Safety Car rules are set to be debated by teams at a Supercars Commission meeting next week following controversy at the recent Ipswich Super440.
The Sunday race triggered claims the current procedure – which includes an 80km/h speed limit within 15 seconds of the Safety Car being called – is “ruining our sport” and will make the Bathurst 1000 “boring as shit”.
That’s because it encourages teams to wait as long as possible before taking a pit stop, hoping to benefit from pitting while the remainder of the field is stuck at 80km/h.
At Ipswich, the 80km/h limit was left in place for so long that the three drivers who had not yet pitted were able to complete both of their required stops and emerge still ahead of the pack.
The slowdown procedure was introduced ahead of the 2024 Sandown 500 to stamp out the practice of drivers roaring past incidents at full speed on their way to pit lane.
Dutton said simply focusing on the accident zone, rather than neutralising the full circuit – should be the goal for officials.
“Everyone agrees it is a problem and it does [need to be solved] because it can affect the race in a negative way,” Dutton told Speedcafe.
“The best way, in our opinion, is still the ‘slow zones’, because that satisfies everything, which is safety and that it doesn’t ruin the racing.
“You can do it the technological way, which is electronics and all that, or you can do it the way it’s meant to be and enforce the [existing double-waved yellow flag] rule.
“If you told the drivers there’s now zero tolerance, if you don’t drop a set amount of time in the sector where the car is off, you’ll get a pit lane penalty, all the drivers will slow down.”
Electronically monitored slow zones have long been used in endurance events such as the 24-hour races at Le Mans and the Nurburgring, which both take place on especially large circuits.
Dutton noted that method would have avoided both the pit stop-related controversy in the Sunday Ipswich race and the Safety Car finish to the Saturday opener.
“You race at full speed, except for one corner,” he said. “You can still pass cars. It’s a proper contest to the end, it’s only one corner you can’t race. How is that not the best option?”
The slow zone solution is not thought to be among options under consideration for immediate introduction ahead of the Endurance Cup races, in part due to the technology required.
“There appears to be some complication, some of which is the reliability of the signal to be able to tell the drivers,” admitted Dutton.
“But I think you could have a 90 percent solution with what exists, relying on team [radio] comms and the onboard [yellow flag] warning lights in the cars.”
Dutton is known to have pushed the slow zone argument last year when the 80km/h, full circuit slowdown method was being discussed.
Supercars initially included the option to implement the 80km/h slowdown as a ‘Full Course Yellow’, without that turning into a full Safety Car period that closes up the pack.
The Full Course Yellow option was deleted from the rules for 2025, leaving the 80km/h slowdown as simply part of the Safety Car procedure.
Full Course Yellow was unpopular in some quarters because it lacked the entertainment factor of closing up the pack with a Safety Car. Slow zones would face the same resistance.
There is also the factor of recovery vehicles needing to access the circuit to attend the scene of an accident, which may require the full track to be brought under yellow flag conditions.
Dutton, though, argues that slowing the whole track to 80km/h for an incident such as the car buried in the gravel trap at Ipswich is overkill.
“It’s like saying to a police officer, ‘you have one weapon to diffuse a situation – a gun’,” he said. “You can’t talk them down, you can’t taser them, you can’t stop them.
“If there’s any issue, no matter how big or small, a cat up a tree, helping a lady cross a road or someone trying to murder someone, you can only use a gun. That’s what was chosen.”
A proposal to close pit lane during the 80km/h slowdown period and only open it once the cars are permitted to catch the Safety Car is thought to have gained early support.
“There’s lots of different ways to do,” adds Dutton of other suggestions, which have also included reducing the pit lane speed under Safety Car.
“If you don’t want to pick the best way or the second-best way, then you can start picking the third, fourth, fifth best, which is what’s being looked at.”
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