Adrian Sutil believes that the safety car should have been deployed after his initial crash at the Dunlop Curve. Marussia driver Jules Bianchi suffered serious injury at today’s Japanese Grand Prix.

It all started with ten laps remaining of the race at Suzuka. Sutil spun off the track at Turn 7 in the worsening rain conditions, but no safety car was deployed. Racing continued but on the following lap, Bianchi had a similar spin. His car however aquaplaned straight into the recovery vehicle which was deployed to remove Sutil’s Sauber. He was immediately taken to the medical centre, and then to hospital in a state of unconsciousness.

The corner is notoriously dangerous and Sutil says he does not know why a safety car was not deployed immediately.

“With respect to this corner – everyone knows this is one of the trickiest, when it’s getting late and the rain increases, if you have an accident there you should probably think about a safety car,” Sutil said. “It’s tricky conditions today and not easy to make the right decision absolutely at the right moment.

“At the beginning of the race we managed it quite well with the safety car. When we came in, the visibility was okay, the track was okay to drive, but it just got a little bit dark a bit early and maybe we should have stopped the race a bit earlier.”

Sutil said Bianchi’s crash was not too different to his own, but added that the outcome was much worse.

“The car came out to rescue my car and then it all happened. The yellow flags were out. I was just aquaplaning at that corner, it’s a tricky one and as the rain got more and more the ability [to drive] got less and less and then one lap later, with waved yellow flags, Jules came round and had the same spin there and that was it. It was more or less the same crash but the outcome was a bit different.”

Sutil also said that the the drivers were not asked about whether they were comfortable with the race going ahead at the scheduled time, depite the forecast of heavy rains. “Yes, for sure,” Sutil said when asked whether the race could have been run in the morning. “I think they spoke about it. We weren’t asked about our opinion. It was very clear it got more wet all the day through and it would have been quite easy to make the race earlier. But as I say, it’s not in my hands.”