The peculiarity of the free tyre change that is allowed under Formula 1’s red flag rules has long been a source of frustration to drivers.

When the situation crops up, like it did in Brazil last weekend and at the Monaco GP in May, those who are caught on the wrong side of things bemoan the sheer randomness of it.

In Monaco, it was all about how the hard compound starters were compromised by the first-lap red flag that allowed all the medium runners a free switch to the hard.

At Interlagos, George Russell, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc were all left ruing what they had lost by switching to fresh inters as worsening rain arrived, while those that carried on in tricky conditions got a free tyre change after Franco Colapinto’s huge crash.

The apparent luck of the draw is something that time and again gets criticised, and yet no one has come up with the fairer solution.

Back at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Norris was running sixth early on when he made a stop under safety car conditions for Mick Schumacher’s accident – which dropped him to 14th.

In theory, it was about playing the long game as those ahead of him that did not stop would need to do so under full race conditions later on – so lose more time.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, makes a pit stop

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

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However, his plan fell flat when a red flag was brought out, which handed everyone ahead of him a free stop and left the Briton stuck down the order.

Speaking afterwards, his criticisms of things were similar to what he said on Sunday night after Brazil.

“Of course, I’m always on the bad end of it, so it probably sucks more for me than anyone, but I think it’s just a very unfair rule that should be taken away,” he said.

“I think they should change it to one mandatory pit stop with two different tyre sets needed to be used, and then I think that’s acceptable.

“But this just ruins everything, to be honest. You put so much effort in for it to be taken away for some stupid rule.”

But while the unfairness aspect is the thing that annoys drivers the most, last weekend’s race at Interlagos has put into focus another factor that is slightly more worrying.

It is that in a wet race like Interlagos where conditions are worsening and there is the potential for a red flag, drivers are almost encouraged to stay out on far-from-perfect rubber much longer than they ideally would.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who stopped under the VSC conditions triggered by Nico Hulkenberg’s off, said that the rain that was coming down had left the track treacherous – but the lead cars obviously felt it worth the risk of staying out.

“I don’t think we expected it to rain as much as it did and then honestly, the toughest part of the race was behind the safety car, trying to stay on the track,” said the Australian.

“I think it kind of exposed a bit of the issue we have with the wet tyre – when everyone is begging for a red flag but refusing to go onto the wet tyre because it’s so bad.

“A pretty dangerous situation to have cars literally struggling to stay on the track behind the safety car. But it’s not really anything new. Hopefully, we can try to at least change it now.”

Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, at the restart

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

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Race winner Max Verstappen, whose victory was made easier by the red flag situation, admitted that things were right on the knife edge as he stayed out – but there was no way he was going to stop.

“When some pitted, the rain was coming, we stayed out, which was very sketchy,” explained the Dutchman.

“And then I saw Esteban [Ocon] in front of me flying, like four seconds a lap faster and I was like, ‘I’m just happy to keep the car on the track’.

“At one point it was just, we need a red flag. It was just undriveable, even on extreme tyres.”

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur, who had pitted Leclerc early but had dropped him into traffic, conceded that the issue teams face is gambling on staying out and not crashing.

“For sure you can say at the end of the day, if you stay on track, waiting for the red flag, it is the right call,” he said. “But if you crash, you look stupid…”

McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said that, with conditions worsening, there was a safety aspect to the situation – and that while there were competitive gains to be had by staying out and hoping for a red flag, in his mind there was only one course of action he preferred.

Speaking about the Brazil podium finishers who all stayed out, Stella said: “I am here congratulating them on their decisions.

“But personally, I am not very comfortable to leave a car out there that has tyres that are pretty worn with that amount of water. Without the red flag we would be commenting on a different race.”

The way to stop drivers from taking the gamble and pushing on with unsuitable tyres would theoretically be solved by not allowing the free tyre change that is allowed in the regulations.

If drivers knew that a red flag would not allow them a free swap, then decisions on which tyre to commit to would be based purely on which is most suitable to the conditions – and not so much about gambling in sticking it out when conditions are too dire in the hope of being saved by a stoppage.

But the red flag rules are in place for safety reasons and not competitive ones. It has long been accepted that changing tyres has to be allowed under red flag conditions because of the risk of debris from accidents causing punctures or other issues.

Forcing drivers to stick to their current tyres when there is a chance they could have run over broken carbon fibre of other parts on the track, or been involved in an accident themselves, would be an incredible safety risk and lunacy to have in the rules.

