F1 News
Misunderstanding over penalties from FIA: 'They should just be harsher'
- Ludo van Denderen
It is one of those topics that comes up again every now and then: the consistency of race control in handing out penalties, or rather the lack of it. Pierre Gasly complained about it after the Singapore Grand Prix, after he felt Kevin Magnussen had, in his view, made it rather tough at times in duels between himself at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. Max Verstappen also escaped several (grid) penalties in Singapore, despite appearing to block a rival on several occasions during qualifying.
In the run-up to the Japanese Grand Prix, the drivers were asked about the incidents, including with Verstappen, and the fact that the world champion did not receive any penalties for this. His team Red Bull Racing did receive a penalty. "I don't want to say too much because then I only create controversy," responded Lando Norris, who does have a general opinion. "I think the blocking one on track was the one that should’ve been a penalty. You block someone. It's not just down to the team."
Norris wants tougher penalties
Because, Norris continued, "I know the team got the fine, at the end of the day, but it should be down to the driver as well to look in his mirrors. You’ve got nothing else to do the whole lap but look in your mirrors, and it seems like a lot of people struggle to do that. There should just be harsher penalties for blocking people because so many people do it. It ruins your lap, ruins your qualifying. It put Yuki out of qualifying and he was P1 in Q1, probably would have been P1 in Q3 if he was in all the way," Norris laughed.
"No one seems to care enough and it's happened a lot this season, happened to me quite a few times, especially with certain teams, but it's also down to the driver to look in the mirror. They've got nothing else to do but hit the recharge button and look in your mirror and people seem to struggle to be able to do that in Formula 1, which is a surprise," the McLaren driver concluded. To add with a smile, "I'll probably block someone now this weekend and make myself look stupid."
One of the incidents for which Verstappen was not penalised took place in the pit lane. The Dutchman stopped for a while at the end of it for unclear reasons and a traffic jam developed behind him. "I was a bit surprised, especially the one in the pit lane because that could open quite a bad situation in the future," Charles Leclerc said. "But again, it's always an open discussion with the FIA and try to explain to them what our point of view is and improve. And I'm sure we'll have that discussion tomorrow evening at the briefing."
Tsunoda always feels the pinch
Yuki Tsunoda said, also with a wink, that he himself did not notice any inconsistency among the stewards. "To be honest, it feels like I'm the one getting quite getting consistent penalties but it is what it is. I spoke with the FIA in Monza so I understand what they're thinking," said the Japanese from AlphaTauri.
Alex Albon, former teammate of Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing, finds it a tricky subject. "I think it's quite a tricky one because consistency is something we push on a lot as drivers. I think teams as well as viewers but it's a tricky one. For example: you could take my incident with Checo when he gets a five-second penalty, it's consistent with everything else, but is it really fair? Maybe not. I do think there needs to be flexibility in some ways. To answer the question about Max, I haven't really seen it, but I do think things don't need to be as consistent as they are right now," said the Williams driver.