I came across this article highlighting recent issues with Formula One red flag decisions.
This article goes more in-depth with the three red flag calls, how they impacted the race and the merits of the decisions.
At particular issue is the second red flag. When it happened, Verstappen was the race leader with an 8 second lead over Hamilton.
Basically, If they had allowed him to finish the race behind a safety care or allowed a rolling restart (where the cars are ordered by position and allowed to drive a lap behind the safety car) Verstappen was for sure going to win. The red flag, however, caused a standing restart. Since Verstappen had shown weakness at previous standing starts, the red flag gave Hamilton a solid possibility at winning the race. So the red flag, from an entertainment perspective, was exciting and made the race competitive. But from a competitive perspective, was likely unfair to to Verstappen. Despite this, Verstappen still held Hamilton and placed first.
While Verstappen ultimately didn’t lose his position as a result of the restart, the same cannot be said for those behind Verstappen and Hamilton. A major crash resulted in a third and final red flag. The scrutiny is that some think the unnecessary second red flag “had confused the drivers and caused unnecessary crashes”.
Other drivers simply think the second red flag was unfair, with Lando Norris in particular saying “it feels like it was just to put on a show. Someone does something stupid at turn one, locks up and your race is over because they just want to make the show more exciting”.
Ultimately, in high speed racing with narrow margins of victory and the every present risk of crashes, these referee decisions can have a big impact on not only entertainment and competitive fairness, but the safety of the sport as well.