The opening free practice for the Australian Grand Prix was interrupted with a red flag after GPS problems at the Albert Park track, with an issue with the distribution of live tyre information being blamed.
The live tyre information that is used by teams and live feeds to show where cars are on track failed just after the forty minute mark causing the black out of information, although the GPS system itself was still active in Formula 1’s monitoring station within race control.
The session was halted for around nine minutes while a fix was put into place, with drivers effectively driving blind as a result of the failure, which meant the pit wall could not see where they were on track nor warn them about any faster cars coming from behind.
With the track during free practice sessions often busy as teams try and learn about their car and how to best set it up for the weekend, the sensible decision was made by the stewards to through the red flags, ending the risk of causing an unnecessary accident on track.
Valtteri Bottas was one of the drivers who supported the decision for the session to be stopped, the Alfa Romeo F1 Team Stake driver believing it would have been risky to keep cars circulating without the information from the pit wall.
“It’s a bit tricky obviously,” Bottas is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com. “It depends on the track but when there’s lots of traffic and half of the field is on a fast lap and half of the field is on a slow lap then it’s a bit blind. So, I think it’s a bit of a safety thing.
“I think it would be manageable [to carry out without teams having GPS positioning information], but there’s this one extra risk factor that somebody’s parked in a blind corner and someone who comes flat out without information.”