Flag Talk

The F1 FunCast is a podcast where the host, James Metsu, learns about Formula 1 motor racing. In this episode, he talks about the different flags used in Formula 1 races. He starts with the yellow flag, which indicates caution and requires drivers to slow down. He then discusses the safety car board, which is used when there is an incident on the track and drivers must follow the safety car. He mentions the striped red and yellow flag, which is used to indicate a slippery track or the presence of a small animal on the track. He also talks about the green flag, which signals that normal racing conditions apply, and the blue flag, which is shown to lapped cars to indicate that faster cars need to pass. James wonders if lapped cars ever ignore the blue flag to disrupt the race. Hello and welcome to the F1 FunCast, the only Formula 1 podcast designed to teach your host all the things about Formula 1 they wouldn't teach you in school. I'm James Metsu, you're riding on board with me today. What do you say we turn those lights out and get this party started? Yes, hello, welcome back. Thank you for joining me here today on the F1 FunCast, the Formula 1 podcast for beginners who want to learn along with me about the sport of Formula 1 motor racing. So I really appreciate you joining me here today. If you haven't been on the podcast before or haven't listened before, I have a very limited knowledge of Formula 1, but I certainly enjoy talking about it, learning about it, sharing things between friends, between new friends, between family, whoever out there might hear this and want to participate in the podcast in any way, I'd love for you to get in touch with me. The best way is at F1FunCast at gmail.com or on Twitter at F1FunCast or on Instagram at F1FunCast. So what we're going to do today I think is, for some reason I got the idea that I wanted to look up and learn about all the different flags you see on the side of the track during a Formula 1 race and what they all mean. I know for most of you, you know what they all are, and there's many of them that I knew what they were as well, but I thought it would be neat to go through and check them all out in case any of these funky ones that I found here ever pop up. We might be able to know what that means. You might be able to sound smart talking to your other casual friends and let them know, hey, that flag means look out for the little animal on the road. So I thought it would be neat to take a look at those today. If you hear this and you know more flags that aren't in use or that are in use or more definitions of what these flags are used for, I'd love to know about it. I'd love to find out more. Like I always say, I know very little. I'm just trying to learn here. I'm just trying to put this out into the world so that I can learn more and get feedback from you. That's why we're here. That's why I'm doing it. And I'd like to start with some flag stuff. What do you say? So I think what I'm going to do here is start with the more common flags that you might see waved at a Formula 1 weekend, and then we'll work our way down to some of the less common scenarios. We'll start with just a yellow flag. I'm on Formula 1 Wiki, so if you hear this and you realize this is a garbage site and they're tricking me, let me know. I don't like being tricked. What they tell me on this site is the yellow flag, which we see almost every weekend, is the meaning can vary depending on the way it is waved and how many are waved. A single yellow flag means overtaking is prohibited due to danger off the track. A speed reduction is required. A double-waved yellow flag means overtaking prohibited due to danger on the track. A specific speed reduction is added in order to increase driver's lap time to around 35% less than a normal dry lap time. The yellow flag means you better slow down a little bit. You better slow down. If you see two of them, you better really take it easy because there's something on the track. You've got to slow it down. There's dangers ahead. What is it? Trouble ahead? Trouble behind? Yellow flag, I think we all know, means caution. Slow it down. I didn't realize double yellow meant something on the track and a single yellow meant something off the track. I think that's pretty neat to find that out. The reduction in speed is added in order to increase a driver's lap time to 35% less than a normal dry lap. I'm sure there's numbers coming in from the pit over the radio letting you know you've got to bring it down this much and they're telling you what those hazards are ahead. The yellow, we see it fairly often. Biggest deal in the world. Let's move on. The next thing that comes up on this site is the safety car board. We see safety cars. You usually see them once or twice a race, I would say, from what I notice. Again, you guys know a lot more than I do. Maybe safety cars aren't as common as I've seen, or maybe I'm not noticing they're out there three, four times a race. Here's the definition of the safety car board. The safety car is put out on the track when an incident blocks a track or leaves a lot of debris. Drivers stay behind the safety car until marshals have it cleared up. This is poor writing on Formula 1 wiki here. It says, safety car until the marshals have cleared up. I suppose that's right. I would have said the marshals have cleared it up. Anyway, this is a lot less of me. A virtual safety car is for more minor incidents where no safety car is on the track, but drivers must slow down to a required delta. The board is always accompanied by a single waving yellow flag. So there you go, what