As revealed by Speedcafe this week, the new-for-2024 FCY procedure allowing officials to slow the field to 80km/h and attend to issues on the circuit without requiring a Safety Car has been dropped.
The FCY procedure was introduced last year alongside new Safety Car rules that also involved an 80km/h speed restriction within 15-seconds of a Safety Car deployment.
Both were implemented for safety reasons, allowing Race Control to bring the field under control quickly following an incident.
Motorsport Australia Race Director James Taylor said this week the FCY has been dropped to avoid confusion between the two procedures. The SC slowdown rules remain.
Speaking to the category’s website, Supercars’ motorsport boss Tim Edwards declared a desire to spice-up the Bathurst 1000 was also a motivating factor behind dropping FCY.
“This was about encouraging the teams to be more aggressive with their strategy,” Edwards said.
“The FCY made [teams] very nervous with their strategy choices, particularly at Bathurst. By removing it, teams are likely to have greater strategy options, particularly in the big race.”
The new rules had a massive impact on the 2024 Bathurst 1000 despite there being only one Safety Car intervention, called 131 laps into the 161-lap race, and no actual FCY period.
Teams generally waited as long as possible before pitting, as stopping early and then having rivals pit under an FCY period would have resulted in multiple minutes being lost.
“There is risk with the Safety Car as well,” Edwards cautioned, “but ultimately, it’s only ever a risk of track position, because the Safety Car brings you all back together.
“With a FCY on its own, you could have lost two, three, four minutes to your competitor.
“However, even though the Safety Car starts with the same process and yes, you could lose some time, ultimately you get that back because you are formed behind the Safety Car.”
FCY was also unpopular with some fans and industry members as it did not bunch the field up as a full Safety Car deployment does.
The FCY was used just twice last season, allowing officials to pick up a stray wheel during February’s Bathurst 500 and clean up debris during the Sandown 500 without needing a Safety Car deployment.
Triple Eight was the biggest public supporter of the FCY rules and its team principal Jamie Whincup is disappointed to see them abandoned.
“I believe the way it was operating at places like Sandown and Bathurst was very good, it absolutely has the ability to get racing underway faster, which is good for everybody,” Whincup told Speedcafe.
“We want to see racing, cars going flatout (after a brief FCY deployment), not under Safety Car.”
Whincup saw the FCY as a step towards ‘slow zones’ that are used at events like the Nurburgring 24 Hour, where a speed restriction is applied only in the sector where an incident has occurred.
“They literally just slow the cars in that sector, they clean up a crash, they clean up debris, all sorts of things just in a sector and keep the race going. That’s perfect,” he said.
He likened the decision to remove the option of the FCY and leaving Race Control to deploy the Safety Car even for debris as “artificial entertainment”.
“If that’s the way we want to go then actually have planned Safety Cars where they bunch it up, like NASCAR,” he said. “Just do it via a planned, ‘lap 20, we’ll bunch the field up’. That’s my opinion.”
