Track limits outcry reins in F1 wide boys

Between Austin and Mexico, conversations between the drivers and the FIA led to a clarified understanding about how stewards would judge wheel-to-wheel contests for position. This followed the Austin incident between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in which a defending Verstappen forced an attacking Norris off track, where Norris completed the overtaking move and received a 5sec penalty for doing so, putting him behind Verstappen in the results. Henceforth, the ruling of whether a legitimate pass had been made would be decided by which driver’s front axle line was ahead at the apex. Whichever driver that was would be adjudged to be ahead and have the right to the rest of the corner. But not to the extent of forcing the other driver off.

In the early stages in Mexico, several drivers were acting upon this clarified position and fighting up to the apex. This included Norris as he swooped upon Verstappen into Turn 4. He got himself ahead at the apex, but it was marginal. Verstappen did not surrender the corner but again ran Norris off the road. Norris took to the run-off and rejoined ahead. Three corners later Verstappen scythed down his inside at a speed which made it impossible to stay within track limits, obliging Norris to leave the track, rejoining behind the Red Bull.

The penalties for Verstappen were in accord with the clarification. “A driver will always push to the limit and when the rules – or the execution of the rules – allow a certain way of racing, a driver like Max is always going to exploit it,” commented Toto Wolff. “The drivers know what’s happening – when somebody is releasing the brake too late and drags you into the corner, pushes you wide. From the early days in karting you know that you’re not going to survive on the outside if you’re not ahead. But everybody’s trying to push that, and if you get away with things, that becomes the new limit. The penalties set a precedent now. From now on you’ve got to leave space on the outside of the corner if the car is next to you. Braking too late and dragging the other car out of the track while also driving off track – it’s not allowed now. It’s good for racing. When this wasn’t penalised in the past it legitimised it.”

Predictably, Red Bull’s Christian Horner disagrees, arguing that Norris would not have made the corner even without Verstappen pushing him out. “It used to be a reward of the bravest to go around the outside. We’re in danger of flipping the overtaking laws, where drivers will just try to get their nose ahead at the apex and then claim that they have to be given room on the exit. And you can see clearly [at Turn 4 in Mexico] Norris effectively comes off the brakes, goes in super late to try and win that argument as far as the way these regulations are written, and then at that point [Max] is penalised.”