"It ruins the competition"- Former F1 champion wants Virtual Safety Car to be 'abolished' from the sport

1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve feels the sport should remove the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) completely and deemed it useless. In his latest column for Formule1.nl, the Canadian took a hit at the race management and claimed that the VSC often "ruins the competition".

At the 2022 F1 Dutch Grand Prix last weekend, Yuki Tsunoda's incident brought out the VSC that essentially ruined Mercedes' plans for the weekend. Writing about it, Villeneuve stated:

“Who also did not excel was the race management. I can’t follow them this year, always that Virtual Safety Car (VSC)… It ruins the competition and as far as I’m concerned, the VSC should be abolished. It’s just no use. Sometimes people complain about lack of tension, so stop that first. In the end, the safety car came after all because it was not safe either. It took an unbelievably long time before neutralization took place, which resulted in a dangerous situation with braking cars. With the safety car, we got an exciting end. It should not be used as a means, but this is what we want.”

Meanwhile, Mercedes driver George Russell was asked if his team could have secured their first win of the season last weekend had the late VSC not come out. The Briton replied, saying:

“I really think we could have. We lost a lot of time at the beginning and ultimately, we lost a lot of race time after a bad qualifying. Had we been within touching distance of Max [Verstappen] after stint one, I see no reason why we wouldn’t have fought for victory. It’s really, really promising, what we’re showing as a team, and it’s exciting for the rest of the season.”

Admitting that his teammate Lewis Hamilton "deserved a better result" at the 2022 F1 Dutch GP, he added:

“To be honest, we knew we had really good pace and we thought there was a genuine chance we could fight for victory for Lewis. He did a really great race and as a team, we deserved a better result and unfortunately, that’s just how it goes sometimes. And it’s very easy retrospectively, but really proud and pleased with the pace that we showed.”

Lewis Hamilton, who pitted for medium compound tires instead of softs, was later passed by his teammate and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. He eventually only managed to secure a disappointing fourth-place finish.

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Lance Stroll claims he got "unlucky" with VSC timing at 2022 F1 Dutch GP

Aston Martin's Lance Stroll believes that he could have secured a better result last weekend at the 2022 F1 Dutch GP, had it not been for the poorly timed VSC. He claimed that the VSC gave the two Alpines and the McLaren of Lando Norris an advantage.

In a post-race interaction, the Canadian said that he could have potentially fought for seventh, which would have been his best result so far in the 2022 F1 season. He said:

“We were a little bit unlucky today with how things played out and how that affected our strategy. The timing of the Safety Car gave the Alpines and Norris the advantage: without that we could have been fighting for seventh. Our pace was strong all weekend, I felt really confident in the car, and we were more competitive.”

With a 10th-place finish at Zandvoort last weekend, Lance Stroll now stands eighteenth in the 2022 F1 drivers' standings with five points to his name.