we just talked about, the yellow flag. You're going to see the yellow flag and the safety car. You'd really have to be some kind of jerk to keep bombing through there or probably get banned. We're going to go into that sometime next week, what it takes to be disqualified and suspended and things like that, and who's got the reputation of being a bad boy or a bad team. The rule breakers. I've seen some great YouTube videos, but that's not for this week. This week we're talking flags, so we'll talk bad boys in the future. I promise you that. Next up we've got the striped red and yellow flag. It's pretty cool. It looks like some sort of war flag for a nation that just has a peaceful flag. This looks pretty hardcore with the stripes and the yellow and the red. Very intimidating. If I was sailing into your port and you were flying this yellow and red striped flag, I'd buzz off. But anyway, this comes out when the slippery track due to oil, water, or loose debris. Now this is the part I really like about this striped flag. It can be rocked from side to side. Not waved, rocked to indicate a small animal on track. If you see someone out there, if you're at a Formula 1 event in the future, or you're watching at home, and you see somebody rocking that striped red and yellow flag, keep your eye out. It could be, I don't know, a meerkat. Some kind of small animal has made its way onto the track, and they're really just trying to point out to you that, hey, there's a cute animal out there. Be careful. We don't want to run it down. And also, look at how cute it is. These races happen all over the world. There's aardvarks and meerkats and raccoons and all sorts of stuff probably find their way onto the track. I imagine, in all seriousness, it's more chipmunks, squirrels, birds, things like that. You could imagine just some little red panda finding its way out onto the Formula 1 track. I think some of these drivers would slow down to try to take pictures on the way by, you know, a little selfie with that raccoon before they took off again. But, yeah, so that's the red and yellow stripe. So it's a slippery track, usually oil or loose debris, but if you see it getting rocked back and forth like a little baby, it's because there's a cute little animal out there. And we want to make sure that animal sees tomorrow morning and knows who made it to the podium. So take it easy around that corner. Next, you see the green flag, which we see, you know, normal racing conditions apply. This is always shown following a yellow flag to indicate that the hazard has passed. So that little meerkat found its way off the track. Now up at the concession stand, getting some nachos, go ahead and continue to keep racing. Or the debris or the oil, whatever the hazard was, part of Yuki Tsunoda's bumper, whatever it was, it's gone now, keep racing. No big deal, but it always comes out after the yellow, and it's always shown at the start of the first session of the day. So I imagine, you know, FD1, they're out there waving the green flag, we're underway here. So nothing too adventurous or surprising there about the green flag. So we'll move on to the blue flag, which if you're a Williams fan, an AlphaTauri fan, you see a lot of blue flags. I imagine you get comfortable with blue flags in your life if you're some of those teams. Because what the blue flag is, is a blue flag indicates that the driver in front, who is one or more laps down, must let faster cars pass. We know that, right? You see the blue flag, you've got to let these cars, you're too slow, move it over. These cars are actually racing, why don't you just, you know, move over. If the car ignores three consecutive blue flags, a penalty is assessed to the driver. In practice and qualifying, this is shown when the car is hindered by a slower car. So if you ignore three blues, you're getting a penalty. You're not letting someone go by. Now that's something I wonder about, like, in the past. I mean, is it a faux pas? I'm sure it's more than a faux pas. Probably people get very angry, but could you, as a lapped car, stick your nose into the outcome of a race? If there's faster cars passing you, could you jam them up? I mean, if it was only for a little bit of coin or a place in the next, you know, a grid penalty, but you really didn't like Team A and you could kind of ignore those blue flags, has that happened? Has anyone out there? Let me know if you've ever heard of that at f1funcastedgmail.com or on Twitter. I'd be interested to know if that ever happens. If a lapped car is ever, you know, you're having a bad day, you're in traffic, they're telling you to let this guy by, you don't like guy number one, so you're going to slow him up a little bit, jam him up a little bit, so your buddy there in driver B can catch up and make it a race again. I wonder. I wonder if that's ever happened. Let me know. That would be really interesting to me. It sounds like a jerk move, a really jerky thing to do, but I bet it's happened. All right, so here's where we start to have a little bit more offbeat and interesting flags going on here. The white flag indicates a slow-moving vehicle ahead, often waved on the last corner during free practice when drivers are doing practice starts. That makes sense, right? You're pulled over to the side, you're doing practice starts, we don't need people rear-ending you, but also used when miscellaneous vehicles such as a medical car or ambulance is on track. So that's got to be something, right? You're out there trying to put in a good lap, you see that white flag going, and you know you're not where they're doing practice