Track limits, rule enforcements, good sportsmanship etc

[trinidefender]

So as many will probably agree, the 2016 Mexican GP was quite eventful and probably for all the wrong reasons. We had drivers being kicked out off of podiums, drivers going as far as completely ignoring track limits even on lap 1, much unsportsmanlike driving which has seemed to be a staple of this season, predominantly by one driver and many other things.

So I am starting this topic in the hopes that we can have open and civil discourse on all of this madness. I'll lay out a few things with my 2 cents opinion and leave the floor open to those who want to contribute or add other scenarios.

1. The very first lap Lewis Hamilton braked too late and drove straight across the grass essentially making 3 corners into 1. I was actually a little shocked that the stewards didn't make a fuss about this. Sure, he was already in the lead however he definitely shaved some time off. This comes back to the topic of drivers seeming to show less and less respect for track limits.

For me the comes back to a hot topic, safety and the use of walls around the tracks. You can be damn sure that if there were barriers, sand traps, gravel or something else there then there is no way that Lewis would have gone so hard into the corner. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safety advancements, however drivers seem to just take advantage of this and take bigger and bigger risks knowing the worst that will happen is that they may get a 5 second penalty or like here, no penalty at all.

2. There are some saying that Vettel should get a penalty for changing his racing line on Daniel however that does not take into account that Max backed off hard to slow purposefully slow Vettel and help Ricardo get by. In the strictest sense maybe Vettel should get a penalty however it appears to me that his actions were just a symptom of a larger problem of unsportsmanlike behaviour and driving by others. Many other sports take behaviour like the sportsman not doing their best very seriously as it puts the entire sport into a bad light and can ruin the event for the fans. Recently there was a tennis player who received a lot of flak in the media when it was obvious that he stopped trying on the court when he realised that he was losing. This kind of behaviour should not be tolerated in F1 either.

I understand that each driver is part of a team however they have their own race to drive. In my opinion all too often these days we see a driver purposefully doing things to upset another drivers race to ensure his teammates good result. This is, to me, very unsportsmanlike and in very bad taste. It ruins the races for fans and without the fans there will be no F1.

3. Before the running joke was what is Maldanado going to crash into this race. Now it seems to be who is Max going to cut off this race.

As stated by a few of the more experienced drivers, many of the younger, less experienced drivers are doing dangerous things and taking many more chances. I, and your opinion may differ, believe that this sort of behaviour is also a result of drivers knowing that they can get away with too much. The unsportsmanlike behaviour goes hand in hand with this. They have been brought up in an age of anything goes and take as big risk as you want because chances are nothing will happen to you.

P.s. Please be respectful of others opinions and don't flame any other posters.

[graham.reeds]

The driving I don't mind too much but Vettel should be heavily penalised for criticising Charlie. Claiming adrenaline was flowing does not excuse him - you can't say adrenaline isn't pumping in football and if you criticise an official you get fined heavily, possibly miss matches (3 match ban when Vardy verbally abused a ref who thought he dived).

[PlatinumZealot]

Hamilton slowed and allowed the pack to catch up with like three corners. Did no one else see this?

On Vettel i believe he should get a race ban or a heavy fine. He certainly brought the sport into disrepute. You can't just tell the referee to eff off no matter the circumstances.

[Sniffit]

As far as tracklimits go I think most would agree that sandtraps must be added to alot of track and/or extended.
I would however like to add one caveat to this, if a car gets stuck, but is still ok to drive, track personnel should help the driver out on track again, it should not force a DNF.

As far as the sportsmanship and not allowing team mates to help one another, well then we might as well diabandon teams and the constructors championship. However, to encourage drivers/teams to always give the most, even at the back, I would want to see a points system revamp where points are awarded to all who finish the race.

[Shrieker]

P.s. Please be respectful of others opinions and don't flame any other posters.

Good luck with that.

[turbof1]

So as many will probably agree, the 2016 Mexican GP was quite eventful and probably for all the wrong reasons. We had drivers being kicked out off of podiums, drivers going as far as completely ignoring track limits even on lap 1, much unsportsmanlike driving which has seemed to be a staple of this season, predominantly by one driver and many other things.

So I am starting this topic in the hopes that we can have open and civil discourse on all of this madness. I'll lay out a few things with my 2 cents opinion and leave the floor open to those who want to contribute or add other scenarios.

1. The very first lap Lewis Hamilton braked too late and drove straight across the grass essentially making 3 corners into 1. I was actually a little shocked that the stewards didn't make a fuss about this. Sure, he was already in the lead however he definitely shaved some time off. This comes back to the topic of drivers seeming to show less and less respect for track limits.

