According to Lotus Team Principal Tony Fernandes, his driver Heikki Kovalainen has proposed a novel way to spice up the action in Formula 1 – scrap the blue flags!
Speaking with Bloomberg, the Malaysian airline magnate has reported that his driver suggested that "lapped cars should not be blue flagged, which may allow time for trailing cars to catch up to the leaders".
Currently, the blue flags seem almost to be unfurled by the track marshals when a leading car is within a kilometre of the backmarker he is approaching!
The issue of lacklustre races has come to an ugly head following the season-opening Bahrain GP, which was the first since 1993 to be run without mid-race refuelling.
"There are going to be boring bits in every sport," said Fernandes in his interview.
There used to be a much greater focus placed on the skill of the driver doing the lapping of the backmarkers in earlier times, particularly if they came upon a battle between several lower runners.
But do we went to see situations like this again?
Richard Bailey
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