Szafnauer argues FIA should have red-flagged British GP to give Silverstone crowd a finish

Charles Leclerc took victory at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, but the race ended under the safety car after Max Verstappen beached his car in the gravel at Stowe corner on lap 48 of 52 — and former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer believes the FIA squandered a chance to give the sell-out crowd a proper finish. George Russell finished second for Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton completing a Ferrari one-two-three in third.

The safety car was deployed to recover Verstappen’s stricken car, and while race control followed the regulations on the unlapping procedure, the process left insufficient time to restart racing before the chequered flag. Szafnauer, speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast alongside broadcaster Jake Humphrey and former F1 race engineer Rob Smedley, argued that a red flag would have been both legal and dramatically superior.

“I did call the FIA. I talked to Nikolas [Tombazis], and I thought what Nikolas told me was the reason that they did it. And for sure, the FIA followed the current rules, but they have the option to red-flag it,” Szafnauer said.

“They could have easily red-flagged that race. And when I told him that, he said, ‘Red flag it for that?’ I said, ‘No, red flag it for the fans.’ And if you red flag it for the fans, you’re doing nothing that contravenes the rules. So, there is a point where if you want to make it exciting at the end and you want to follow the rules, which you should, unlike in 2021, red-flag it.”

The reference to 2021 carries obvious weight — the Abu Dhabi controversy that year, in which race director Michael Masi deviated from the unlapping procedure to manufacture a final-lap restart, remains one of the most contentious moments in the sport’s recent history. Szafnauer’s point is that a red flag, unlike what happened in Abu Dhabi, would have been an entirely legitimate tool.

Leclerc’s win was his first of the 2026 season and a timely result for Ferrari, though the manner of the finish left many at Silverstone feeling short-changed. The debate over how race control balances sporting integrity with spectacle is unlikely to fade quickly.

Formula 1 moves on to Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian Grand Prix from 17–19 July.