‘Smart’ solution to F1’s visibility issue in the rain

Denying fans what could’ve been a great wet race at Spa, George Russell says F1’s “smart people” need to find a solution to the visibility issues in the wet.

As the rain chucked down at Spa last month, Race Control delayed the start of the Belgian Grand Prix by more than 80 minutes.

‘It is for the smart people to come up with the solutions’

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

The problem wasn’t even standing water and aquaplaning, it was visibility.

While the likes of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton declared they were good to go, others complained they couldn’t see what was ahead of them.

Verstappen had an easy solution for that: “if you can’t see, you can always lift. At one point you will see.”

The stewards, though, agreed with his rivals and, after four laps behind the Safety Car, began the race in a rolling start. Not even eight laps later, the drivers were swapping their intermediate Pirellis for slicks.

Verstappen, having called it a “bit silly”, feared that was the end for F1’s “classic kind of wet races” with Race Control overly cautious.

It sparked debate as to whether F1, with the deaths of Jules Bianchi and Dilano Van ‘T Hoff ever-present, had become too afraid to race in the rain, especially given the criticism of Pirelli’s full-wet tyres.

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However, Russell reckons it’s not so much dispersing the standing water than is the issue, it is visibility.

And if one of F1’s bright minds could figure that out, whether that be tyres dispersing more water or aeroscreens, the single-seater open cockpit racing could continue.

“I don’t know to be honest,” Russell told the media, including PlanetF1.com, when asked for his solution.

“You would have thought with all of the technology we have now, with GPS, with heads-up display, having your road cars at home, that there could be some sort of system to visually show the car in front of you, when you cannot physically see that car.

“It is the same as when you are driving on the highway at 130 in the rain and you turn your wipers off, that is what we see. But the difference is, we’re doing 300 not 130.

“So yeah, maybe in the future, some sort of not virtual reality, but some sort of heads-up display showing where that car is. I do not know, I am not intelligent, and it is for the smart people to come up with the solutions.”

Williams driver Carlos Sainz agrees there must be solution, it’s just a case of finding it.

“I always thought, if Formula One should if possible innovate and try something different, and I think there’s certain kind of tarmacs that if you would put them on a straight line, there would be no spray, and they exist. But circuits don’t have them. Most circuits don’t have it” said the former Ferrari driver.

“In the end, the biggest problem for us is visibility, it’s what keeps us from racing.

“I think Spa is a very particular case where there’s been a very dark past at this track, and the FIA consciously took a very conservative approach and they warned us on Thursday that they would take a very conservative approach.

“Maybe we should have done a better job in communicating that or they should have communicated to the fans, to the world [that at] Spa we’re going to play very easy because of its dark past and this is what’s happened in the past and why we’re going to play it safe on Sunday, just for everyone maybe to have a bit more awareness.

“But I do think we could have obviously raced a bit earlier than what we did, and gone a bit earlier after the red flag, and [that] the safety car could have lasted a bit less long.”

Lando Norris won the race ahead of Oscar Piastri while pole-sitter Max Verstappen, having banked on a wet setup in qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix, fell to fourth.

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