Webber/Lotterer slam WEC's 'Russian roulette' virtual safety car

Porsche driver and reigning champion Webber claimed that the WEC system known as the full course yellow, during which the cars are limited to 80km/h rather than 60km/h in Formula 1, turned round four of the 2016 series on Sunday into a lottery.

"There is still some work to do on the full course yellows - it's a bit like Russian roulette at the moment," he said.

"It was a bit of a mixed up race: we lost some time in a full course yellow period when the car in front of me wasn't going 80km/h as the regulations say."

Lotterer added: "I agree with Mark. We are all racing at such a high level, and then it's Russian roulette in the full course yellows.

"They are destroying the racing, so we need to sit down and talk about it."

The #1 Porsche 919 Hybrid that Webber shared with Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley lost the lead to the sister car of Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas, which gained approximately 40 seconds after pitting under full course yellows.

Webber and his team-mates subsequently won the race after Lieb clashed with a backmarker and was penalised.

The full course yellows also played a significant role in the GTE Pro result.

The Aston Martin Vantage GTE of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen was on course for second in class, but dropped to fourth when it pitted one lap ahead of its rivals, which all stopped when the race was neutralised immediately afterwards.

The Aston subsequently made it back onto the podium after the Ganassi Ford GT running third was penalised for a pitstop infringement.

Vincent Beaumesnil, sporting director of WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, dismissed the criticism of full course yellows.

"The other way of doing it would be to use the safety car and that would most likely have a much more dramatic effect on the outcome of the race, never forget that," he told Autosport.

"No safety procedure can have zero effect, but we believe that the full course yellow is the one that affects the race the least."

He also denied that the six full course yellows on Sunday represented an over-use of the system.

"We can't send marshals onto the track under normal yellow flags," he stated.

Beaumesnil said that slow zones, the local full course yellows used at the Le Mans 24 Hours, were not suitable for the regular six-hour WEC races, even though provision had been made for their use in the regulations.

"My opinion is that full course yellows are perfect for the WEC races, but not so relevant for Le Mans because the circuit is so long," he explained.

AUTOSPORT SAYS

The Russian roulette analogy used by Webber and Lotterer isn't quite right.

But their use of the term does highlight the issues that come with neutralising the race to deal with a broken down car or debris on the circuit.

There are always going to winners and losers out on track, so the aim of the rules and their implementation by race control must be to minimise the effect on the racing.

There might be a better solution out there somewhere, but at the moment the full course yellow has to be preferable to regular use of the safety car.

It's the best of a bad bunch.