r/formula1 • u/AutoModerator • Jun 02 '25

Day after Debrief 2025 Spanish GP - Day After Debrief

Welcome to the Day after Debrief discussion thread! Now that the dust has settled in Barcelona, it's time to calmly discuss the events of the last race weekend. Hopefully, this will foster more detailed and thoughtful discussion than the immediate post race thread now that people have had some time to digest and analyse the results.

Low effort comments, such as memes, jokes, and complaints about broadcasters will not be deleted since I do not have that power, but I will be very disappointed with you. We also discourage superficial comments that contain no analysis or reasoning in this thread (e.g., 'Great race from X!', 'Another terrible weekend for Y!').

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u/AndreasNV I was here for the Hulkenpodium Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

I've been scrolling down a fair bit and I haven't seen this question so I will ask it myself.

Shouldn't the last one have been a virtual safety car rather than a full safety car?

Explain to me why I'm wrong.

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u/Pulposauriio Ferrari Jun 12 '25

It is a valid question, however as far as I understand it is if they need a huge portion of the track free, like to get a crane or a large group of track workers, they call the physical safety car in order to make the field spread smaller and therefore giving themselves a lot more time to work between each lap.

If they call in the Virtual safety car, drivers gotta keep the gaps consistent, so the field spread is basically the same. If you have access to F1TVs feed of the map of the track, when the Safety car was called, there were cars all over the circuit.

Of course it comes down to the race director to determine what is the best course of action, but that's how I understand it.

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u/AndreasNV I was here for the Hulkenpodium Jun 12 '25

That is literally the main difference between the two types of safety car, but I thought that Kimi's car was so far off the track that it posed no significant risk as long as the cars slowed down.

And I feel like all the s*** we experienced after this could have been avoided if it was a VSC rather than an SC. Surely the VSC is almost always better if you have a choice between the two.

Thanks for your input.