Interesting: Charlie Whiting stated that if NO cars are running on the circuit, they will stop the race (obviously). It would be funny if they would do pit stops as they do at LeMans - when they pull the car into the garage, they actually work on it and try to fix it! In the past, once you had to pull into the garage, "it's game over" as Steve Matchett would say.
http://www.autoweek.com/article/20140313/F1/140319915
FIA race director Charlie Whiting says he will stop the Formula One Australian Grand Prix if there are no cars left running.
Given the poor reliability suffered by teams in testing, there has been a lot of speculation about how many cars might finish this weekend, with incidents potentially adding to the attrition rate.
“First of all, I'd like to say that I think a lot of these doomsday scenarios are quite unlikely, knowing F1 teams and how efficient they actually are,” Whiting said. “But if it came to the situation where no cars were running, we'd just simply stop the race, because there wouldn't be much of one, would there? But being serious, I think that would be the only option. If the race couldn't be restarted, as the rules say, then the results would be declared at the lap prior to the one during which the race was stopped, and whoever was running at that time would be the winner.”
In theory, races can last until the two-hour mark, but Whiting said the clock would not be allowed to run down until the flag was thrown on the off chance that someone might fix their car and re-emerge.
“I don't think we would [wait]. If it became clear that there wasn't a race anymore, because there were no cars on the track, I think we would stop the race, because there wouldn't be much else to do, really. It's not something that's foreseen by the rules, and obviously it's something that we hope doesn't happen.”
Whiting agreed that if attrition is high, cars that might normally have retired could reappear after repairs.
“I'm not sure we should really be talking about this. I stress I think it's highly unlikely, knowing the professionalism of the teams. But once they started dropping like flies I think the ones that thought they'd stopped -- because they don't have to officially retire, of course, they can come back out again -- they might think hang on minute, I might get something here, let's get this old girl going again and get back out there…”
They would, of course, have to complete 90 percent of the winner's distance in order to be classified and score points.
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