F1 drivers discuss about the penalty points situation and things needed to be changed on the FIA Sporting Regulation after Kevin Magnussen’s ban.
After Haas’ Magnussen was handed a race ban for accumulating 12 penalty points on F1 superlicense following the Italian GP, the debate around handing of penalties kicked-off again. It related to penalty points for minor offences like track limits.
Although Magnussen had it coming after his defensive driving in earlier part of the F1 season, the Dane’s penalty in Monza wasn’t warranted as per him and his rivals too. On a separate topic, they rose up to discuss about the penalty points in general.
And few of the F1 drivers predict changes on the FIA Sporting Regulation in the future as they are discussing about certain penalties which they think isn’t harmful enough to warrant a penalty point on their superlicense.
Here’s what the F1 drivers say –
Kevin Magnussen: “I haven’t seen what’s been said but it’s nice if that’s the case. My own opinion is that it’s not a great situation for F1 to restrict racing in that way. It feels bad when the sport you love so much changes in a way you don’t appreciate. I’m certainly one that… I like hard racing and I think that’s a big part of the beauty of motorsport – the battles and [being] on the limit and slightly over. That balance is what makes or breaks your race and at the moment it feels like they’re punishing ridiculous things. Personally, as a Formula 1 fan, I’d like to see the sport open up again and just allowing the great racing that can be seen on track. I’ve raced in IndyCar. I’ve watched the races on television, and I think they have it [right] going over there. They have fantastic racing. The drivers are respectful to each other. They’re left with that responsibility in their hands, and I think that works.
“It has to be tough and these cars are put on track with the knowledge that they might get damaged. And, if they do, then the driver that damages his car, he gets penalised naturally. And I think the only thing that is different in Formula 1 to IndyCar are the tracks. The tracks are not great for racing. With all this track-limit stuff, I got all my penalty points pretty much for track limits at the end of the day. I think that’s kind of stupid to be a few centimetres out of a wide line and end up with a race ban because of that. It’s not the sport I love. I can feel the FIA kind of seeing… I feel like they know it’s not the right way at the moment. Hopefully they will open up and realise that they need to trust the drivers. Of course there are things that you have to clamp down on. There are things like moving under braking and reacting to movement. There are dangerous things that you should clamp down on. But apart from the little things, just let it go.”
Nico Hulkenberg: “Obviously, there’s a history of how that happened and he accumulated all those penalty points but if you look just isolated at the Monza incident, I think, that’s racing. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward, fair and square racing. I don’t see two penalty points for that, or that 10-second penalty even – that’s very harsh. That’s my opinion, but most drivers feel the same way about that. I had a case with Fernando in Austria, in the sprint race, where I kind of tried to make a move in turn three, and locked up and went a bit wide, and he had to go off the track. But, I mean, that’s racing; to overtake we have to leave the comfort zone and take some risk and then that kind of happens sometimes.
“In my case with Fernando, and also with [Magnussen and] Pierre, both drivers said: ‘It’s nothing’ so it seems that whenever there is a little bit of contact, the stewards want to get involved, they want to have a consequence for it. The drivers feel that it isn’t really necessary for every contact, so maybe the penalty guidelines need to be reviewed and changed because we need to be able to race and it is just difficult otherwise. It will be boring and dull as we can’t race anymore — we’ll just get penalized all the time. But I am sure it will come up in the drivers’ meeting, and there will be talks with [race director] Niels Wittich.”
Alexander Albon: “The whole system is going to get reworded, and there’s other things as well. With traffic and pit entries, when is the driver to blame, when is the team to blame. Sometimes drivers get points for team problems. We’ll go through, it I’m sure. Some of it will be addressed for next year. I don’t think anyone’s a real fan of it. Punishment in the race itself should be what’s done. If I look back at the incidents which Kevin created in a couple of races, those races he should have been penalized much more than he was. That set a precedent and he kept repeating them. It’s got a little bit messy. There’s been a couple that have been dangerous, but some of them have not been.
“So it seems a little bit odd. It even seems odd that it resets straight after your one-race ban and then you are on a clean slate again. So I don’t quite understand it. We have spoken about it in drivers’ briefings. Everyone’s under an understanding that we’ve just got to shuffle the system around a little bit. It needs to be a little more forgiving around what constitutes penalty points. If it’s done right it can be OK to have. I think the whole system is going to get reworded. Some of it will be addressed for next year.”
George Russell: “It’s a conversation that’s been had a number of times in previous years as drivers have sailed close to the wind. No one’s been banned in 12 years, so you could argue, were the penalty points actually harsh enough? You could argue his penalty points from Monza seemed a little bit harsh, but you could also argue, some of the other incidents, [the penalties] perhaps were not harsh enough. So yeah, I think also we need to set a bit of a precedent for the junior series. They look up to us in F4, F3, F2 and you shouldn’t be allowed to get away with dangerous or erratic driving and at some point you do need to be punished for it.”
Yuki Tsunoda: “I was in that situation, I almost got banned two years ago. If I understood correctly, the penalty points didn’t seem to change from once they introduced the maximum points they can reach. It feels like that penalty points should get a little bit more compliant, I guess – it seems still kind of strict for 24 races, but at the same time, they had to do it [ban Magnussen] I guess. If the track limits get penalty points, that’s too much then. You get enough penalty in the race in race results. I don’t think it’s necessary to put it the penalty points, but collision like now, I guess it’s good to have, but case by case, for sure. But also, it seems to look case by case anyway, because some of the cases that they put to the driver one point instead of two, it depends on the situation.”
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