The decision to call the SC after yellows were shown only took them 10 odd seconds which was surprisingly quick, they seemingly did not even consider the VSC.
I always thought the whole idea of the VSC was to allow the marshalls to remove a car safely when no recovery vehicle is required, this was the case here, as the car being pushed was shown on the feed.
The mere fact that the race direction did not wait until the cars were all lined up behind the SC implies that they thought it was safe enough to do so under conditions which were no different to a VSC, as, to my knowledge, the SC and VSC delta times on the dash are the same [...]
I did check if anything contradicted the basic assumption my argument hinges on and i could not find anything [...] the regs just mention the time set by the ECU and i couldn't find anything beyond that, additionally i did have a glance at the lap times as i don't like talking out my arse.
[The VSC lap times are roughly] 30%-40% [above normal race times] which was probably something that was estimated based on previous races (not an official number).
I don't think there's any driver who finished a full lap with the delta times without having caught the SC yet and without doing a stop, one of those who got close to doing that is Stroll as he was the furthest car from the SC when it picked up LEC and also hadn't caught the SC train yet after pitting.
His outlap was a 2:03 (lap41) incl. the stop (~30s total) - which puts it perfectly at 30% or even below from a baseline of 95s accounting for going slower in the pits but then not being bound by the delta [on pit entry and exit]
Various other drivers did times around 2:03 in that period on laps 40 and 41 [...] they were doing lap times which were roughly equal to VSC times.
[...] the positioning of the car on/off track does not seem to be a binary factor:
In Jeddah there was a car on track and it was recovered under VSC.
In Miami they called the VSC within 10s for Norris' car which was on three wheels on a fast part of the track, they then probably realized they would not be able to push it and called the full SC 1:37min later.
In Baku Magnussen stopped at the end of a fast section on track and the car was recovered under VSC.
Even in Monaco with a car split in half they went through the VSC and then to a full SC whereas they instantly went to SC here.
[...] so with that in mind i looked at a full race replay and some footage from the live timing app.
Ocon stopped his car here
And was brought here
Those were the positions when he stopped the car
When the SC was called
So Perez and Tsunoda were just about to get past the scene and technically did so under VSC conditions, the same was true for Norris, Alonso, Vettel, Verstappen, Schumacher, Magnussen, Stroll and Latifi.
Clearer image with those cars marked
Leclerc was the first to be behind the SC, the others then pitted.
Leclerc behind the SC coming up to Copse, hard to tell whether Sainz, Hamilton and Ricciardo were already stacked up and just leaving large gaps or if they were still closing on the SC.
This is how it looks like with them stacked behind the SC, so it's probably the latter.
I would argue that it's just the two Ferraris which actually passed Ocon's car behind the SC.
HAM, RIC, PER, TSU, NOR, ALO then definitely went past under VSC conditions depending on where they were when the car was already gone potentially also VER, MSC, MAG, LAT and STR.
The second screenshot in this post was roughly the moment where Leclerc then finished lap 40, so the next time they went past Copse the car was already gone.
The recovery took three minutes at most from what i could see in the footage.
So in summary: The call for a full SC was [potentially] unnecessary as all cars apart from two went past the marshalls who were pushing the car under conditions identical to a VSC - i really do not understand why they did not call a VSC first to have the marshalls check whether they could engage neutral or whether they'd have to call a full SC to get out a recovery vehicle. [...] - in retrospect there would have been no practical difference between a VSC and SC in this case - ergo they could just as well have called a VSC (internal guidelines allowing).