There have, however, been numerous suggestions in the past of ways to potentially improve things and make them fairer.

One idea, that would best work for dry races to avoid the potential for a free stop, would be to allow teams to change tyres in the stops – but if they wanted to it would have to be for the same compound.

This scenario would prevent what happened in Monaco, and also ensure that drivers who had stopped to switch compounds under full race conditions were not unfairly punished.

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01, makes a pit stop

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

However, it would not have avoided penalising drivers in Brazil because the inter is ultimately the best tyre for the rain – because by the time the full wet is brought into action, normally visibility is so bad that racing does not take place.

Another idea could be to allow the teams the option to change tyres if they are damaged, but if they do so they have to pull themselves out of the race order and drop to the back.

That way, there would not be an incentive to stay out longer than necessary in tricky conditions – because ultimately if there is a red flag the disadvantage could be greater if you need to change rubber. And if you feel you are still on the right tyres, you can keep them on and take your stop later.

Or what about Norris’s suggestion after Saudi 2021, of tweaking the sporting rules to demand that each driver makes a mandatory stop under normal race conditions, irrespective of a red flag?

All these ideas are things that have been discussed, and drivers have their own opinions about what can be done to make it better – but unfortunately, F1 has never moved things forward much.

Asked after Monaco whether he had some hope of the red flag tyre rule being revisited by teams and the FIA, he said: “I don’t know. There are many things that they have not changed, probably because they don’t listen to the drivers.”

Five months his words still appear to ring true.

Ducati test rider Michele Pirro will be drafted in at VR46 for the final round of the 2024 MotoGP season at Barcelona, Motorsport.com has learned.

Pirro will be riding one of VR46’s GP23 bikes in the Barcelona GP on 15-17 November, with Fabio di Giannantonio again absent from racing after getting surgery done on his left shoulder last Wednesday.

Although Andrea Iannone impressed VR46 in the Malaysian GP last weekend after returning to MotoGP at the express wish of team owner Valentino Rossi, the one-time grand prix winner will not be racing in Spain next week.

The decision was taken by Ducati in conjunction with VR46 and will be formally communicated to the public next week.

Iannone, who had been out of action since his 2019 campaign with Aprilia after receiving a four-year doping ban, finished 17th less than a minute behind race winner Francesco Bagnaia‘s factory Ducati.

One of the conditions required for Iannone to compete again in the last race was not to look out of place at Sepang, a goal he more than achieved with his quick adaptation to the GP23.

Andrea Iannone, VR46 Racing Team

Photo by: Asif Zubairi

However, Ducati has decided to lean on the reliable Pirro in Barcelona after taking technical and development aspects into consideration.

Unlike this season where Ducati is fielding four GP24 bikes between its official team and Pramac, the Borgo Panigale marque will be down to just three factory-spec bikes in 2025. These will be raced by Bagnaia, new works team rider Marc Marquez and di Giannatonio at VR46.

The pre-season test in Barcelona, where Pirro will again be on duty at VR46, is therefore crucial for Ducati to get the final details for the 2025 bike right as MotoGP enters a two-year engine freeze phase.

Ducati’s current cushion over other manufacturers is so big that no one doubts the development freeze will be an advantage for them in the long-run.

However, the fact that Marquez does not have much experience on the current GP24 – having ridden a one-year-old bike at Gresini in 2024 – has led general manager Gigi Dall’Igna to conclude that Pirro’s presence at the test is vital for the marque.

At the moment, it is not certain whether three GP25 bikes will be shipped to Spain as is planned, or if only two will be available due to a production issue.

In any case, Ducati wants to have Pirro, who plays a major role in the development of the bike, at full capacity in Barcelona to help Bagnaia and Marquez fine-tune the bike by providing more data.

Pirro is already testing the GP25 on Wednesday and Thursday this week at Jerez. After these two days of running, the bike will be packed up and sent to Barcelona for the first official 2025 test on 19 November.

Lancia’s sporting director Eugenio Franzetti has explained why the brand is making its rally return in Rally4 and what is required to make a comeback to the World Rally Championship.

Lancia, the winner of a record 10 WRC constructors’ titles (1974-1976, 1983, 1987-1992), is set to return to the rally stages next year with its all-new Ypsilon Rally4 car. Officially launched last month, the car will compete in the Italian Rally Championship and the newly created one-make Lancia Rally Trophy.  

The creation of the two-wheel drive Ypsilon Rally4 marks a return to rally for Lancia, 50 years after it won its first WRC title with the legendary Stratos in 1974. 

