It also happened to Alain Prost in Britain in 1985, Lewis Hamilton in China in 2014 and Sebastian Vettel in 2018. That was in 1978, at the Argentine Grand Prix, when Fangio accidentally waved it at Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus after mistaking it for the other Lotus of race-leader Mario Andretti. In fact, five F1 races have been halted early – and the first time it happened the flag was in the hands of legendary five-time champion Juan Manuel Fangio!

If you think that waving a flag is a pretty simple thing to get right, though, you would be wrong. It clearly shows a chequered flag being lowered in front of the oncoming French driver Louis Wagner as he came to cross the line for victory. However, the first genuine record of its use in motorsport is in a photograph from the Vanderbilt Cup in New York from that same year, 1906. The book ‘ A flag worth dying for’ by Tim Marshall suggests it was first used at the Glidden Tours Road Rally in 1906, when chequered flags identified time checkers at the of each end stage. Some point to origins in horse racing and others to French cycling races in the 1800s, but there is no evidence of either. Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images Chequered flagĮveryone knows this is waved to the leader at the end of a race and also the end of every practice or qualifying session, but nobody seems to know exactly when or where the practice first started. Stormzy, Rapper waves the finish flag while Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 W10 crosses the line There is a wide range of flags types in the marshals’ arsenal, so here’s a run-down of what they all mean and how they have been used in the past. Marshals use buttons to send flag signals directly to race control, circuit light panels and a set of LEDs on the driver’s dashboard, which light up when the related flag colour is waved. To supplement – not replace – the traditional marshalling flags, F1 now also uses a GPS marshalling system. Click here to start your game plan.ġ8+, New UK players only, min £10 deposit, Full T&Cs Apply,, Play Responsibly

Winning in F1 is all about executing a highly tuned plan. The track is divided into a large number of marshalling sectors – far more than the three timing sectors – and at the start of each one there is a ‘marshal post’ where the flags are waved to tell drivers of dangers on the track.

Flag signals were first used in F1 to communicate trackside to car in 1963.

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