zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Racing
/
F1 Mandates Digital Checkered Flag for 2019 After Officiating Mishap That Ended Canadian Grand Prix Early
F1 Mandates Digital Checkered Flag for 2019 After Officiating Mishap That Ended Canadian Grand Prix Early-June 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:11:12

After an officiating miscommunication led to this year’s , F1 Friday that it won’t rely on us humans to end races anymore. A computer will get the responsibility instead, and digital checkered flags will be the new norm.

The light panel at the start-finish line will become the new checkered flag, showing checkered lights to signal the end of the race. That doesn’t mean the traditional checkered flag will go away, especially since the light panel isn’t in the view of everyone on the start-finish stretch, but it’ll just be for show. If the checkered lights aren’t on, the race isn’t over.

F1 didn’t say whether the digital checkered flag will be completely computerized or just run by a traveling F1 official, but the idea of a digital checkered flag next season came up earlier this year after a big blunder at the Canadian Grand Prix ended the race on lap 68 instead of lap 70. The guest waving the flag, model Winnie Harlow, got a lot of the blame and blowback for it, but quoted F1 race director Charlie Whiting as saying said it wasn’t her fault at all—it was a miscommunication with local officials, and she was just following directions.

Whiting said after the race he figured the miscommunication stemmed from the way F1 counts laps, and that a local official who’s not around F1 all the time got confused when they saw a graphic showing lap 69 of 70, thinking it showed laps completed instead of the lap drivers were on. The latter was the case, meaning drivers should have raced a whole lap with the board saying “70 of 70.” Whiting said that’s no big deal for F1’s traveling crew, but that the series needed to do a better job of briefing local, temporary hires on the way its system works.

F1 stewards decided after the early wave to treat the checkered flag like a red one, thus ending the race after 68 laps instead of 69. The early ending didn’t matter much for the winner by an entire zip code, Sebastian Vettel, but a few other drivers could’ve used lap 70 to catch people in front of them.

quoted Whiting as saying a few days after the race in June that F1 was considering going to a digital flag and an automated system to signal it, and four months later, the digital flag is official. Starting next year, the waving of the checkered flag will be no more than a ghost of what it is now, symbolic but meaningless as we slowly turn this world over to the computers.

But, you know, computers are probably better at this “communication” and “counting” stuff than we are anyway.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Racing
Massive Beast-Wasp Interrupts Daniel Ricciardo's Post-Qualifying Interview
Massive Beast-Wasp Interrupts Daniel Ricciardo's Post-Qualifying Interview
Red Bull Racing F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo narrowly missed out on HIS FACE GETTING STUNG BY A GIANT FREAKIN’ WASP HOLY CRAP KILL IT WITH FIRE. Ricciardo was in the process of explaining how stunned he was to lose out on a fifth place start at Monza to Williams driver...
Jun 23, 2025
Fernando Alonso Is Still The Least Happy Man In Formula One
Fernando Alonso Is Still The Least Happy Man In Formula One
Even if a Formula One race turns out to be as dull as watching paint dry, we can always still rely on something going wrong with Fernando Alonso’s McLaren to entertain us. Let’s savor these moments of Alonso misery just in case he rage-quits McLaren and gives a seat back....
Jun 23, 2025
IndyCar's Scott Dixon Obliterates Watkins Glen Record Lap Time Again
IndyCar's Scott Dixon Obliterates Watkins Glen Record Lap Time Again
As predicted, IndyCar broke its track record around Watkins Glen today, with Scott Dixon’s pole-sitting time of 1:22.5259 taking the new record. Dixon’s lap was good for a blistering 147.008 average speed around the best little road course in New York. Holy crap, that’s nuts. The time obliterated Ryan Briscoe’s...
Jun 23, 2025
Watch An Audi R18 Run Out Of Fuel At Just The Right Time
Watch An Audi R18 Run Out Of Fuel At Just The Right Time
No. 7 Audi R18 driver Marcel Fässler was left in a dead car on the pit lane during today’s 6 Hours of Mexico race. Audi Gets A Push In Fortunately, the car sputtered out on its last fumes right as he came into pit lane, where it’s legal for the...
Jun 23, 2025
6 Hours Of Mexico Had Everything That's Right With Modern Endurance Racing
6 Hours Of Mexico Had Everything That's Right With Modern Endurance Racing
Just 90.004 seconds separated the top four overall cars of today’s 6 Hours of Mexico. The winning No. 1 Porsche 919 had a significant lead over the No. 7 Audi R18, but had the No. 1 car’s last-minute off-track adventure been just a hair worse, the win could have gone...
Jun 23, 2025
Lewis Hamilton Completely Borked The Start At Monza
Lewis Hamilton Completely Borked The Start At Monza
Lewis Hamilton may have owned qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix, but he totally screwed the pooch at the start of the race. Mailed it in. Fell asleep. Something. (Something not good.) Cars passed the slow-starting No. 44 Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton like it was standing still. Too much wheelspin...
Jun 23, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved