FIA forced to issue statement following yet another system failure.

Hot on the heels of the software issue that threw last weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix into chaos, the sport's governing body was today forced to admit to another failure.

In the final moments of SQ1, the timing screens went awry - not for the first time those of you who use the official app will know - and was a minute or so after the session that the order was settled.

"The start of SQ2 will be delayed due to an issue with timing systems," said the FIA in a statement, "some lap times had not been registered," it admitted.

"That is now resolved and the current timings are considered correct. We are investigating whether we can proceed with the rest of the session."

However, in the moments after the admission, a message from Race Control said that overtake was enabled, even though SQ2 had yet to start.

In the final moments of SQ1, a number of drivers had complained that despite overtake mode supposedly being enabled they were lacking power.

After Sprint qualifying had concluded, the FIA issued another statement.

"During the first period of Sprint Qualifying there was a human error in Race Control unrelated to the timing issue also encountered in SQ1," it read. "The issue in question meant Overtake Mode was not available after the red flag period during SQ1.

"When it became apparent that Overtake Mode was not active after the restart, it was then activated for a period of 27 seconds before being deactivated again.

"The FIA acknowledges that this unfortunate human error had an impact on the performance of certain cars based on the timing of their run and their position around the lap.

"The second and third periods of Sprint Qualifying were not affected."

"We did the whole lap with half-a-second less power than any other lap of the weekend, so that's never going to help," complained Carlos Sainz who was classed 22nd. "But with all the issues that we had on the brakes and tyres in that quali, we would have always struggled to get through.

"We only got one lap and we had some issues with the brakes in FP1," he continued. "We had to change them for qualifying and we were having some brakes issues still. I had a few lock-ups and was struggling a lot with that and with the tyres.

"But on top of that half of the cars did the lap with half a second quicker engine than the others. There was another software issue with the cars at this time around and we on the bad end of it.

"For whatever reason, the FIA, like in Malaysia, didn't decide to do sporting equity, and were happy to do half of the cars in quali with a higher power than the other half of their cars," said the Spaniard. "So I'm a bit confused why the sport keeps doing different things depending on who is out in Q1 or who is in lap one."

Check out our Friday gallery from Singapore here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by ClarkwasGod, less than 1 minute ago

"This is starting to cause concern. More and more evidence is coming to light just how much the FIA can interfere with the performance. Given the drive for "entertainment", how long before something "accidental" occurs and skews a result, and maybe a championship?"

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2. Posted by Superbird70, 4 hours ago

"@KKK- Nice, but go a step further. No communication to car from pit. Only to the driver via radio or pit board.

Put a 'check engine' light on steering wheel.
"

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3. Posted by KKK, 5 hours ago

"Just get rid of the electric power and mo software be able to be downloaded. Bring v8's back governed by a sealed ecu, no changes to be made during the weekend of the races"

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4. Posted by Superbird70, 5 hours ago

"I believe it would be it's wrong to cite human error as the cause.

The documentation is bad.
The training is poor.
The system wasn't validated.
The equipment is faulty.

Care to add to the list?

"

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5. Posted by Wokingchap, 5 hours ago

"FFS..........it's worse than ridiculous. There should NOT be ANY electronic control to cars by blxxxy stewards !"

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6. Posted by Celtic Tiger, 6 hours ago

"An understandably frustrated Carlos Sainz is laying the boot in. Everyone makes mistakes, of course the timing of it doesn't help that some individual in the FIA's Race Control booth is p*ssing up the walls when there is already sh*te on the floor, but it happens. Having said that, timing issues and the like wasn't a big issues five/six years ago as far as I can recall. This should serve as a wake up call for the FIA, AI has its place but not in everything.
Because, it is as they say "if you don't use it, you lose it". Too many wrinkles being smoothed out in their brains by relying on AI systems to think and analyze for them. There is a reason kids in the west are not properly socialized and, alarmingly, are graduating high school and entering collages barely able to read at a grade school level (in some cases not at all), spell or write long form essays."

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7. Posted by JamesD, 7 hours ago

"A small human error ? Are there any humans at the FIA these days ?! Certainly no humanity, that's for sure."

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8. Posted by Tyrbiter, 8 hours ago

"Looks like they need to pay Anthropic a subscription to Claude Code."

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Another day, another FIA system issue

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