The Melbourne race was red-flagged for the third and final time on lap 57 of 58 after a chaotic restart, causing a 30-minute delay to determine how the event would end.
With one lap remaining, the safety car led the surviving cars across the line in the order they had been restarted last time, bringing the race to an anticlimactic end and dealing a blow to the eliminated drivers.
Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, one of the drivers who crashed on the final lap restart, sprinted out of the media pen after seeing his competitor follow the safety car into the final lap as he finished last A lap decision prevented scoring.
FIA race control followed the rulebook, teeing off the way the race ended, but questions were raised about whether the rules themselves needed to be re-examined to prevent a repeat of the chaos at Albert Park.
But Alpine’s Szafnauer, who also saw his fellow driver Esteban Ocon scoreless after a collision with Gasly, thought the rules were “good” because it was impossible to satisfy all situations.
“In this case, if you say: ‘Okay, okay, let’s change the rules because it’s going to help,’ there are other situations where the opposite happens,” Szafnauer said.
“The rules are what they are, and whatever they are, you can’t change them during the game.
“After the season, if you look back, it’s going to be 50-50, for better or for worse, because we’ll have a lot of different situations and sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.
“So, I think the rules are fine now.
Marshals remove Esteban Ocon’s damaged car Alpine A523 from the track after the race
Photography: Simon Galloway / motorsport pictures
“My real belief is that we can have these scenarios … you have to start with the rules and then follow them.
“Now, if we want to look at them after the fact, it’s okay, let the sporting director look at it.”
He then joked: “If we were to change the rules, I’d make it a 55-lap race. That’s what I’d do,” referring to the stage where the two Alps are still on points.
Asked if Alpine pushed to the end of the race before finishing the final lap, Szafnauer said: “Of course, we definitely pushed because we could have been there.
“The second safety car line was before Turn 1, so Pierre was probably around fourth.
“Yes, of course we asked them to. We weren’t sure what was going to happen.
“But I think they made the right decision. It’s the rules, so you have to play by the rules.”