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Albon: 'Five-second penalty hurts me more than Perez'
- GPblog.com
Alexander Albon feels that drivers are not always punished severely enough in Formula 1. For minor offences (defending just a little too fiercely, for example), a five-second time penalty is often applied by the stewards. But this is not entirely fair, according to Albon. The Williams driver explains why ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix.
Albon over penalties
At the Singapore Grand Prix, Perez misjudged a duel with Albon, causing contact. For the British Thai himself, the grapes were sour: he lost a lot of time. Perez was able to continue his way without major time loss, although he received a five-second penalty. Albon thinks something of that.
"For example with Checo in Singapore, he can take that risk because there's a very good chance he can pull that five seconds away from me so it puts drivers in a position where the car behind can be a bit more aggressive than the car in front. If I defend and I make a mistake and I lose, I get a five-second penalty. More often than not, I'm going to lose two or three positions because I'm holding up a train."
He also cites another example. "It's more the fact that the car that's quicker tends to be able to get away with these incidents quite often position free. What I mean by that is, for example if I take my Monza race, I was holding off Lando the whole race but if he just cut the chicane for one of them laps and overtook me and then pulled away he would have got a five-second penalty but would have pulled away and had nothing done to him."
When is which penalty appropriate?
So does Albon have an immediate solution? "Disqualification," he jokes with a big smile on his face. "I do know as drivers, we want consistency but there is a genuine feeling that it is very hard to be consistent in these positions and I understand and I do sympathise with the FIA that it's not that easy to do. I don't have an answer but I will if I have more time to think."