For me the comes back to a hot topic, safety and the use of walls around the tracks. You can be damn sure that if there were barriers, sand traps, gravel or something else there then there is no way that Lewis would have gone so hard into the corner. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safety advancements, however drivers seem to just take advantage of this and take bigger and bigger risks knowing the worst that will happen is that they may get a 5 second penalty or like here, no penalty at all.

Well, concerning from a standpoint of fairness I agree with you. However, coming from a logical standpoint the right thing was indeed not to penalize Hamilton for him cutting off the corner. The reason why is that in the past, a lot of the first corner incidents were judged very inconsistently. Due to that, they decided a few years ago that these first corner incidents would be mostly ignored, which led to consistent judgement. If Hamilton did this on any other corner in the same situation, he would have been punished.

Where I do agree, is that the corner itself was too tempting to cut off. A small trip through the grass is not going to slow the car down too much. There are infact a lot of things you can do. My personal view would be either special tarmac stripes like Paul Ricard which slow the car down immensively through friction, ruin the tyres but slow the car down in a safe way; OR put down obstacles and force the drivers to drive around those. Like they did in Canada.

2. There are some saying that Vettel should get a penalty for changing his racing line on Daniel however that does not take into account that Max backed off hard to slow purposefully slow Vettel and help Ricardo get by. In the strictest sense maybe Vettel should get a penalty however it appears to me that his actions were just a symptom of a larger problem of unsportsmanlike behaviour and driving by others. Many other sports take behaviour like the sportsman not doing their best very seriously as it puts the entire sport into a bad light and can ruin the event for the fans. Recently there was a tennis player who received a lot of flak in the media when it was obvious that he stopped trying on the court when he realised that he was losing. This kind of behaviour should not be tolerated in F1 either.

I understand that each driver is part of a team however they have their own race to drive. In my opinion all too often these days we see a driver purposefully doing things to upset another drivers race to ensure his teammates good result. This is, to me, very unsportsmanlike and in very bad taste. It ruins the races for fans and without the fans there will be no F1.

In my opinion, instigation or not, a driver has to keep his cool. It's not a reasonable excuse to change racing line under braking just because you got hot under the collar due an other driver pulling an unfair advantage over you. This is not a Playstation game; there are lifes at stake. No room for retaliation or using a driver as punching bag. You are right of course that there is unsportmanship behaviour. The problem here is this very difficult to root out. Only doable actually by introducing a whole bunch of rules which punish drivers for ungentleman behaviour, while the commercial rights holder would rather want nothing else then a swearing destruction derby.

3. Before the running joke was what is Maldanado going to crash into this race. Now it seems to be who is Max going to cut off this race.

As stated by a few of the more experienced drivers, many of the younger, less experienced drivers are doing dangerous things and taking many more chances. I, and your opinion may differ, believe that this sort of behaviour is also a result of drivers knowing that they can get away with too much. The unsportsmanlike behaviour goes hand in hand with this. They have been brought up in an age of anything goes and take as big risk as you want because chances are nothing will happen to you.

It's an issue where they are not punished for it. Drivers will keep doing dangerous things as long as it is not hurting them. To give a good example, some years ago Marc Marquez came blazing into MotoGP. He was a very, very agressive rider who took a huge amount of risk and he received a lot of flak for it. Last year, he lost the title, for a large part because he pushed his bike too much to the limit, resulting him in crashing several races. This year, he toned down, and learned to settle for second places. Motogp exposes the rider to a lot of risk, both loosing out sportive wise and physical wise (very common the drivers break some bones).

This is something that is missing in F1. There's no real element that punishes driver sportive wise or physical wise. To go to the case of Verstappen: he'll keep doing things his way until the moment comes he is involved in a huge accident, something that will make him sh*t his pants. Unfortunaly, F1 is very forgiving right before it becomes very unforgiving.

[The_table]

weren't sandtraps removed because of safety? I would be for small time penalties for big cuts such as Ham in the beginning of the gp (or just make the driver slow down like he did).

It seems easier to give small time penalties that are representative of the time gained by cutting even when the cut was not deliberate, no exceptions. (it's not like these are race ruining penalties anyway).

This would boil down to "no time gained but no time lost" if it is actually possible to give a fair penalty.

[flynfrog]

Looks like they had it figured out at one time half buried tires and armed guards.

[poolboy67]

i think it's all a reflection of the frustration that the drivers have these days.

the current cars are just so boring and stupidly finicky to them. they constantly have to save something, like it's an endurance race. i mean everything is just too sensitive for wear or consumption. the drivers have to be like robots inside the cars thesedays.
so everything gets too strategicly important. it's like they're all just driving a set race. just following the strategy and saving fuel and tyres and brakes and engine and... they're not let to race anymore.

so the drivers are grasping to anything. that means --- rules as long as they're not getting a penalty for it, and --- the other drivers.