starts, so what could be out there on the track? You would think there would be cautions and there would be radio chatter, but imagine just getting that white flag and you look over and there's an ambulance or there's the EMT or, I don't know, construction workers could be on the side of the road. Why are there miscellaneous vehicles on the track at all without proper notification? But I guess back in the day, that was a pretty common way to let you know that something was afoot. Up ahead, there's something on the track that you're not expecting, slow-moving. That stops, you know, you're not in on a caution, but there's something ahead that you've got to keep your eyes open for. I remember hearing about, I think it was the Japanese Grand Prix, I know someone, there was a tragic accident and there was a crane on the track. If someone could enlighten me a little bit more about what happened and what went wrong that day. Because I remember last year, the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix, there was talk again, there was similar conditions, very wet, and I'm wondering if that, you know, is that a white flag situation where there was something else on the track? Or is that, I mean, you would think if something that hazardous is on, they'd be pulling you in instead of just waving a white flag. So I'm just curious when that's practically being used other than practice starts in free practice. But then, that brings me into the next flag I'm looking at here, which is the red, solid red, which a session is suspended or stopped due to imminent danger to competitors or spectators, or due to bad weather. All cars go right to the pits. And that makes sense, you know, that's like the red light. Something's going on here, there's a danger, it could be, I don't know, thunderstorms, could be something, I can picture, you know, a million different things. There's an earthquake, there's something going on, you need to get everyone off the road immediately and get them to safety, the red flag is out. So, interesting, I haven't seen a red flag yet in my, ah, that might not be true. I might not have noticed a red flag, I think we might have had a red flag in 2022. Um, I didn't see, maybe it's more common than I realized, but I'm going to be keeping my eyes out for that when they have these really wet sessions if they wave that red flag to end it. I always kind of figured it would go to a caution and then they just kind of call you in, but I guess those red flags go out when it comes from the top, we need to get you, we need to get you home right now. Alright, so then, here's one I would love to see, um, the black flag of doom, they call it the black flag on here, but, that's the driver is disqualified, must return to pits immediately, this flag is accompanied with the driver's race number and probably also a frowny, poopy face emoji for whatever you did to get the black flag. And I've seen some great YouTube videos of people ignoring the black flag, um, maybe we'll do an episode coming up about disqualifications, like I said with the bad boys, and things that have gone wrong, people who don't, you know, play by the rules necessarily, I'd like to do that, I'd like to do one on rule breakers, and I think people who ignore the black flag would definitely fall into that category, it could be pretty interesting, and, yeah, I think, I think that's a good one, I think maybe sometime in the near, in the near future we'll be doing an episode on the, the bad boys, the formula one, and hopefully we see some people who ignore that black flag. Um, then the next one down is like a black flag with an orange circle in the middle, almost if you picture a Japanese flag for Halloween, that's kind of what I'm seeing here with this one, black flag, orange circle in the middle, and that's letting you know that your car is damaged or driver has a mechanical problem and must return to the pits as soon as possible. The flag is accompanied with the driver's race number, so that's like when I'm driving around and my gas cap is open or my mirror is dangling off the side of my car, which have both happened before, and this is the equivalent of the guy next to me flashing his lights at me or waving it, waving me down, telling me, hey, your tire's a little flat in there, buddy, you gotta, so that happened to me the day I moved into our new place out here in California, I'm thinking like, hey, this is gonna be great, I'm gonna go check out the neighborhood, and my very first interaction with a neighbor was, I thought he was waving at me, just being friendly, and, you know, this isn't necessarily the friendliest part of San Diego, but I was like, hey, look at this guy being friendly, and he, I rolled the window down, and this guy, there were a few swears in there and a few names, but you, your tire's about to fall off, you got no air in your back right tire, man, and he went on and on and on, and I thought, you know, I'm gonna have to move, and it turns out this guy is a neighbor of mine, and one of the nicest, nicest guys I've ever met, he has barbecues every weekend, and he's a big family, and he's a great guy, but man, how embarrassing, your first interaction, you rolled down the window to say, hey, what's up, and he tells you, you know, you're driving around with a tire that was, and he was right, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have made it, I was heading, you know, 20 miles away, I wouldn't have made it five miles, but, so that's what we're dealing with here on the F1 Funcast, too, in terms of my car acumen, so let's not pretend this is some sort of, some