2025 Spanish Grand Prix - [POST RACE] discussion thread 🏁
FORMULA 1 ARAMCO GRAN PREMIO DE ESPAÑA 2025
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Shocked Max only got a 10 second for that..
Yeah agree.
Happy cake day btw
The real punishment is that he is now on 11 penalty points for the next two races, even a reasonably minor infraction could result in a race ban.
If he did get a race ban what would be interesting is how RB would fill that seat, would Liam get recalled for a race as he has recent experience of car? Isack can a crack at it? Who would replace either of them in the Racing Bull?
This is why I hate penalty points. No, minor incidents shouldn’t add up to a ban, but something like this, deliberately ramming your car into someone else’s, should be a race ban.
I agree that Max should have had a much bigger punishment yesterday, a drive through would have been the absolute min that I would have expected and a stop and go would really be what I was expecting. The FIA always maintain that the damage to the victims race does not play a part, but they are full of shit when they say that. If Max had taken George out of the race rather than banged wheels I would then expect the DSQ, but not for what actually happened.
I suspect he wasn't given it as they would have had more pressure to give him more penalty points so he would have been banned for the next race as well, losing two races worth of point and ending the title race to other teams far too early for the FIA.
On the penalty points it depends for me, someone consistently making mistakes no matter how minor should be getting a ban as they are not learning their lesson. You would have to get six two point offenses within 12 months to qualify for it, that's a hell of a lot. Second in the list is Lawson with five points, that's a massive gap to Max. Max is where he is because of his behavior last year.
Fines are pretty meaningless for F1 teams, bans actually work as a deterrent for bad behavior. If you started giving penalty points for things like speeding in the pit lane or unsafe releases then it would stop pretty quickly. I know unsafe releases are the teams faults but its not like fines have actually reduced their occurrence.
I also believe that multiple bans within x years should result in a super license being pulled and that person having to re-qualify for it.
consistently making mistakes no matter how minor should be getting a ban
We can find equivalents of this in other sports too. E.g. in football, when you're cautioned twice, you're sent off. And if you keep committing normal/non-cautionable foul play, you'll be cautioned. But: Just like you can't get cautioned for being off-side all the time, there's a certain level of breaching the rules in F1 as well, that leads to penalty points in the first place.
I know unsafe releases are the teams faults but its not like fines have actually reduced their occurrence
During races unsafe releases are penalized with time penalties. So there's a clear deterrent there, even if there aren't any penalty points. I'm not sure about qualifying. The fines are certainly levied during free practice sessions.
Time penalties aren't always consistently applied for unsafe releases, and that highlights the FIAs inconsistency over the offenses punishment being linked to the damage caused.
I think there is a argument to be made that anything that is worthy of a time penalty must rather than could, come with penalty points, otherwise the penalties have no real ongoing peril for the driver or team. There should be less grey area over what points you can expect for what penalty, may be it exists already but if it does then it really isn't clear.
Football you have clear boundaries for each offense with clear punishments to apply, they aren't always applied consistently, but they do exist. Offside is a strange one, as it only really impacts the team and the punishment is losing possession and a free kick for the opposition, so it is punished. It isn't always spotted but VAR has reduced that, not enough but significantly.
An unsafe release by its very definition negatively impacts at least one other driver, its a far more significant transgression than being offside. I would equate being offside to being outside the defined track limits on a qualy lap and having your qualy lap time deleted as thats an offensive and punishment that only impacts that driver. Being outside track limits to stay ahead during the race I see as something very different, that very much should result in a black flag for persistent offenses.
I agree with the overall point, yet we have to be careful not to conflate the rules with the stewarding/refereeing. You mentioned the expression grey area and I would like to point out that the football rules have been revised in the last 10 years or so, to finally shrink the scope of interpretation. There is still a lot of 'freedom' for the referees and their interpretation, but I agree, that more clear boundaries have been established. I would point to some glaring examples to the contrary, but prefer to come back to F1, which has the exact opposite situation.
