Luca Filippi critical of safety car inconsistencies

Luca Filippi believes Sunday’s TCR Europe series race at the Red Bull Ring should have been stopped or completed behind the safety car, criticising what he perceived to be inconsistent race control decisions.

The BRC Racing Team driver was leading a chaotic and rain-affected final race of the weekend when he started the last lap, but faced heartbreak when he was sent spinning into the wall following contact with eventual winner Luca Engstler just a few corners from home.

With the incident currently under investigation by the stewards, Filippi would not be drawn into a liability debate when asked by TouringCarTimes, claiming he doesn’t “yet have a strong opinion about it” and that he was “unsure if he [Engstler] did it deliberately”.

Instead, Filippi – who was on course for his first TCR win before the clash – aimed criticism at inconsistent safety car procedures, stating that the race should potentially have been stopped when Jessica Bäckman retired in a perilous position between the final two corners (Turns 9 and 10) with three laps to go.

Bäckman’s stricken Hyundai was left at the side of the track, on the run-off area not far from the racing line, until the end of the race, with only yellow flags to warn drivers as opposed to previous situations in the race that had called for fully-fledged safety car interventions.

“They sent out the safety car for a car [Zengo Motorsport’s Tamás Tenke] that was out of the way in Turn 1, up on the hill, quite safe, visible and with space,” Filippi argued, “but they didn’t do it in the last three laps when there was a car [Bäckman] between Turn 9 and Turn 10 almost in the racing line. That is out of the fastest turn on the circuit, in a blind corner with no visibility, and when we were running slick tyres in the wet. If someone came spinning through Turn 9, that would have been a big one.

“For me, I think this is not coherent. If you take a decision which is sensible, and I think it was in the other [safety car] instances, and then you do nothing in a much worse situation… With that I am unhappy. I am unhappy. I think the race should have been stopped with just three laps to go and we should have won, or there should have been another safety car. I have spoken to other drivers and they all have the same feeling.”

The decision not to bring out the safety car following Bäckman’s retirement ultimately cost Filippi a likely victory, as intensified rain at the back of the circuit spelled bad news for the Italian single-seater convert – who revealed that his windscreen wipers had stopped working at that time.

“The wipers stopped working and it was raining quite a lot, especially in the far end of the track, so it was very difficult to see anything,” Filippi said. “I couldn’t see much for at least the last three laps.”