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Alright, let’s get to the part everyone wants to talk about: the 5 second penalty on Verstappen. For one second, let’s set aside the track limit rules and look at the actual pass.
On the grounds of safety, it is pretty obvious Verstappen made the right decision. But now, we have to bring back in the rule of track limits. According to the FIA, if all four of a car’s wheels go across the white line marking the edge of the track, that car is considered outside the bounds of track limits. This is considered a penalty, especially if exceeding the track limits gains the driver an advantage. Now if we really want to be pedantic, cutting corners (or running wide) ALWAYS gains the driver an advantage of some sort. It may not be an overtake, but the only reason a driver would exceed the track limits is if it makes them faster. But, even limiting it to overtakes only, what exactly makes Verstappen’s move illegal and the following legal?
The above is Sebastian Vettel’s Turn 1, Lap 1 pass of Lewis Hamilton. Clearly, Vettel has all four wheels outside the white line. He is outside the track limits, is he not? And, if he hadn’t run wide, he would not have been able to hold the pass on Hamilton- yet Vettel did not receive a penalty. This leads us to the crux of the problem: The FIA is incredibly inconsistent with enforcing their own track limits rules. If the FIA had been consistently penalizing drivers for exceeding track limits, this would be a non-issue, but once again they decided to crack down at the worst possible opportunity.
This should really be a black and white issue, but there is a lot of gray area to cover. Part of the problem is that as the FIA’s definition of what constitutes a Grade 1 track (the level required to host an F1 race), more and more runoff, especially on the outside of corners, has been required to allow the cars' margin for error and a chance to slow down or regain control if they go off. Back in the days when exceeding track limits meant driving through grass, there was a very strong, physical deterrent to straying off course. But, a track like CotA has almost infinite runoff area: there is no physical penalty for going off. Therefore, we are left with track limit rules. A big part of me loves seeing drivers cut and overrun corners, kicking up dust, and scrapping like dogs during a race. At one time, my definition of track limits was “if it’s between the walls, it should be legal,” with an understanding that cutting or overrunning corners should be used sparingly. The problem is, drivers will utterly abuse that privilege. See all of the kerbs the FIA has to place in the chicanes at Monza, or across Radillion at Spa so the cars won’t cut the corners.
This needs to be a black and white issue, so I think the FIA should make it simple. Exceeding track limits is NEVER allowed, period. In that sense, the FIA was right to penalize Verstappen for cutting the corner to pass Raikkonen. But when the FIA ignored every other off-track excursion by the rest of the field, it becomes a horribly unfair call on Verstappen. He was right to call the stewards idiots. They really were in this case.
Random Observation