The rules for football (laws of the game) are widely accessible and available including how transgressions are to be punished. In F1 on the other hand the whole thing is absolutely opaque. We can't really say, how much room for interpretation there is, because the FIA won't publish their Driving Standard Guidelines (may I present a version back from the Imola GP 2022!). So we have no real reference to measure the Stewarding against. What this year's exact wording is concerning the mirror of the overtaking car being alongside the axle of the other or whatever it is, we simply don't know. The only thing we have is the International Sporting Code (ISC), and from that Appendix L is usually the one cited in the decisions, because it handles overtaking. But: There's only a mention of a penalty points system in there, not how it is handled, nor what exactly gives someone a "right to the line" or anything in that direction.
For unsafe releases, we have ISC App. L Chapter IV 5. d) which states that "Cars must not be released from a garage or pit stop position in a way that could endanger or unnecessarily impede pit lane personnel or another driver". The penalties for breaching this rule (or anything else in the ISC) is handled somewhere else (The same goes for the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, where the unsafe release is defined again with a few specialties to F1). In Appendix B (Stewards Penalty Guidelines) they very vaguely describe, that Stewards have the authority to enforce these rules and that they "retain the discretion (...) to tailor the penalty to the specific situation." (i.e. to judge mitigating/aggravating circumstances, etc.). Again, no clear reference to measure against. As an example for the seeming arbitrariness: In the decision document around Max' 10 second time penalty and 3 penalty points, they mention the infringement of App. L Chapter IV Article 2 d) of the ISC, but as we've seen, there isn't anything concrete in there relating to the severity of the penalty.
If we go back to Miami, Max got a 10s penalty in the Sprint for an unsafe release with a collision as a result. In their decision document the stewards write: "The Stewards acknowledge that the driver did everything he could to avoid the incident and therefore no penalty points are issued in this case." So it seems that the Stewards could theoretically issue penalty points depending on the incident at question. But again, we have no possibility to actually know. In Oliver Bearman's case in the same race, the time penalty was only 5s and there wasn't anything mentioned about any penalty points.
So regardless whether we think the rules should be penalty points for unsafe releases or not, we can't even tell how good of a job the stewards are doing, because there's a lot of uncertainty within the rules, and we don't even have access to all the relevant publications of the rules and their clarification.
I would maintain that the uncertainty is intentionally kept in the rules to allow for a flexible interpretation to suit the situation. By itself its not a bad way to do things as it allows for nuance but it also allows for actual and perceived manipulation.
I have long maintained, including in this very thread that I want the uncertainty removed and the rules made stricter. When you have certain drivers deliberately working in the grey area of the rules, while doing nothing "illegal", or you have clearly inconsistent stewarding, is against the intent of allowing that grey area.
The overtaking rules were recently changed because of the way one driver exploited that set of rules, its how it has to be in that situation.
It's funny to read back the thread. It makes it seem as if we disagree, when we clearly agree.
The overtaking rules were recently changed because of the way one driver exploited that set of rules
Yeah. But we don't know how, because they only changed the unpublished guidelines... probably. We can't really know. And you are probably correct that they want to maintain their leeway for nuance or/and manipulation, as can be witnessed nearly every season.
The kicker of this one driver's behavior last season: it's a clear breach of Appendix L Ch.4 2. b), c) and d). But all that has to happen because of that is a reporting to the Stewards. Everything beyond that is - by the rules we have access to - fully up to them. That's all I'm trying to say. The actual rules don't just offer grey areas, they lack any enforcement. It's like if the lotg say, that if the ref sees a foul, he can do as he pleases. And these problems and discussions won't cease until there are clear limits within the rules and guidelines and the public can finally see them. It doesn't mean they shouldn't allow for nuance, but this is just ridiculously arbitrary.
It has to be entirely intentional to keep it opaque and ambiguous, it will not change until they are forced to change it.
t has to be intentional because the FIA know that any such ambiguity or lack of clarity in the rules governing the design of the car are ruthlessly exploited by the teams as soon as they are spotted, and the FIA often react quickly to it with TDs and the like, why should drivers be any different?
With football refs if the ref does something so obviously wrong and it results in a result being changed, that ref is at real risk of punishment of one sort or another. Its rare that we ever see that with F1 stewards, Herbert was the last guy to get punished and that was for talking outside of school rather than a mistake with a particular ruling, as contentious as some of those were.
It just feels like they are equating controversy with rating, so have no incentive to sort it out.