1,200 track limits violations in Austria causes race control ructions

There were a total of 1200 possible track limit breaches during the Austrian Grand Prix. They were occurring faster than race control could keep up with and although several penalties were applied either in the race or immediately afterwards, after several hours of race control scrolling through the footage the official results were quite different to those across the line. The podium finishers were unaffected but the remainder of the points-paying positions were wildly jumbled up.

The main problem was the fast Turn 10, the final corner on the lap, taken in fifth gear, downhill and with a dip in the middle which tends to pull the cars out wide. The track limits are defined only by a white line and drivers were reporting that it was impossible to see that from within the cockpit.

“We need to find a better way,” said Carlos Sainz. “That made us look ridiculous. It really doesn’t look good and it’s not good as a driver, not good as a team, not good as a sport. There has been so many solutions offered and for some reason we keep postponing – like an alarm, postpone, postpone – instead of acting on and finding solutions for these kind of circuits.”

Lewis Hamilton – another to be demoted after penalties – agreed. “We’re not doing it deliberately,” he said. “We’re driving at crazy speeds. You’re trying to be millimetre perfect, but it’s… ultimately, we need to abandon the track limits situation because it just did not look good. We need to look at what other solutions there could be. The excuses always are that because Moto GP want run-off areas, they don’t want gravel, so we have to accommodate for more than one series. But you can’t do that, you can’t be having that. I can’t imagine how that was for people watching, but for me it was frustrating in the car.”

There used to be a similar problem at Monza’s Lesmo 2 corner. But it was effectively eliminated entirely by bringing the gravel trap up close to the kerb. The Red Bull Ring organisers initially were reluctant to put a gravel bed there because it also hosts MotoGP which historically has maintained that gravel traps are unsafe for bike racers.