corrective action after the US.“, Add.
Finally, make sure that from 2023 they will use another criterion to use the black and orange flag: “In 99 percent of the cases, the teams bring the cars to any place by themselves, so the need for intervention is eliminated, since the teams are, in general, quite responsible. We would not display a flag for a wobbly front or wing end plate“.