Under the Formula 1 regulations stewards are permitted to hand out penalty points to drivers in conjunction with the respective offence committed.
Should a driver amass 12 penalty points across a 12-month period then they will be suspended from the following event.
No-one has hit the mark as yet, though in recent years Romain Grosjean and Daniil Kvyat have come close, while in Formula 2 this season Mahaveer Raghunathan fell foul of the limit and was banned from Austria.
Fortunately for the field of 20 it has been a relatively quiet half season to the extent that only one driver – Max Verstappen – is more than halfway towards a ban.
Verstappen is on seven penalty points though only two were gained this year – attained in Monaco when Red Bull unsafely released him into the path of Valtteri Bottas.
Two drivers no longer on the grid – Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon – are technically still second on the list, having gained six penalty points in the second half of 2018!
Of the current grid, two are on five: Haas’ Grosjean and Renault driver Daniel Ricciardo.
Ricciardo was given two penalty points in Azerbaijan for colliding with ex-team-mate Daniil Kvyat while the last-lap incidents in France meant three points went Ricciardo’s way.
Grosjean’s two 2019 points were for blocking in Bahrain and for crossing the white line at pit exit in Monaco.
Several drivers are on four penalty points: Sebastian Vettel, Sergio Perez, Lance Stroll, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Valtteri Bottas, while Pierre Gasly, Kevin Magnussen, Nico Hulkenberg and Antonio Giovinazzi are on three.
Kimi Raikkonen and Daniil Kvyat are both on two, though the Finn will have a clean record as of Monday, which marks a year since the 2018 British Grand Prix, when he was sanctioned for clashing with Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton picked up his first penalty point since 2017 in Austria when he was judged to have impeded Raikkonen in Q1, while blocking during the same session led to George Russell’s first penalty point.
It means that four drivers have a license free of penalty points: Lando Norris, Alexander Albon, Robert Kubica and Charles Leclerc, who has not picked up a single point since stepping up to Formula 1 at the start of 2018.
Leclerc, though, is the only driver on the grid who has sustained a reprimand for a driving infringement, which came after a Virtual Safety Car infringement during practice in Monaco.
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