'Selfish and silly?' Mercedes and Ferrari's F1 race start row explained

George Russell seemed to indicate Ferrari is against the FIA making 2026 Formula 1 race starts less chaotic, amid multiple drivers expressing safety fears at the Chinese Grand Prix.

Franco Colapinto narrowly avoided slamming into the back of Liam Lawson’s slow-moving Racing Bulls at the start of the Australian GP, raising concerns about the safety of race starts.

Many drivers believe it’s an accident waiting to happen unless the rules are changed.

Exactly why there’s been such variance between drivers has been something of a question mark, with multiple drivers complaining of a drained battery by the time they lined up on the grid.

Ferrari’s smaller turbo certainly helps it and its customer teams off the line, but the exact cause of bad starts like Lawson’s has remained something of a mystery.

But Grand Prix Drivers’ Association director Russell, who lost the lead to the fast-starting Ferrari of Charles Leclerc at the start in Melbourne, pointed to one flaw in the rules likely to be a factor in at least some of the start issues.

“I think there was an error that caught a lot of teams out, which was the harvest limit on the formation lap,” Russell said.

“So a very quirky rule. I don't know if you guys know this or not, every lap there's a harvest limit.

“The drivers who started in the first half of the grid who were beyond the timing line, they were already within that lap.

“So when you did your formation lap start, you're spending your battery and you're charging your battery, which goes towards your harvest limit.

“The drivers at the back, when they did their formation lap start, they then launch away, they cross the start finish line and then it resets because they're effectively on the next lap.

“So from what we did in the practice starts. We did the launch before this line and it reset and on the race start, started from pole, I went on the throttle, I charged the battery, but it took like 50% of my harvest limit of that lap.

“So when I got halfway around the track, I could no longer charge the battery. I had no power to do proper burnouts.”

Ferrari's against the change

Russell hinted that Ferrari was against the FIA adjusting this rule.

“The FIA were looking to potentially adjust that, but as you can imagine, some teams who were making good starts didn't want it, which I think is just a little bit silly,” Russell explained.

“But I'm not overly concerned, but it's definitely a challenge.”

With a concession over extending the start procedure by five seconds for the Australian Grand Prix - a move Ferrari tried to block - having already been given, The Race understands Ferrari’s stance is that no further changes should be made to further accommodate teams whose car designs are not optimised for the current rules set.

While no specific change to the rules has been put forward yet, Ferrari believes that the focus now should be on teams to adapt their procedures to the rules - which have been set in stone for a while and which Ferrari designed its power unit around.

One source suggested that if drivers have safety concerns with the way things are now, then they have the option to start from the pitlane.

Max Verstappen said there were a “few simple solutions” to battery issues generally at the start of the race, but they need to be “allowed by the FIA”.

He added: “Starting with 0% battery is not a lot of fun and quite dangerous. So we're in discussions with them to see what can be done.

“You can see we almost had a massive shunt in Melbourne in the start, some of that is related to battery, some can happen with an anti-stall, but you can see a lot of big speed differences.

“I was not the only car that had almost no battery or 20/30%, this is something that can be easily fixed.”

Asked about Verstappen's comments, Russell said:  "[The FIA] could do [changes], I think they want to but they need a super majority from the teams which they don't have.

“So you can probably guess which team is against that. I don't think their gain is coming from this issue. Now all the teams know the problem, we'll just drive around it.

“But it's just creating a bit of unnecessary complications to something that doesn't really need to be there.

“So as I said, half the grid messed up in Melbourne. We'll adjust. We know what we need to be wary of now. The FIA did just want to make our life easier and just remove this harvest limit.

“But as often people have selfish views and they want to do what's best for themselves and that's part of Formula 1 and part of the challenge of Formula 1, we'll deal with it. I think the starts here will be much better.”

'Massive' start crash a matter of time

The protagonists in the Melbourne near-miss suggested a “massive” startline crash felt like “just a matter of time” given the big variations in the quality of starts at this very early point in the new rules cycle.

Cadillac driver Sergio Perez had a close-up view of Colapinto slewing his Alpine past Lawson before also using the same narrow gap between the barely-moving Racing Bulls and the pitwall

“It's a shame that I say that it's just a matter of time before a massive shunt happens,” said Perez when asked about the start situation by The Race.

“Because it’s just these power units are very difficult to start. You can have a good start or you can have a bad start by so many different factors.

“You can get anti-stall like what happened to Lawson and then that can be very dangerous because the speeds that you end up doing within two to three seconds are extreme. It's a difficult one because I don't know what you can do in that regard. It's just that these new engines are very difficult to start.”

Lawson agreed “if it keeps going on like this, then yes” when The Race put Perez’s “matter of time” opinion to him.

“What happened to me at the weekend, it's so easy for it to happen,” Lawson continued.

“And if Franco hadn't done a very good job at avoiding it, that would have been a really, really big crash. At the moment, it is quite dangerous.”

Colapinto said watching the onboard replays of his avoidance move showed it was “even closer than what I thought, even more sketchy” and Lawson admitted he was convinced the Alpine was going to slam into him.

“It was very impressive from his side to avoid it. He had very good reactions and I was very lucky,” said Lawson.

“Honestly at that point I had braced already in the car because I was looking in my mirror and I saw his car on my left when he was close to me and I was sure he was going to hit me and then all of a sudden he came by me on the right.”

Colapinto’s team-mate Pierre Gasly half-joked about the consequences for Alpine’s spare parts situation had he hit the Racing Bulls, while admitting it had been a frightening moment for the team.

“Franco's situation clearly was scary,” said Gasly. “I thanked him many times again this morning because we're quite short on parts. For all of us in the team, it was definitely a scary one.”