Supercars clarifies critical Christchurch Safety Car policy

The policy is being introduced for the Ruapuna event alongside regulations banning double-stacking in pit lane.

Supercars is preventing teams from having both cars in lane at any given time in response to concerns over the tight nature of the pits.

That rule would ordinarily have major implications should a Safety Car be called, leaving teams to pit one car and have the other stuck behind the SC.

However, Supercars motorsport boss Tim Edwards has confirmed to Speedcafe the intention of delaying the deployment of the Safety Car onto the circuit.

“Subject to anything serious happening on track, the intention is we’ll hold the Safety Car [deployment] for one lap,” said Edwards.

“That allows the second car in every team [to pit] and doesn’t compromise their strategy.

“If you just fired the Safety Car [onto the track], then those 12 cars are essentially out of the race. This keeps all 24 cars actively in the race.

“Obviously through the slow zone, they’ve still got to slow down to the appropriate speed through the double-waved yellows.”

The policy of delaying a Safety Car deployment was previously experimented with when Full Course Yellow rules were introduced in 2024.

Various iterations of FCY, 80km/h slowdowns and slow zones were subsequently used, before being dumped in favour of a traditional yellow flag system.

Edwards said speeds past an incident while under Safety Car conditions will continue to be monitored by officials.

“The way the Safety Car rule is, where the double-waved yellows are, you’ve got to slow to 50 percent of your speed, or 80km/h,” he said.

“That’s no different to how we’ve been policing it.”