F1 red flag rules: What does red flag mean in Formula One?

Tanish Chachra | 06/09/2020
F1 red flag rules: What does red flag mean in Formula One?

F1 red flag rules: What’s the use of the red flag in Formula 1 and when was it used in the last five years of F1 championship and why?

Charles Leclerc crashed into the barrier in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza before the red flags were waved to make the cars discontinue the race.

The crash was a major one, but luckily Leclerc was fine as he responded to the team radio.  But the race was stalled for a significant number of minutes. In a nutshell, the line prior to this defines the purpose of the red flag.

But according to the official definition, it is a signal for the suspension or stoppage of the session due to imminent danger to competitors, weather is bad or spectators.

Hence, at the Italian Grand Prix, the reason for Red Flag was Leclerc, which ended Ferrari’s participation at Monza in the 2020 season.

How many times F1 red flag rules has been used in the last 5 years and why?

Since the inception of the championship, red flags have been shown 71 times that makes it slightly more than once in a year. Coming to the specification.

The rate has been somewhat similar in the last five years, as it has only been shown only 6 times. Surprisingly, it was not even shown even once in the last two years.

Here’s the list of Red Flag incidents in the last 5 years:

  1. Australian Grand Prix 2016: Accident involving Fernando Alonso and Esteban Gutiérrez. Gave few injuries to Alonso.
  2. Belgian Grand Prix 2016: Accident of Kevin Magnussen, resulting in a damaged barrier.
  3. Brazilain Grand Prix 2016: Only race in the last 5 years, when flags were shown twice. First, because accident faced by Kimi Raikkonen du to rain and second because of massive rain.
  4. Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2017: A he amount of debris followed on the track after multiple accidents.
  5. Italian Grand Prix 2020: Charles Leclerc crashing into barrier.
Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
ferrari Red Flag

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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