I don’t understand the stewards on this one. The attacker has to prepare for a pass this late in the race. It’s a fighter in round 5 creating an opportunity to win. You can’t cheap shot the attacker and then go “guess you’ll have to try again.” It makes no sense.
They even tell teams to handle off track incidents themselves before they get involved. Well the defender went off the track because they lost control (aka purposely came off the brake) and couldn’t make the corner. The defender destroyed all that preparation by leaving the track, thereby gaining a multiple lap advantage! Clearly the attacking car should keep the place. But now it’s up to the stewards to decide apparently.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Both Verstappen and Norris were in the wrong and of the two Norris was clearly the one gaining a bigger advantage from his wrong, gaining a position VS maintaining a position.
- If you penalize neither driver then Norris gains an advantage.
- If you penalize just Verstappen Norris gains an even bigger advantage.
- If you penalize Norris he gets a disadvantage with his advantage.
- If you penalize both then it’s as if nobody got penalized.
- If you penalize both but Norris more severely you get the same outcome as if you’ve penalized only Norris.
You might not like it but Norris deserved that penalty, what he did was against the rules. What Norris should’ve done is give the position back and try to get a penalty for Max for pushing Norris off the track.
Edit: seems like a lot of people are letting their objectivity be clouded by their dislike of Max. Ask yourself, if the roles were reversed, would you be making the same arguments? Would you also argue that Max overtaking offytrack shouldn’t be penalized or that Lando pushing Max off track should be penalized? To me the drivers don’t matter, whoever took a position off track should be penalized first. If they had given the position back the driver pushing off track should be penalized. Penalizing both equally means nobody got penalized and one driver got away with an unfair overtake.
I agree with your assessment.
My solution in this case would be: 5 second penalty to NOR, like they issued and 10 second penalty to VER for driving unfairly and with ill intent for the millionth time.I’d go with 5 seconds penalty for Lando overtaking off track and a 5 seconds penalty for max for forcing another driver off track. Lando would have made the corner, max chose not to.
Maybe that’s the info McLaren will present to the stewards but we don’t know that,which is why I don’t really agree with any penalties for Max. Norris already gained an unfair advantage with that overtake and punishing both drivers still leaves Lando with that advantage. Considering how stewards have been giving out 10 second penalties Lando getting a 5 second penalty was a slap on the wrist, and it almost didn’t matter because at the end once the penalty was applied the delta between Max and Lando was less than a second. Had it happened a few laps earlier Lando could’ve outpace the penalty.
Based on the information we know, punishing both drivers in that situation sets a weird precedent where sometimes it’s acceptable to overtake off track and I don’t think anyone wants that door to be left open.
I disagree. I think weirdly letting max run drivers off track is a sore that I don’t think anyone wants to be left open
So if both get a penalty how is Lando actually penalized for passing off track? He gets a 5 second penalty, but so does Max and those two cancel out which means Lando is still ahead of Max.
yeah, I’m okay with that. had max but a acted illegally, Lando would have passed him
So if the roles were reversed, if Max had overtaken Norris that way, you’d also be okay with that?
I agree that Lando broke the rules, don’t get me wrong. Max is phenomenal at everything, finding the limit everywhere.
I guess there’s no leeway for when a car passes off track so the stewards can’t do much. Or maybe the logic is that cars must decide when to give a position up, but never to take a portion.
If you’re McLaren you have to file this. Will it get them any points though?
Depends on what the new evidence is and if it’s definitive. I wish they would’ve given more details but I suppose it will come out eventually.
Also interested in knowing
Maybe it’s telemetry data from Max?
It should be clear that Max had no intention of ever making the corner, he only wanted to get to the apex first so that he can “claim” it according to the new rules.
I watched the some of the analysis and Max completely dropped the brake. I think McLaren is correct in arguing Max intentionally carried too much speed so he could get the apex first, but did not have a chance to make the corner. So in my opinion Lando should not have picked up a penalty for that.
However, he should have picked up a penalty for his turn 1 move…
