The category last year introduced an FCY procedure allowing officials to slow the field to 80km/h and attend to issues on the circuit without requiring a Safety Car intervention.
It simultaneously added a new element to its Safety Car regulations, enabling Race Control to require the field to slow to 80km/h within a nominated time of a Safety Car being deployed.
Those regulations allow the field to be controlled at 80km/h until the relevant incident has been cleared, at which point competitors are able to speed up to catch the Safety Car.
Supercars will continue with its modified Safety Car rules in 2025 but has elected to drop the Full Course Yellow option, which Race Director James Taylor says is about simplification.
“The way we start the Safety Car procedure is similar to the Full Course Yellow procedure, and there was a lot of confusion in the paddock on the difference between the two of them,” Taylor told Speedcafe.
“There was probably only two opportunities last year for a proper, pure FCY, everything else was a direct Safety Car.
“In our opinion there’s no reduction in safety because we’re dropping the field down to 80 km/h anyway, it’s just that we’ve removed the FCY element to get rid of the confusion.”
Race Control used the FCY option to retrieve a wheel from the circuit during last year’s Bathurst 500 and to clear away debris in the Sandown 500.
The FCY, which is widely used in European racing including Formula 1 (under the Virtual Safety Car name), was unpopular with many Supercars fans as it does not bunch the field before racing resumes.
Introducing the slowdown procedure as part of a Safety Car intervention also caused complications on track, with nose-to-tail incidents creating debate over the countdown time and 80km/h speed.
The 80km/h speed remains for now, although Taylor says the lead-in time before it applies may be varied pending ongoing feedback from parties including teams and drivers.
An ongoing review process could also yet see the FCY procedure return.
“We’ll constantly review it, it’s never a dead subject,” Taylor adds. “In the [Bathurst] 12 Hour regs we still have FCY nominated. We will have the option to run that there.
“I envisage it coming back (to Supercars) at some stage, but it’ll be a work in progress with us discussing with Supercars management, the teams and the drivers, for what we can change.
“Do we utilise the FCY and use the Safety Car a bit less? Eventually we’ll get a system that everyone is happy with and that’s what we’ll utilise.”
Removal of the FCY regulations for 2025 coincides with Supercars’ move from the long-used Dorian timing system to the globally recognised MyLaps.
While Taylor says this is not a big change in itself, he notes the capability of MyLaps and the evolution of circuit technology – namely Trackside Marshalling Panels in place of traditional flags – may help Race Control in future.
“Some of our venues are going to start to put more light panels in, like The Bend and Queensland Raceway. The MyLaps system can work with that,” he said.
“The timing system itself is going to be very similar, but its back-of-house programming is going to enable us to enhance some of our warning mechanisms with the flags, etcetera.”
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