While Lancia’s emergence has created much fanfare, there had been speculation it would consider a Rally2 programme. It ultimately confirmed a Rally4 project that will see the brand contest the 2026 European Rally Championship.

Lancia has not ruled out a future WRC comeback and would consider forming a business plan once the WRC has announced its 2027 technical regulations. The FIA is expected to reveal its new regulations in December this year.

According to Franzetti, the stability of the Rally4 regulations was among the considerations that swayed the car maker to make its return at the lower end of the rally pyramid.  

“What we need is to have the rules [2027 regulations], we need to know how the Rally2 of the future will be made and how the Rally1 of the future will be made. Once we understand this, in a few months we can also understand how much it costs to make them and how much. And then once we understand the rules, we can create a business plan,” Franzetti told Motorsport.com’s Italian edition. 

“Once the business plan has been created, we can put the costs on one side of the scale, and the value of visibility and the revenue on the other side, and understand if this scale is a scale that is positive. 

“We do motorsport and there is a return on investment. The return on investment is given on one hand by the technical and logistical costs of doing it, on the other hand it is substantially the value of visibility, which has a great significance. This visibility also brings you sponsors, partners and so on. All this clearly must be extremely positive. 

“Today the only certain rule is Rally4. We know how it is made, how much it costs and everything. That’s why Lancia is back with a Rally4. The only certain thing we know is the regulation, it’s clear, it’s an extraordinary product, interesting from a racing point of view and from a commercial point of view.”

Lancia Ypsilon Rally4

Photo by: Lancia

Lowering costs and the introduction of a cost cap are factors that could interest Lancia to rejoin the WRC. 

Franzetti also admitted to be an admirer of the Rally2 class, which Lancia’s owner the Stellantis Group is already visible in through the Citroen C3 Rally2 programme.   

“Let’s try to create championships that cost a little less and that have a cost cap, after which, staying within it, you do what you want,” he added. 

“You have to make a championship with a finite number of millions, after which the engineers can unleash their imagination, knowing that motorsport is used as a promotional tool and therefore in any case everyone will bring what they know how to do also in terms and in the end it’s a show case. 

“Today we are all moving towards hybrid, electric, electrified. I imagine that everyone wants to demonstrate that they know how to do that thing there. But a cost cap would be enough and then leave space for the others.

“The Rally2 is a very interesting car because it’s fast, it lets you win [national] championships, obviously the European championship, which allows you to go very fast also in WRC. 

“Today, with few Rally1s [in WRC], if you have a Rally2 you can also get into the top 10, even get close to the top five and you have crazy visibility. And then it’s a commercial product, it’s a product that you sell and whoever buys it is happy, it [the car] runs well, has an acceptable cost per kilometre and so on. The Rally2 was an extremely clever specification.”

Last Saturday, after crashing out on the third lap of the sprint race at Sepang while fighting his rival for the win and the championship crown, Francesco Bagnaia was both hurt and bewildered. The reigning world champion was unable to find a rational explanation for the five zeroes he has accumulated so far in the sprint races which, as he himself pointed out, have been decisive in leaving Jorge Martin a step away from the title.

The Pramac rider will be celebrating in 10 days’ time if he is able to win the sprint, in which he has built a large part of his championship chances, at the Barcelona season finale that replaces the cancelled Valencia GP.

“I just need to improve my performance on Saturdays. I have to understand why I have failed so much, work on it. On Sundays, I was at a high level, but it was the sprint that made the difference,” lamented factory Ducati rider Bagnaia.

The results achieved by the two riders are frightening, and put them on a level unattainable for the rest. Paradoxically, Bagnaia is very close to losing a world championship which, numerically speaking, is his best season since he has been competing in MotoGP.

His performance in the Sunday races has been phenomenal, with 10 victories and 15 podiums out of a possible 19. In the longer races, Bagnaia has scored 345 of his 461 total points. Subtraction indicates that the Turin native has scored 116 points on Saturdays, 48 fewer than Martin’s tally of 164.

In the amount of sprint wins, they are more or less on a par (seven to Martin’s six), but the contrast between them is in the number of retirements. Bagnaia has five to his opponent’s two.

Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing, Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Statistics need to be interpreted and context needs to be added. In the era before the weekend format change introduced in 2023, only counting Sunday results, Bagnaia would lead the overall standings with a 24-point cushion and would be just one point away from becoming a three-time world champion in the premium class.

But that model of championship is now a thing of the past, and the current situation highlights one of Martin’s strengths.

“We already knew that one of Jorge’s strengths was his explosiveness, and now he has found a way to maximise that,” Pramac team manager Gino Borsoi tells Autosport. “To understand his form and the records he has set, I would point to that explosiveness and the mentality he has adopted this year.

It would be unfair to conclude that the reigning champion has failed if we consider that nobody has won more than him in a year in which he has broken all the individual records of any Ducati rider

“Now he goes out to race knowing that he is not obliged to always win, but that the important thing is to perform well, bring the bike back, and then let the standings be the judge.”

Apart from the points on offer, the main difference between Saturday and Sunday races is that the bikes are not as fine-tuned in the former as they are in the latter. In this sense, it is no coincidence that Bagnaia, one of the most methodical riders on the grid, tends to make a big jump in performance between Saturday and Sunday.

Combined with his enormous talent and his temperance, the two-time champion makes the most of the working method established at Ducati since the arrival of Gigi Dall’Igna in 2014. Based on the collection and analysis of the information provided by the eight Desmosedici at the Bolognese constructor, this protocol allows the performance of the bikes to be optimised much more quickly and efficiently throughout the weekend.

The most useful test bench for drawing conclusions is the sprint race. Until then, the technicians have ‘only’ three practice sessions to analyse and look for the best set-up.

Martin has regularly managed to find the limit quickly in sprints, where Bagnaia tends to take longer to come to the boil

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

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“Jorge adapts very well and very quickly to the bike from the moment he gets on the bike on Friday morning,” an authoritative voice from Ducati tells Autosport. “On the other hand, with Pecco we often see that he grows as the practices go by.

“It’s usually on Sundays that he makes the difference, because the people around him have been able to collate all the information available. With all those resources, he usually arrives at the most decisive moment with the bike completely to his liking.”

“From the outside, without knowing all the details, you get the feeling that Pecco arrives a little bit more precise at the sprint, but then, with all the information from the rest of the Ducati team, about tyre consumption, electronic set-up and so on, he makes that leap that is reflected on Sundays,” adds a track engineer from a rival team which works with one of the world champions on the grid.

In Malaysia, this feeling was once again evident, not so much because of Saturday’s slip-up, but because of the victory the following day. Bagnaia’s 10th win has sublimated Ducati’s method, despite the fact that it is practically impossible to retain the title in Barcelona.

Should that happen, it would be unfair to conclude that the reigning champion has failed if we consider that nobody has won more than him in a year in which he has broken all the individual records of any Ducati rider. In any case, it will be that Martin’s reading has been more accurate.

Bagnaia faces an uphill struggle to win his third world title despite winning 10 Grands Prix in 2024

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Yuki Tsunoda believes he would have led the Brazilian Grand Prix had the safety car and subsequent red flags not been called for at Interlagos.

The Japanese driver was one of a select few to opt for a switch to extreme wet tyres as rain pelted the Sao Paulo circuit, with he and team-mate Liam Lawson at one stage lapping faster than those around them by almost five seconds per lap.

But with others trying to brave it out on intermediates as the deluge got heavier, race control had no alternative other than to send the safety car out on track, a neutralisation that became a full red-flag stoppage once Franco Colapinto had crashed his Williams catching up to the pack after a pitstop.

Tsunoda, who was running third before his pitstop, lost out with F1’s rules allowing for free tyre changes under red flag conditions and would eventually finish eighth on the road – a result that was upgraded to seventh courtesy of a 10-second penalty for McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, who had earlier punted Lawson into a spin at Turn 1.

“I think what we did, switching to extreme, that was good,” explained Tsunoda.

“Just the safety car and the red flag came out, that was the point that went very down. If the red flag didn’t come out, probably I would, at some point, have overtaken a lot of cars and maybe [been] P1, but it just didn’t come towards us.”

Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Lawson also scored points as RB locks into a fight for sixth in the constructors’ standings, albeit losing ground to double podium-scoring Alpine.

Having stressed the importance of the result for the Faenza-based team, Tsunoda added: “It wasn’t easy conditions. If you lose concentration, [it can have] a lot of consequence.

“I enjoyed the last stint, good fight with Oscar [Piastri]. I tried to be within 10 seconds. You know, could have done a lot of things wrong, but kept it clean and tried to score P7, which is good.”

Francesco Bagnaia’s hopes of retaining the MotoGP title are hanging by a thread. The factory Ducati rider is facing a 24-point deficit to Pramac rival Jorge Martin heading into the final round of the season in Barcelona next week.

