Tombazis said it was difficult to quantify what classified a car as being damaged enough to warrant a black and orange flag, but that teams would make the right call “in 99% of the cases” and pit their cars. The black and orange flag issue was still one that Haas wanted answers on come the end of the season, with the actions of race control coming under scrutiny throughout the year. Kevin Magnussen was called into the pits in Singapore with a loose front wing endplate. “I think we took some corrective action after the US.” So we went a bit too far in one direction. “I think then that created a bit of an overreaction where we started deeming cars unsafe even when they were a bit on the limit, let’s say. “That was one of the AlphaTauris, with rear wing damage that was taped up or something like that. “We had a situation in Baku where objectively a car was allowed to run with damage that really a car should not be running with,” said Tombazis.

The team brought Tsunoda into the pits, only to repair the car by taping the wing up so it would not come loose before sending the AT03 car back out. Tombazis explained this dated back to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in June, when the black and orange flag was shown to AlphaTauri driver Tsunoda after the DRS flap on his rear wing failed. “Our assessment was, having analysed the situation, that we overreacted a bit.” We already saw one or two cars after that that were not shown the black and orange flag,” said Tombazis. “We revised our criteria on the black and orange flag from Mexico onwards. The FIA is set to reduce its use of the black and orange flag moving forward as a result, with its technical chief, Tombazis, accepting there had been an overreaction. That prompted Haas to launch a protest against Fernando Alonso’s car in Austin, which raced with a loose rear view mirror that eventually fell off due to accident damage. Haas drivers were told to pit on three occasions in 2022 due to loose front wing endplates, despite the team feeling the car was still safe and not posing any risk.

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