Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Ferrari escapes punishment over pit board message

Ferrari has escaped punishment from the FIA over a pit board message during the Australian Grand Prix.

Amid a radio clampdown on what drivers can be told, Sebastian Vettel's pit board in Melbourne carried the message '-3.2-LFS6-P1' following the red flag period for Fernando Alonso's accident. The message refers to a setting on Vettel's steering wheel, with drivers no longer allowed to be given instructions to change settings aside from critical messages.

The FIA investigated the message having been alerted by one of Ferrari's main rivals in Bahrain. However, no further action was taken, with the FIA saying it received an "entirely satisfactory" explanation, with the message connected with the way in which the Standard Electronic Control Unit [SECU] software handled the red flag stoppage, leading to many teams having problems with fuel calculations.

It is understood the Ferrari message was one of many being investigated by the FIA, with race director Charlie Whiting having warned teams against trying to deliver coded messages via pit board ahead of the start of the season.

"They are allowed to give the same messages they give on the radio and no more," Whiting said in Melbourne. "There has been some suggestion that by putting the lap count, for example, in red it would mean one thing, if it’s yellow another and white another. But we do have a camera looking at all the pit boards so if we see anything unusual we might have to ask why.

"I think the teams will do their very best to try to get as much information to the drivers as they can, but I just hope they continue to do it in a legal way."

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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.