Should the FIA ditch the virtual safety car after it ruined the end of the Mexican GP?

Virtual Safety Car board — Photo: © IMAGO

Mexican Grand Prix

Should the FIA ditch the virtual safety car after it ruined the end of the Mexican GP?

The VSC's use was called into question this weekend

Chris Deeley

Wednesday 29 October 2025 10:58

It's fair to say that there are a lot of things about F1 that would be better if they were changed.

The renormalisation of team orders, the FIA presidential elections looking like they're rigged, the fact that every other meaningful overtake has to go to VAR while the drivers moan on the radio - these are all things that are absolutely reasonable to have a whinge about.

The virtual safety car doesn't fit in that category. It is, without exaggeration, one of the best things that the FIA have introduced in the last decade or so. An unambiguously good thing which protects drivers and marshals without disrupting races as much as a full safety car.

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That's why the prevailing narrative at the end of the Mexican Grand Prix was so, so irritating. Karun Chandhok grumbling about fans being 'robbed' of a grandstand finish to the race by the deployment of a virtual safety car, when Carlos Sainz's stricken car was sat smoking off the track.

VSC: Good

It took one quick note to the FIA and a couple of more helpful camera angles to show that no, race officials hadn't overstepped and 'robbed' anyone of anything - Sainz's car was exposed and, given that it was smoking, needed immediate attention from marshals who were also forced onto the run-off area to deal with it.

The race even got back underway before the end, which it would never have been able to do if the FIA were forced to deploy a full safety car to sort out the smouldering carcass of the Spaniard's Williams. It's almost impossible to look at the situation and think that the stewards didn't do a perfect job in the circumstances, with the right options available to them.

This happened at the end of a race where marshals were in harm's way on a live track, with two of them nearly reduced to their component parts by the front of Liam Lawson's Racing Bull. And still, the use of the VSC is being questioned.

Ultimately, it's actually pretty easy to be on the right side of any F1 flashpoint. Pick two commentators - for the sake of anonymity, let's call them Karun C. and D. Croft - and take the diametrically opposite view to their immediate, instinctive overreaction.

You'll be right more often than you're not.

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F1 FIA Mexican Grand Prix