Fans boo as British Grand Prix finishes behind safety car with Leclerc victorious

A record crowd at Silverstone were furious as 175,000 fans were denied a last lap shoot-out with the British Grand Prix finishing behind a safety car in bizarre scenes.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc ended up winning from Mercedes’s George Russell following Max Verstappen’s crash with four laps of the race remaining.

But the packed grandstands – part of a record-breaking 564,000 across the race weekend – booed after the ensuing safety car stayed out for the final lap of the race, despite race control signalling that it would be called in.

There was no explanation for why it did so but fans were clearly furious, booing vociferously.

An FIA statement later, explained: “The safety car period regulation, Article B5. 13.5, states that one lap must be completed following the unlapping procedure. This process was followed by race operations. The “Safety Car In This Lap” message was displayed erroneously due to a software error.”

The decision to leave it out denied Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, in third place, the opportunity to attack Russell on fresh soft tyres. Hamilton had stopped when the safety car initially came out, losing track position to Russell.

Russell admitted afterwards that his tyres were “stone cold” meaning he would have been unlikely to have held on to his place.