Organisers of the Korean grand prix will escape sanction, even though a fire vehicle was deployed onto the racing line during Sunday’s race.<\/p>\n
The future of the Yeongam race was already under a dark cloud before the bizarre incident, in which leader Sebastian Vettel was stunned to find himself bearing down on a 4×4.<\/p>\n
“I think it was a Hyundai or Kia SUV,” said the German.\u00a0 “You want the number plate?\u00a0 It was not Bernd Maylander’s, so it was not the safety car.”<\/p>\n
Korean officials had made a mistake, but it is not quite as serious an error as it first appeared.<\/p>\n
Indeed, race director Charlie Whiting admitted that, although surprised to see the 4×4 on the track, he had in fact just ordered the deployment of a fire vehicle to help extinguish Mark Webber’s worsening fire.<\/p>\n
“We assumed they would send out the car that was in turn 3, because that’s where the burning Red Bull was,” Whiting told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.<\/p>\n
“It wouldn’t even have had to go on the track,” added the Briton.\u00a0 “But for some reason they sent the car that was in turn 2.<\/p>\n
“I would say it was a classic misunderstanding,” Whiting said.<\/p>\n
“When I saw the car on the screen, I immediately deployed the safety car,” he explained.\u00a0 “Not because of the fire, but because of the car.”<\/p>\n
Because it was more a ‘misunderstanding’ than a grave error, and because the marshals acted correctly in warning drivers with white flags, the Korean race promoters will not be penalised by the FIA.<\/p>\n
Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali said the mistake was excusable.<\/p>\n
“As this is their only race per year, they are probably just missing some experience,” he said.<\/p>\n
And Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said he excuses the mistake altogether.<\/p>\n
“I was actually relieved that a fire extinguisher was finally on the way to our car,” he said.\u00a0 “It seemed to be burning for an age.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Organisers of the Korean grand prix will escape sanction, even though a fire vehicle was deployed onto the racing line during Sunday’s race. The future of the Yeongam race was already under a dark cloud before the bizarre incident, in which leader Sebastian Vettel was stunned to find himself bearing down on a 4×4. “I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[2436,810,128,5262,5300,5340,1282,4674],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19509,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19508\/revisions\/19509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}