Motorsport flags: what every one means at a UK race meeting

Your radio packs up halfway through a stint. The pit board goes by and you take in none of it. One thing at a race track has never yet let a driver down: a marshal standing on a post with a flag in their hand, and every driver out there has agreed to obey it. Motorsport UK puts the flags in the Yearbook, the Blue Book, and you sit a test on them before anybody hands you a race licence. Misread one and the cheap version is a penalty. The expensive version is your car.

What follows is the set you will actually meet at a British club meeting, what each one is telling you, and where it parts company with the version you have watched on television. There is a quiz at the end. Do it before your next test day.

These describe what is going on ahead of you. Marshals show each one from the post before the trouble, so by the time your brain catches up you are already in the zone it covers.

Yellow is the one you will see most. A single waved yellow means a hazard ahead, on the track or hard against it: a spun car, a car being pushed off, marshals down on the verge. Lift enough that it shows. Expect to change your line. Leave the overtaking alone until you have gone past the green flag at the far end of the incident. The zone runs yellow to green, not yellow to as far as you can see. Somebody gets caught by that most weekends, and it is nearly always a re-pass on a driver who lifted harder than they did.

Two yellows waved together mean the road is blocked, either part of it or the lot. Slow right down and be ready to stop. That car sitting sideways at the next corner is exactly what the marshals were warning you about.

Green closes a yellow zone. It also starts the formation lap. Every post shows one on the opening lap of a practice session, which gives you a free lap to count them and learn where they live.

The striped flag is held still, and it means the grip is about to change under you. Usually a car has dropped oil or coolant, or gravel or water has found its way across the road. There is no overtaking ban with it. Just take the next corner as though somebody has been at it with a bucket of soap.

In the UK, white means something slow is out on the track in that section: an ambulance, a recovery truck, or a car limping back to the pits on three cylinders. Held still, the vehicle is in the next sector. Waved, it is in this one. It does not mean the last lap. That meaning belongs to American oval racing, and it has no business at a British club weekend.

Blue means a quicker car is coming through. Held still, somebody is sitting close behind you. Waved, they are on you and about to go past. Hold a predictable line and do not fight it. In a multi-class race such as Britcar, where a GT car might lap a Trophy car three or four times, the blue flag more than earns its keep, and the leaders do remember the drivers who made it easy.

Red stops the session, usually after a bad accident or because the weather has turned. Slow right down straight away, do not overtake, and head for the pit lane or stop where the marshals point you. Assume there is a stopped car, an ambulance or a knot of marshals somewhere on the track ahead. The Clerk of the Course decides whether you restart, and as a rule the grid comes from the last completed lap.

Motorsport UK brought in Code 60 in 2016 as an alternative to the Safety Car. Pink flags go out at every post, every car drops to 60 km/h (37 mph), and the order freezes. Nobody overtakes, nobody closes up, and the gaps stay exactly where they were. That is the entire point of the thing: marshals get to clear an isolated incident without handing the field a free restart behind a Safety Car. Racing starts again when the Code 60 flags come in and the greens go out. Watch your speed here. From inside a racing car, 60 km/h feels far slower than it sounds, and somebody is measuring it.

The Safety Car is the older method. Marshals wave yellows and show an SC board at every post. You slow, nobody overtakes, and you join the queue behind the Safety Car in single file. When its lights go out it peels into the pits at the end of that lap, and you go racing again either as you cross the line or when the green appears, depending on your series regulations. A Safety Car concertinas the field, so that 20-second lead you built is worth nothing by the restart. Which is why endurance series would far rather use Code 60 or a Full Course Yellow.

The next three come with your race number on a board beside them, so there is no wondering who the marshals mean. They go out at the start and finish line, and in most cases at the pit exit too.

The black flag with an orange disc, the meatball to anyone who has raced, means the marshals can see something wrong with your car that you probably cannot: a trailing bumper, a fuel leak, smoke, a wheel working loose. Come in next lap, get it sorted, rejoin. Nobody is punishing you. Out of the whole set, this is the one flag shown for your benefit.

The black and white flag, split on the diagonal, is a warning. The Clerk of the Course has seen something they did not like: weaving, a squeeze on the exit of a corner, an unsafe rejoin. You get it once. Carry on the same way and the next flag with your number next to it will be black.

A black flag with your number sends you into the pits on the next lap to report to the Clerk of the Course. Could be your driving standards. Could be the state of your car. Could be that you ignored an earlier flag. You do not get to finish the lap you were on, and you certainly do not get to argue about it out on the circuit. Ignore a black flag and the penalty becomes an exclusion.

The chequered flag comes out at the line once the race distance or time is done. Your race ends the moment you cross under it, so back off, keep the cool-down lap clear of overtaking, and give the marshals a wave. They have been stood on that post all day.

Posts are numbered and spaced so you can see the next one from the one you have just gone past. A flag goes out at the post before the section it covers, and the serious ones repeat at every following post until the hazard is behind you. Waved means here, now. Held still means it is coming. At night, and increasingly in daylight as well, Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Donington back the flags up with LED light panels at the posts, showing the same colours and much easier to pick out through spray.

Here is the bit nobody tells you until you have raced: you will not be looking at the posts. Your eyes are on your braking point, your mirrors and the car in front. Learning where every post sits on a circuit, so you catch them in the corner of your eye, is part of learning the track.

Formula 1 uses the same basic set, with two differences worth knowing about. F1 runs a Virtual Safety Car, which is closer to Code 60 than to a Safety Car, except drivers hold above a delta time rather than a fixed speed. And an F1 blue flag carries a penalty once a driver has ignored three, whereas at club level it comes down to sportsmanship and how much patience the Clerk has left. The World Endurance Championship runs a Full Course Yellow at 80 km/h, Code 60's quicker cousin. None of those boards show up at a British club meeting. Code 60 does.

Overtaking between the yellow and the green, because the car ahead lifted more than you did. Pressing on under a double yellow because the incident looked tame from a distance. Treating a held blue flag as a suggestion in a multi-class race. Missing the meatball because you never glance at the start line post. Not knowing which board carries your number. Every one of those earns a penalty, and every one of them goes away once you read the flags before you read the racing.