Coulthard demands F1 overhaul safety car rules after dull Silverstone finish behind the car

David Coulthard has called on Formula 1 to overhaul its safety car procedures after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone ended in frustration, with Charles Leclerc taking victory on lap 52 without a final restart after Max Verstappen’s Red Bull became beached at Stowe corner on lap 48.

Speaking on the Up To Speed podcast, the 13-time grand prix winner argued the current process is unnecessarily slow and backed a proposal to mandate automatic red flags for any incident occurring within the final 10 laps of a race.

“So dull and so kind of something that we must be able to find a way around,” Coulthard said. “We have an almost 6km race track. We have an incident in one corner of that race track. A safety car is deployed pretty quickly once they’ve decided that the car is not going to be able to get out of the gravel. We then spend a few laps waiting on the pack catching the safety car, and then once it’s with the safety car, we then wait for the race director to tell the drivers that they can overtake the safety car. It all just takes way too long.”

The Verstappen incident triggered a flurry of late pit stops, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton both taking on fresh tyres while Mercedes’ George Russell stayed out to move up to second. An erroneous television graphic briefly suggested a final-lap sprint was coming, raising expectations in the Silverstone grandstands before it became clear there were insufficient laps remaining to complete the full safety car procedures. Leclerc won ahead of Russell and Hamilton.

Coulthard argued that Formula 1’s technological capabilities make a faster process entirely achievable. “We change wheels in 2.2 seconds, or the world record previously was 1.8 seconds. We develop the fastest racing cars in the world. As soon as the safety car is out there, they could start that process. Because you know with the GPS data where the cars are on track, as long as people respect the speed at which they’re going through the double yellow area, it’s completely within our capability to do that whole process faster.”

He also suggested the reform would have prevented two of the sport’s most controversial recent finishes. “It would have avoided Abu Dhabi ‘21, and it would have avoided what we saw there at the weekend.”

When co-host Will Buxton raised the automatic red flag proposal, Coulthard was supportive but insisted a faster on-track process was equally viable. “Yeah, I think that is a solution, and I think that would give them the chance to reset everything. I also think it’s not beyond the capabilities of Formula 1 to do it on track and to do it quickly. There are only 22 cars, and that’s assuming they’re all running at that point. It isn’t that complicated. These are the best drivers in the world.”