when was the safety car introduced in formula 1 races
Safety car The first use of a safety car in Formula One is reported to have taken place at the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix, where a yellow Porsche 914[5][6] was called for duty following various incidents under treacherous weather conditions. Controversially, on that occasion, it took several hours after the race to figure out the winner and final results since the safety car driver had placed his car in front of the wrong competitor thus causing part of the field to be one lap down incorrectly.[7]
Formula One racing Thirty minutes prior to race time, the cars take to the track for any number of warm-up laps (formally known as reconnaissance laps), provided they pass through the pit lane and not the grid, after which they assemble on the starting grid in the order they qualified.[18] At the hour of the race, a green light signifies the beginning of the relatively slow formation lap during which all cars parade around the course doing a final tire warmup and system checks.[18] The cars then return to their assigned grid spot for the standing race start. The starting light system, which consists of five pairs of lights mounted above the start/finish line, then lights up each pair at one-second intervals. Once all five pairs are illuminated, after a random length of time (one to nine seconds), the red lights are turned off by the race director, at which point the race starts.[19] The race length is defined as the smallest number of complete laps that exceeds 305 kilometers (the Monaco Grand Prix is the sole exception with a race length of 78 laps / 260.5Â km),[20] though occasionally some races are truncated due to special circumstances. The race can not exceed two hours in length; if this interval is reached the race will be ended at the end of the next full lap. The only exception is if the race is halted by a Red flag in which case the total time including the red flag stoppage must not exceed 4 hours (since 2012), and the total time excluding the red flag stoppage may not exceed 2 hours.[21]