The Formula 1 driving fraternity feels that the FIA’s introduction of 10-second penalties for track limit breaches, up from five seconds, is “harsh,” amid penalty increases being applied for other infringements.
Previously, after five track limit breaches during a Grand Prix, drivers were handed a five-second time penalty, but it has since been adjudged this is too lenient and the penalty has been doubled.
No drivers made enough track limit blunders to feel the wrath of the new penalty in Bahrain and in Saudi Arabia, the walled-in Jeddah Corniche Circuit penalises breaches with a heavy impact rather than adding time to a driver’s race result – as Lance Stroll found out during Saturday’s Grand Prix.
Still, drivers argued during last Wednesday’s press conference that 10 seconds is too large, given how it is hard to judge where the white lines marking the track limits are in this current generation of F1 car.
“I think it is quite harsh, but I think the main priority should be in fixing or helping us at least respecting those track limits better, because at the moment, the way the white lines are, we don’t really see it,” said Charles Leclerc.
“So I felt like five seconds was quite painful already. 10 seconds is, in my opinion, too much.”
Mercedes driver George Russell reiterated that contemporary F1 cars are difficult to see out thanks to how low both driver and car sit.
“I think it’s difficult to really comprehend from a television how difficult it is from within the car,” he said.
“You’re sat so low, you only see the top, you know, 15 centimetres of your tyres, and the cars are running, you know, 70 mm from the ground, even less at the end of a straight.
“So we need a kerb that we can feel, and ultimately, some tracks we go to, there’s no track limit issues whatsoever. It’s only a handful of circuits that we see a lot of track limit issues, so we just need to find a way to solve it.”
Aston Martin’s Stroll, who found out that if you breach track limits in Jeddah you wind up in the barriers, ironically hinted at how on a lot of circuits asphalt run-off removes the risk of breaching track limits, leading to the necessity for time penalties.
“I think if we change the actual nature of a lot of the tracks and make it a little bit, you know, easier to stay in the track limits, but also just maybe more penalizing if you go off the track limits of gravel or grass, we’d have less of these issues in the first place,” the Canadian driver said.
However, after drivers complained that 10-second penalties for track limit breaches were too harsh before Saturday’s Grand Prix, there was no example to conclude post-race.
But, FIA Stewards have been adopting harsher time penalties for several infringements, which Haas, Kevin Magnussen and the trail of cars behind him found out.
Magnussen was handed two separate 10-second time penalties, the first for causing damage to Alex Albon’s front wing endplate after failing to give the Williams driver appropriate space on the outside of Turn 4 and a second for passing Yuki Tsunoda and gaining an unfair advantage off-track.
However, after backing up the cars behind him to allow team-mate Nico Hulkenberg to build up a big enough gap to pit whilst retaining track position, Magnussen was able to gift his teammate an easy run to a 10th place finish.
Haas’ rivals RB and Williams were then left disgruntled as Magnussen’s tactics cost them a chance at points, proving that harsh time penalties aren’t the final solution if it makes way for teams to employ tactics to dash the hopes of others.
On some tracks the kerbs are one-and-a-half cars wide, so no wonder people use them. The effective track limits are grass, gravel and wall. Simple as that. Formula 1 is getting artificially over-regulated, and too many decisions are made in the control room.
… ok, maybe Max could get a 30s penalty for being on the grid?