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Penalty for Norris leads to a debate: Are the F1 rules clear enough?
- Cas van de Kleut
The stewards decision to penalise Lando Norris for overtaking Max Verstappen - when the Dutchman went off the track himself - has created a lot of debate in the Formula 1 world. Are the rules clear enough? Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz answered that question after the United States Grand Prix.
In the incident between Norris and Verstappen, Norris received a penalty. There was a similar incident during the sprint race on Saturday, with Oscar Piastri staying on the track. He, unlike Verstappen, did receive a penalty for the incident.
Piastri casts doubt on rules
The Australian, therefore, feels that the rules are not entirely clear: "If you look at my penalty from the sprint, it was basically a carbon copy of Max and Lando but I stayed on the track and I got the penalty. No, it's not very clear. It's tough. It's just very difficult. I feel like as drivers, we also all have different interpretations of what we think is fair and what's not."
Piastri, therefore, argues that the differences between having enough space or not are small: "For stewards, who have generally not driven a car very much, it's very tough to judge that in the moment especially. I think my incident yesterday, and Lando and Max's today look very similar with the opposite penalties."
Sainz and Leclerc defend Piastri
Sainz thinks the rules are clear, but Piastri's penalty was unjustified. "I felt like the penalty on Oscar yesterday [Saturday's USA GP sprint race] was really, really harsh and didn't go along with some guidelines that I thought were the way they were. That penalty surprised me," Sainz said.
Leclerc agreed with Sainz: "I also thought it was a bit too harsh. However, on the rules, I think they are clear. Sometimes the interpretation of the rule can be a little bit different because it will be impossible to have a rule book that takes every single scenario. Every scenario is different, has its particularity, and you've got to analyse it in a different way and interpret the rules in some ways for particular scenarios, which is what the FIA is trying to do best. However, sometimes we disagree, and I think on the one of yesterday, it's something that we'll probably talk of in the next driver briefing."
This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton
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