Although the odds have been against Bagnaia for some time, it was his crash from second place in the Malaysian Grand Prix sprint that has effectively sealed the deal in Martin’s favour.

From the early part of the year, Bagnaia had identified sprint races as being the main weakness in his title bid. After the first six rounds, he had accumulated just 14 points on Saturdays while his chief rival Martin had tallied up 56. By this stage, Bagnaia had actually outscored Martin by three points in Sunday races, but was left with a mammoth 39-point gap to overcome in the overall table.

To be fair to Bagnaia, he has upped his performance in half-distance races in the ensuing period. Since the Italian Grand Prix back in June, Bagnaia has picked up six sprint wins in 13 attempts, compared to four for Martin. Over the course of the full year, Martin is still ahead in the reckoning with seven wins to six thanks to his early-season form but clearly, the defending champion has shown that he can be rapid in the new format.

However, while Bagnaia knows how to score big on any given day, he has also hemorrhaged big points to the championship leader over the course of the season.

As early as the second round in Portugal, the two-time champion gave away a sprint win by outbraking himself at Turn 1 while leading the race. He later revealed that a mistake in miscalculating the impact of decreasing fuel load on braking led to him running off track.

A DNF in the Le Mans sprint was partly down to him, as the crash in qualifying left his primary bike with too much damage. The back-up GP24 that he ended up racing was described by him as “dangerous”, forcing him to pull into the pits after just three laps.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

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Then there was the biggest error of all in Barcelona, where he crashed on the final lap while circulating a second clear of his nearest rival.

Even with that patchy run in the first part of the season, Bagnaia had managed to pull himself to the top of the championship, incidentally after Martin dumped his bike while leading the German Grand Prix.

But when the championship resumed at Silverstone in early August after the summer break, Bagnaia failed to capitalise on the situation, hitting the deck in the sprint while having a podium in the bag.

That weekend clearly showed the 27-year-old’s tendency to make errors at the worst time possible. The 10-point lead he had inherited after Sachsenring was turned into a three-point deficit and the focus suddenly shifted to Martin’s mental strength in overturning a psychological and sporting disadvantage.

In that context, it is easy to explain why Bagnaia fumbled under pressure in Malaysia at Turn 9 – admittedly at one of the trickiest corners on the track, a complex uphill left-hander that comes at the end of a fairly long straight.

The retirement from Sepang marked his fourth non-score in a sprint event this year (compared to two for Martin). That goes to show why he has lost a whopping 48 points to his title rival on Saturdays alone.

Points scored by Martin and Bagnaia in sprints:

Of course, Bagnaia then responded with a bang on Sunday, outduelling Martin in the early stages of the grand prix before sprinting clear to win by 3.1s.

It was his 10th win of the year from 19 grands prix, which already puts his 2024 campaign as one of the best by any rider in the history of the premier class.

With that success, he is now tied with ex-Ducati and Honda star Casey Stoner in the list of riders with most wins in a season, albeit with a lower success ratio due to there being more races on the calendar now.

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Another triumph in the Barcelona finale would mean he would have scored as many victories as Valentino Rossi did in 2001, ‘02 and ‘05, but again with the same caveat as before with Stoner.

In fact, 11 victories was the maximum motorcycling legend Giacomo Agostini achieved in his career in a single season – in 1972, back when there were just 13 races in the 500cc class.

Points scored by Martin and Bagnaia in grands prix

With those numbers, it would be easy to conclude that Bagnaia would have been champion if MotoGP had not overhauled its weekend format and added sprint races to the schedule. After all, if you take sprints out of the equation, it would be Bagnaia leading the championship by 24 points heading to Barelona and not Martin.

But that only explains part of the picture. Bagnaia is known to build his speed over the course of a weekend. He starts off slowly on Friday and gradually picks up the pace, making steady gains in both single-lap performance and long run speed.

A crucial part of that trajectory is the sprint, which gives him the opportunity to hone his speed in real-life racing conditions. It’s one of the reasons why he is able to win races on Sundays after being outperformed by Martin in the sprints.

Of course, it’s important to note that some of his dismal sprint results in sprints haven’t entirely been of his own making. At Jerez, for example, he was blameless when he scored a duck after being sandwiched by Brad Binder and Marco Bezzecchi. He also strongly hinted at a faulty Michelin tyre for his troubled run to ninth place in the Aragon sprint, a race in which Martin finished on the podium.

But those misses pale in comparison to the unforced errors committed by Bagnaia and it’s a key reason why he may have to surrender the crown to Martin in a little over a week’s time.