Whiting absolves Vettel of Baku restart 'antics'

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FIA race director Charlie Whiting says that he sees no problem with the way that Sebastian Vettel handled the first restart during Sunday's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The race was placed under a safety car for an early accident involving Force India's Esteban Ocon. As the race leader, Vettel was at the head of the field going to the restart line on lap 6.

However, Hamilton was unhappy with the way that the Ferrari managed the process.

"You are not allowed to start and stop, start and stop," he said. "You're not allowed to fake the guy behind.

"If there was not that rule, that's what you'd do because eventually you'd catch them sleeping."

Hamilton indicated that he would talk to Whiting about what had happened, and what would be permitted in the future.

And on Wednesday, Whiting made his response public - and cleared Vettel of any wrongdoing in Sunday's race.

Hamilton unhappy with Vettel's safety car antics in Baku

“I think he controlled it very well," Racer.com reported Whiting as saying on Wednesday. "It’s up to the leading driver to say when we go.

"They have an acceleration zone, a place where you can accelerate," he explained. "You can’t do it before or after that.

"Once it goes green, the safety car comes into the pits and it’s up to the leader to decide when he is going to go."

Whiting admitted that the Baku street circuit was a particularly tricky venue for Formula 1. "They catch the safety car too early if they go too quickly.

"I think Seb controlled it well," he reiterated. "There was a bit of a complaint from Lewis that he wasn’t going at a constant rate.

"But if you look down the field, there’s a few places where that happens.

"To expect them to go at one speed doesn’t happen," he added. "As long as no one does anything dangerous, we’re happy.”

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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.