Another farce from the FIA which shows why drastic changes are needed.

It's as if the Spa grand prix last year never happened, with history nearly repeating itself on Sunday. The race was scheduled to start on the hour however with less than 10 minutes to go the start procedure protocol was started, this allowed teams to change their tyres to wets. Which in promise sounds good however this actually led to a grand level scale of panic from pit crews and teams. There was chaos on the pitlane as teams rushed to put on the wet tyres with some deciding not to or missing the cutoff. So the scene is set a mixture of dry and wet tyres from all 10 teams, a damp track and a whole lot of possibilities. 

Unfortunately we all know how this ends. The FIA decide to reg flag the race and abandon the start. This was the first major mistake from the the FIA. The race should've started on the hour, the track was wet but more than able to run wet tyres on. However the FIA decided against that and instead they decided to try and second guess the weather. It appeared that they were waiting for the rain to ease up however no-one knew how this was being measured. We were all waiting for a signal but no-one knew what the signal was. The whole thing was a disaster with many fans and teams bemused because the lack of information provided from the FIA on actually how they were going to come to a decision. By the FIA's logic we could've been waiting till the Monday to go racing as everyone was in the dark as it could've just kept raining and never return to racing conditions. 

Eventually after a lengthy delay the race did start and another Spa wasn't repeated. However the actions taken by the FIA could have led to another race not awarding full points. Decisions made need to be done with safety as paramount this is without doubt but this doesn't mean no wet running. It appears that these new regulations have made it more and more difficult to run in the wet. Only a minimal bit of rain is needed to halt or stop a race. F1 has always raced in the wet and that shouldn't change. The FIA needs to rethink the whole wet running protocol as it comes across as a overreaction to last year events at Spa. 

The solution is to be more flexible and make decisions based on what is infront of the race directors. Gone away with the idea to wait until it stops raining because as shown by Sunday more rain fell 20 minutes after than when the race was actually halted. This would allow races to get going on time, if the rain does pick up then a red flag can be used. This is the most logical and safe way of going forward.