Question coming from a F1 newbie as of this year (thanks DTS)
Interesting race yesterday. Clever loophole exploitation on RB to put Perez back out to erase the time penalty. Supposedly F1 powers-that-be want to plug that hole so teams can’t do it again?
I guess the bigger question is should the loophole be fixed?
So how would such a rule be written? Say “if a car is out of a race under green for more than five minutes, the team must retire the car (which is defined as not permitted to race again in that race)”. But that doesn’t seem fair to a team in a race where less than ten cars are remaining (does this ever happen?) and it takes a while to get the car fixed.
Anyway, I am curious to see what becomes of this.
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That’s a great point. I think I am of the mind that it doesn’t need fixing. I also do not like penalties after the race. So just let it be. If once a year a team figures out a way to exploit this, then so be it.
To answer the part of your question regarding number of finishers: if you don’t count USGP in 05 (shudder), sub 10 finishers hasn’t happened since Monaco 1996, but only top 6 scored back then anyways (but only 4 did finish, so this is an example of a time when just finishing would score points). It’s very rare to have fewer finishers than points, I think besides the two I listed, these are the examples:
finishers year GP
5 1966 Belgian Grand Prix
5 1968 Spanish Grand Prix
5 1968 Monaco Grand Prix
5 1970 Spanish Grand Prix
5 1982 San Marino Grand Prix
5 1984 Detroit Grand Prix
Also some fuckery with the 1966 Monaco GP but that’s a long time ago and I’m not sure it’s relevant to your original question
Should they? It was kinda fun tbh, gives an interesting twist
Did they fix something on Checo’s car before sending him out again?
My understanding is that you need a valid reason to retire a car; you can’t just park it if you’re out of the points in order to preserve your engine, for example
So, if they decided to park him, there must have been a safety reason. Putting him back out without addressing that would mean they either retired him without a reason, or put him in danger by going back out again
I thought this would be the reason he would have to stay out after he returned to the race. If you’re saying that the car is now safe to drive, aren’t you not allowed to retire it 2 laps later without a reason? I was hoping that rule is what would have punished RB for this sneaky move.
I thought it gave an interesting twist too. I guess I would feel different if I wasn’t a RB fan. Hard to say.
One other possibility comes to mind. What if there are no rule changes, but instead if the stewards think a team might try to take advantage of this, they decide at race time to hold their ruling disclosure until after the race?
Well, I personally don’t like stuff happening after the race. I rather have it during the race. But in your spirit of keeping it simple: if the stewards think a team has done something to evade punishment, they can consider the punishment not correctly served.
Alternatively, why do these penalties carry over? If a driver gets a time penalty and retires before it’s served, the time penalty should be moot.
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I was hoping so bad for a safety car so we would all have to wait for Perez to run 26 laps to unlap himself… No skipping that part since Hamilton/Verstappen debacle a few years ago…
You don’t get to unlap yourself 26 laps.
Yup it’s just to get back to your position, so, last
In my opinion I don’t think a fix is necessary since this situation won’t happen often anyway.
What I see as a much bigger problem is the 5sec penalty. Because most if the time 5sec won’t actually change anything for the offender if they can just drive ahead 10, 15 or even 20 sec in a spread wide field. They should out harsher penalties like lost positions after end of race or maybe to get only half of the points if the finished position or something like that.
I was always (apparently wrongly) under the impression that if someone touched a car, that it could not continue to race. I assume this must just be for marshals, but could be extended to pit crew.
If the car needs help getting to the pits (i.e. a lift) it’s typically dq’d from the session (so if you crash out, red flag Q1 just cuz you’re stuck in gravel, that’s it for Q1 for you, even if the car is okay)
Couple of things they could do:
All penalties must be served on the lap they are given
Maximum pitstop time
Remove time penalties and make it a points penalty
A lot of people have mentioned serving time frame for time penalty and I agree.
I really like points penalty, damn… that’ll cause a stir!