11/07/2022
NEWS STORY
On a day that witnessed 43 breaches of the track limits, the FIA insists its clampdown on the practice was fully justified.
Other than reliability, tyre deg and the chance of being hit by a rival, another factor drivers had to contend with during the Austrian Grand Prix was track limits.
Barely anyone escaped the attention of the stewards, who in total reported 43 breaches.
Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly, Sebastian Vettel, and Yuki Tsunoda all received 5s time penalties for repeated offences, while Lewis Hamilton was shown the black and white flag and Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen both had two breaches to their credit.
Ahead of the weekend, it was made clear to the drivers that, as has been the practice all season, the white lines define the edge of the track.
At the end of a race which threatened to be compromised by the sheer number of breaches, especially if one of the leaders was concerned, the FIA stood by the clampdown.
"The monitoring of track limits during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix has been consistent with all previous events this year," it said in a brief statement.
"At each circuit, the white line is used as the defined limit of the track, and this has been implemented following discussions with the drivers and teams to improve consistency and clarity for the competitors and fans.
"The number of penalties today is proportional to the number of infringements of Article 33.3 of the Sporting Regulations, with drivers during the race given two 'strikes' for crossing the white line with all four wheels, followed by a black and white flag for the third infringement, and referral to the stewards for each subsequent infringement."
The policing of such rules has come in for a lot of criticism in recent times, with drivers unhappy about the lack of consistency in the application of the rules, a factor that Grand Prix Drivers' Association director, George Russell putting down to the fact that there are now two race directors.
On Friday, such was his frustration that Sebastian Vettel stormed out of the drivers' briefing without permission, in itself a breach of the regulations which consequently earned him a suspended €25,000 fine.
Speaking at the post-race press conference, Verstappen was asked about Russell's comment, and the Dutchman used the track limits clampdown as an example of why drivers are unhappy.
"Of course everyone has their own opinions about certain things," he said, "but like track limits, I think track limits debate this weekend has been a bit of a joke. Not only in F1 but in F2 and F3.
"It's easy to say from the outside, yeah, but you have to just stay within the white lines. It sounds very easy, but it's not because when you go that quick through a corner and some of them are a bit blind, if you have a bit more understeer, tyres are wearing, it's easy to just go over the white line.
"But do we actually gain time? Maybe yes, maybe not, and to be honest, there's only two or three corners where you can really just go a bit wider.
"I don't think we should have this value on one mill over that's a penalty or whatever. Just add a wall or put some gravel back where we... like Turn 6 on the exit. I think that's great because there is gravel, you punish yourself if you go wide.
"These are things where we have to look into how we can make it better because also for the stewards and just the people involved with checking these track limits, I mean it's almost impossible to check these kind of things because you need what... almost like one guy on one car the whole race to check the whole lap if he's not going outside of the white line, where on this track, at least, in some places, you get naturally penalised if you just you know go a bit wider and you touch the gravel.
"These kind of things, I think it just doesn't look good for the sport as well and this is just one thing. Then the other thing is racing incidents and stuff. Yeah for sure we can do better. I think we will work on it we'll try to make it better."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spielberg here.