sort of mechanical wonky talk here, this is basically the guy who needs to get to the closest air pressure checker to make it to work, so, but yeah, that was my first, my first time, my first interaction with someone in the state of California was them probably saving my life, because I was about to get on the five-lane freeway with a tire that was, as deflated as Tom Brady's footballs, does that still play? No, he's retired, he's an old man, Tom Brady, anyway, that's not, that's not, we've got a couple more flags, let's talk about those, the second to last one here is the half black, half white, and I like that they went with the diagonal, like 1990s style, early 90s, late 80s, like diagonal, they could have chopped it in the middle, they could have made a horizontal line, they could have made, they could have done anything they wanted, they did the diagonal, black and white, half black, half white flag, I think it looks great, maybe the best one, if I was going to make one of these flags into a piece of clothing, this might be the one, but this warns a driver for unsportsmanlike behavior, may be followed by the black flag of doom, upon further infringement, accompanied by the driver's race number, and a big thumbs down from everyone in the stadium, so if you're getting this, if you're getting this flag, half black, half white, you're doing something wrong, you're running people into the walls, you're doing something wrong, and again, we'll look into that more, about the things that can go wrong in a Formula 1 race, and we'll look into that more with the bad boys of racing, and I'm sure we'll see some black and white flags, followed by the black flag of doom, which I'm very excited about seeing at some point this season, I hope, can you remember the last black flag out there, can anyone email me or tweet me, the last time they saw a black flag, it would be interesting to know if it's something you see once a year, once every 10 years, is it the equivalent of someone getting tossed out of an NBA game, or is it the equivalent of like, you know, you've got to be the Ron Artest, Indiana Pacers in Detroit, to get the black and white flag, because there's different levels of them, I'm bored from like, I'd be interested to know how often, how often we see this stuff come out, but like with this podcast, we're about to hit the checkered flag, and the checkered flag indicates the session is completed, in practice and qualifying, it means drivers are not allowed to start laps, but they are allowed to complete laps, we all know that, I think you don't have to be a race fan to recognize, or know what a checkered flag means, and I'm sure by now everyone's seen the video of Apple CEO Tim Cook, with the least enthusiastic checkered flag, come on man, if you're going to do a checkered flag, if you get that honor at a Formula 1 race, you should be swinging that thing, and I'd be flying off the handles, like the ultimate warrior back in the day, you know I'd be bouncing off the ropes, swinging the checkered flag, and this guy looked like, he couldn't even hold it up, he looked like he was the heavy, like Mr. Burns, you know in the Simpsons, when they have Mr. Burns, like try to lift anything heavier than a pencil, my goodness man, come on, like, if you gotta wave the checkered flag at a Formula 1 race, you gotta, you gotta have something, you gotta have a little moxie Tim, you really let me down Tim, but, so that's my look today, at the different flags you see, again, if you guys see any flags out there, that I forgot about, that I should know about, that are unique, that I got wrong, if this website is no good, let me know, but I thought it would be fun today, I had a little fun talking, flags, and the different types of things you can see, with these flags at a Formula 1 race, and I think, I think one of our next ones too, is gonna be about the markings, all the markings on the racetrack itself, I think it would be fun to go through, all the different markings, and signage, and you know, everything there is on track, would be a lot of fun to get into, and hopefully we can expand, some of our knowledge base, when it comes to that next week, so, again, we're looking forward to the, the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, I'm hoping to maybe get somebody on the line with me, for a preview on Thursday or Friday, so keep an eye out for that, but maybe we'll hopefully, we'll do some bad boy of racing talk, coming up this week, keep an eye out for that, and some track markings too, I'd like to look into that, I'll start my research for you guys, and I again, I'd really, I want to thank you for listening to this, and joining me here, and I'd appreciate any, any kind of information, if you guys have links, if you have pages, if you have your own podcast, your own blog, things I can listen to, things I can watch, I'd really appreciate it, share it with me, and just let's have a, I'm going to have a fun year doing this, and hopefully this is just the beginning, and I look forward to talking Formula One, all different aspects of it, with all you listeners, going forward, so again, thanks again, get in touch at, F1Funcast, at Gmail, or on Twitter, Instagram, et cetera, I hope you guys have a great couple of days, and mail me in those predictions for the, for the Aussie Grand Prix, I'd love to know, I'd love to, to really get into some of these, I'd love to read them on air, and know what you think, is Red Bull going to run away with it, or are we looking at maybe, some of the gap closure, so, thanks for listening, and we'll get back to you guys soon, take care.