Haas has officially protested the result of the 2023 Formula 1 race in Australia. It’s about the FIA’s decision to line up the drivers at the last restart as they were before the third standing start two laps before the end of the race.
The decision cost Haas a possible podium from Nico Hulkenberg, who had benefited from the chaos in front of him and went from ninth on the grid to fourth. With the five-second penalty against Carlos Sainz (Ferrari), the German could probably have finished third.
Due to the resetting of the starting order, Hülkenberg had to start in eighth place behind the safety car at the last restart (Pierre Gasly, who was originally in front of him, was unable to restart the race) and was classified seventh at the finish line due to Sainz’s penalty .
Problematic from Haas’ point of view: Drivers like Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) or Sergio Perez (Red Bull) were allowed to line up in front of Hülkenberg again, although they actually fell behind Haas when restarting due to collisions or departures into the gravel bed.
There is no official comment on the reasons for the protest from Haas, but it can be assumed that it is precisely this formality that is at stake.
The sporting regulations of Formula 1 specify exactly how the order is formed in the event of a demolition. Article 57.3 states: “In all cases the order will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars. All such cars will then be permitted to resume the sprint session or the race.”
This means that the order that prevailed at the last time it was possible to determine the position of all vehicles is taken. How exactly this point in time is determined, however, is not specified.
Haas could therefore say that the order must be frozen at the time of the red flag.
Precedent dampens hope at Haas
However, there was a precedent last year at Silverstone when the race had to be abandoned after Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou rolled over. Because not all drivers had crossed the second safety car line, the original starting order was used for the restart. However, there is nothing in the regulations about such a line.
“We questioned it,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner at the time. “As far as I know, not all cars had the safety car line [zwei] happens. The only reference they had was the starting line, so they reverted to that order. That’s something we might need to look at.”
The order at the time of the abandonment was Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, Carlos Sainz, Nico Hulkenberg, Yuki Tsunoda, Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Guanyu Zhou, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, who would occupy the points positions. The two Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll would drop out of the points.
However, changing the result would pose further problems: since there were no split times, the FIA would have difficulty adding five seconds to a non-existent race time when penalizing Carlos Sainz.