[langwadt]

The driving I don't mind too much but Vettel should be heavily penalised for criticising Charlie. Claiming adrenaline was flowing does not excuse him - you can't say adrenaline isn't pumping in football and if you criticise an official you get fined heavily, possibly miss matches (3 match ban when Vardy verbally abused a ref who thought he dived).

Vettel was talking to his team, they didn't have to broadcast it

[bill shoe]

Make a simple rule: If a driver leaves the track for any reason then they must come to a complete stop before rejoining the track. This allows wide runoff space for safety while also creating a simple and instant penalty for going off in the first place.

[DiogoBrand]

Two things that are just way past ridiculous this season:
Verstappen's unsportsmanlike driving and Vettel's unstoppable whining.

I mean: I like Verstappen and his aggressive style, but why the hell it seems impossible for the guy to get a penalty? What is left for him to do? Maybe if he starts bumping people off on every fight for position they'll start giving him penalties (I know he got one today, but that was pretty much impossible not to happen).

And Vettel... really? Has he still not realized what a spoiled brat he sounds like every time there's a backmarker in front of him, or every time someone shows the slight aggression on a fight for position against him? I mean, even today, when it would be perfectly acceptable for him to complain, he still managed to sound like an a-hole. I'll not argue wether that deserves a penalty or not, to me personally it doesn't, but the guy seems to have lost his sense of ridiculous.
To me that's just someone who got used to win too easily and is getting a real taste of "real life" after a long time.

Edit: Only now I found out about the 10s penalty for Vettel:
That has got to be the stupidest penalty I've ever seen (since I wasn't alive to see Senna's penalty in Suzuka 89). How the hell does he get a larger time penalty than Verstappen? F1 is just making a joke of itself.

[Cold Fussion]

The only real problem I see are the inconsistent application of rules and penalties, transparency, and Carlie whiting's incompetence; all of these have been problems for years. Remember they brought in the drivers steward because the penalty consistency was out of control, perhaps it's time the FIA had a one stewards team that was the same for every race.

[Tim.Wright]

I recall, around 15 years ago, there was a ruling which called for a penalty for leaving the track if you were shown to "gain a position or fail to lose one" with the intention to penalise drivers who are leading a battle, make a mistake but then use a paved run off area to negate their mistake an rejoin still ahead.

I can't remember if it was in the sporting regs or one of the infamous rule clarifications.

If I remember correctly the issue came up after a particular Monaco race where drivers where avoiding being overtaken at the chicane by straightlining it and then slowing down on the next section to avoid a penalty.

While exact wording is a logical fallacy and needs to be rewritten, its pretty clear that something needs to be done about the situation.

I see Lewis' and Max's incidents as identical. They both made a mistake in T1 and were able to negate it by cutting T2 and rejoing at T3. Whether they slowed down after or not is irrelevant as they gained massively in track position during T2 and T3 by avoiding them.

Solutions are pretty simple though. Either rework the runoff at T1 and force the cars to follow a more inconvenient path (like the final chicane in Canada after Rosberg did exactly the same thing in 2014) or they could impose a 1-2s penalty immediately - imposing a sector delta like they do during a VSC.

[dave kumar]

I think there is a general agreement on this forum (a rare thing in itself), that Hamilton's cutting of turns 1 and 2 was in some way just plain wrong. It felt wrong as I watched it happen and it still feels wrong now. At the moment Hamilton out-braked himself, my immediate feeling was that he'd blown it and was going to rejoin someway down the pack. But no, the track layout allowed him to rejoin in the lead. Where is the drama of such an incident? The challenger for the title makes a big mistake going into the first corner of the first lap, and yet... nothing really happens.

It is telling that the drivers now perceive leaving the track and rejoining as routine.

A quote from Rosberg

Lewis went into the corner first, and came out first. That's okay.

Similarly from Lewis' perspective

I had a completely flat-spotted tyre so that definitely wasn’t an advantage, I think I was still in the lead going in so I was in the lead coming out, so I don’t believe so.

This is Verstappen talking about his own off-piste action at the end of the race

I didn’t even gain an advantage, I was still ahead under braking when I came back on the track I was the same length in front.

So these drivers are thinking in terms of advantage gained, not about a lack of consequences for a mistake (misjudging their braking distance in this case).

I support the idea of making the penalty for missing a corner, immediate and significant. Bill Shoe's suggestion above, of requiring a driver to come to a full stop before rejoining is very simple and elegant. And Tim Wright's suggestion that there is more inconvenient path to follow, such as a foam chicane added to the runoff area in these type of corners. These are inexpensive and safe suggestions (although someone will probably pick me up on that). The only criteria I would suggest is that the penalty for a mistake is immediate (and safe in the context of the sport). Applying penalties after the event, is not the same. They require the stewards to investigate and issue a penalty and therefore are subject to the frailties of human judgement, and the moment has passed, the drama has gone, and the consequences different. Maybe worse or better for a given driver, but different.