People were posting the story about FIA officials halting the Formula 3 program at Monza mid-race last weekend because of poor driving all over social media yesterday. It was normally done under the auspices of a surprised joke, “Hey, who ever heard of a race being stopped because of poor driving?!” While it is an admittedly rare occurrence, I can tell you that I witnessed such a situation back during my tenure as an SCCA road racing announcer. The Spec Miata guys were always fun to watch because the cars were (largely) identical and talent level was all over the map. Up front, the guys with skills made it look easy, but in the tail end of the field was where the action happened. On at least one occasion I saw race stewards pull the whole field in and give them a stern talking to, threatening to stop the whole program if their behavior and decision making on the track did not improve. Now, this was a race involving like 100hp Miatas…let’s apply that to this story of Formula racing in Europe.
To clarify what actually happened in Monza you need to know that this was a three race weekend for the Formula 3 guys. The race that was halted was the third of the three races and it followed a horrendous afternoon on Saturday where two massive wrecks occurred, sending drivers flipping all over the place. Aside from the headlining wreckage there was contact galore and blatant aggression to the levels normally associated with Bowman-Gray Stadium, let alone open wheeled racing in Europe. FIA Officials gathered the teams and drivers, telling them that if they got 75% of the way through the Sunday race without the pace car having to be called, they would race to conclusion. They did not make it. With the “safety car” rolling early, all the cars were sent back into the pits and that was that. Formula 3 is high level racing and many of the competitors in those cars are hopefuls to someday find themselves on the stage of Formula 1. Virtually none will, but it is the nature of the racing beast.
While it sounds funny that a race was stopped due to bad driving, it needs to be recognized that the first priority of race officials is to keep all of their competitors alive through the conclusion of the event. With things looking like they were out of hand (and the videos show that they were) it was the right, albeit shocking, move for this event to be stopped dead in its tracks. We bet the next race plays out a little differently!
I thought driving like that only happened in iracing.