SINGAPORE -- Formula 1 encountered its second technical mishap in a less than a week after an FIA official forgot to push a button needed to enable full engine power in sprint qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix.
Qualifying was red-flagged in SQ1, the first elimination session, due to debris from Sergio Pérez’s Cadillac, which automatically suspended the extra amount of “overtake mode” power delivered to engines on safety grounds.
That mode can be reactivated only manually by an FIA official from race control when the session resumes as normal. However, that did not happen initially when SQ1 resumed and cars returned to the racetrack to complete the session.
The FIA was soon notified via driver and team feedback that this had not been done when the session got back underway.
The power mode was then turned on for 27 seconds, only to be turned off again when the FIA race control expressed a concern over sporting fairness, although those two decisions affected drivers differently depending on where they were on the racetrack during timed runs.
One of those was Williams driver Carlos Sainz, who was eliminated in SQ1.
“Half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others,” Sainz said Friday. “There was another software issue with the cars, this time around we were on the bad end of it.”
Also eliminated alongside Sainz in SQ1 was Racing Bulls’ Arvid Lindblad, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll, Williams’ Alex Albon and Sainz, and Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas and Pérez.
The FIA later released a statement confirming “a human error in Race Control unrelated to the timing issue also encountered in SQ1.”
The statement added: “When it became apparent that Overtake Mode was not active after the restart, it was then activated for a period of 27 seconds before being deactivated again. The FIA acknowledges that this unfortunate human error had an impact on the performance of certain cars based on the timing of their run and their position around the lap. The second and third periods of Sprint Qualifying were not affected.”
The session set the grid for a sprint race Saturday afternoon.
Next steps are unclear, although teams affected are free to protest the outcome of the session.
It’s unclear what the stewards would do if they found a protest admissible.
In theory, stewards could declare the qualifying result void, but there is no precedent for what would happen in that instance and how the grid would be set as a result.
It is the second engine-related embarrassment for the sport in a week.
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Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was red-flagged when a software glitch saw cars across the field lose power in their hybrid V6 engines during a formation lap.
The FIA was only able to restart the race 48 minutes after the first issue became apparent when it recoded a software upgrade that every team used to update its engines.
Drivers called the Bahrain issue “horrible” and “totally unacceptable.”
On this occasion, there are more headaches for the FIA.
Sainz questioned why Singapore’s sprint qualifying session was allowed to finish in the first place when last week the FIA stopped the formation lap on the spot as soon as an issue was detected.
“For whatever reason the FIA, [un]like in Malaysia, they didn’t decide to do sporting equity and were happy to do half of the cars in quali[fying] with higher power than the other half of the cars,” he said. “A bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things based on who is out in Q1 and who is out in Lap 1.”
Sainz’s comment referred to the controversy that followed last weekend’s aborted start.
The FIA had effectively red-flagged the formation lap as cars lost power at different points.
Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso questioned afterward why the FIA had aborted the start when some cars were still going and others had stopped or slowed significantly.
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who had started second, had been passed by half the field when his car ground to a near standstill, although he got going again as the FIA aborted the formation lap.
The race was then controversially restarted with the grid unchanged, meaning Hamilton kept his spot on the front row and others who had dropped down the order started as if nothing had happened.