Whiting 'not overly concerned' by new standing restarts

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FIA racing director Charlie Whiting says that he doesn't expect standing restarts to cause any major problems in 2018.

Rule changes for the new Formula 1 season mean that red-flagged races can now restart from the grid. Previously, interrupted races always got underway again with a rolling restart from behind a safety car.

The decision on the type of restart to use on any given occasion will be in the hands of the race director, depending on track conditions.

Pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya saw teams taking time to practice the new restart procedure. The change didn't go down well with everyone, however.

"It could be carnage," predicted Haas F1 driver Romain Grosjean. "Safety wise, I'm a bit concerned.

"You could lose the car in a straight line," he commented. "Just trying to upshift and downshift was tricky."

But Whiting doesn't expect standing restarts to be an issue once the season got underway.

F1 to use standing starts after red flag periods

"It seems a bit of an odd comment to me," he said this week in response to comments made by Grosjean and others in the media.

"No driver has spoken to me about it," he said. "So I am not overly concerned about it."

Whiting added that the out-of-season conditions at the newly resurfaced Barcelona track might be giving rise to unnecessary anxiety.

"I think the grip was quite low in Barcelona anyway," he said. "And they didn't put new tyres on [in testing] because it was a quick procedure.

"In the event of a red flag [in a race], teams normally change tyres anyway," he pointed out. "So it would be not much different to a normal race start.

"I am not too concerned about it," he reiterated.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.