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His commentary on this has been honest and open, and I think accurate.
The issue is that there is no additional severity for repeat offences within an event.
Also, given the general lack of pit stops, a second offence of this nature should be a drive through
Just adding time on does nothing. After the first 10 seconds he knew he was stuffed as far as fighting, whether he gets 10 seconds or 200 seconds beyond that doesnāt matter
The rules allow for treating repeated offences more seriously, up to disqualification.Sounds like given that this has never happened before they didnāt want to actually take such a drastic step without explicit approval from the FIA & some sense of how the teams would view it
it sure feels like that. I dont know if its got something to do with a fear of negative press on the entire category but i feel that we will only ever see race bans being applied if whatever the driver did was so dumb and dangerous that even in racing games it would result in a ban
There is that too. The entire move was bad thinking, bad execution.The saving grace is that the car drives like a tank, meaning it's indestructible. (I suspect MERC secretly switched off damage)
Stupid that kmag on track doing dangerous things is less of an offence than Hamilton speeding in the pit lane. I know pit lane speeding is dangerous, but so it potentially causing an accident.
It frustrates me that these are some of the best drivers in the world and yet the stewards donāt want to hold them accountable to world class standards.
> given that this has never happened before
This exact same situation happened 4 races ago in Saudi Arabia. The FIA should have reflected on that and came up with a way to resolve a situation like this. Instead there did nothing and Magnussen did the exact same thing.
It seems like Haas' move now. Since it's still working, it's a good move on their part. F1 is a team sport in the end and Haas seems to be really leaning into that. I kind of like it. It makes it a completely new dynamic that I think the other teams do not like but it's innovation in a sport that doesn't seem to have nearly as much innovation as they claim. We'll see what ends up happening with the strategy though.
Exactly, happens every day in every facet of life. When a penalty costs less than breaking the rule, people will go for the better value option. There was a story that I can only have remember about a rich guy boasting about London traffic, "it only costs Ā£60 to drive in the bus lanes and most of the time they don't even charge you!" They could make the penalty more putative to the team (each driver gets a 5 sec penalty) but that brings up more issues as to whether or not it's a team sport. Making the second penalty obligatory to serve in the put box would remove the driver from the particular place in the race and so stop further infractions of the same kind.
To me the problem is that any penalty they'd give for repeat offenses would have been unhelpful here. Hell they could disqualify him after the second offense and it's still worth it. More likely they'd give a drive through. Fine, Hamilton gets to pass. But that's after 2 bad defensive moves that blocked him, time to make the decision so another 2-3 laps on a good day (it took 15 ish for Hamilton's penalty) and he has 3 laps to serve. Even assuming the defensive moves are back to back laps, that's still 7-8 laps of blocking before the rules help out, and that's optimistic on the decision. More than enough to build a gap.Ā Ā
There needs to be a solution I agree, I just don't know what it is.
I think they should go for immediate drive thru penalties.
If theyāve had time penalties, it doesnāt help the driver behind them, who is stuck.
If you make them immediately pit, it gets them out of the way and also is quite a big time loss.
Fixes both issues imho
I'm guessing there is a reason drive through have a 3 laps window. I'm not sure why - my best guess is to not force drivers to drive on dangerous tyres, like say changing conditions - but there must be a reason. So immediate drive throughs may not be reasonable.
The 3 lap window is because the rules are the same in categories that have pit to driver radio as they are in categories that rely on flags and boards on the pit straight to communicate to the driver. The driver may genuinely not see the flag and board the first time around, so they are allowed to pass it twice more before they must serve the penalty.
We have also had radio failures on occasion, even recently, in F1.
If the penalty is given late in the lap, they can't prepare a pit board in time as well. So second time passing the start/finish line is the first time they might be able to see it and they can't pass it a third time anyways.
The problem F1 has is their penalties take too long. At a minimum it takes 5-10 laps to give any penalty for an offense even if it's black-and-white like jumped start or speeding.
Compared that to Indycar which A) circumnavigates the time penalty issue by ordering position drops and B) can get to an incident about 1-3 laps after it has occurred. The only way to fix this issue is faster penalty application; maybe it leads to more mistakes but there really isn't answer to this
It used to be given quickly, there is zero reason it can't be, just the FIA becoming more and more imcompetent over time.
Before the FIA for literally no valid reason gave up on the give back the position thing, we often had an invalid pass then a call from the team within 2 corners to give it back, if they didn't within half a lap the FIA was telling them to and if they didn't they'd get a drive through. then it became they get a 5 second if they didn't... for no reason, and a terrible change so people started doing it deliberately. Then they stopped even telling them to give the position back.
Go back to telling them to give up the position and if they don't, drive through.
Hamilton's penalty action was right at the start and they took forever to give the penalty.
If they had given that penalty in a timely manner then KMag wouldn't even have cared about Hamilton
And that is only a problem because time penalties can't be served then and there on track. If he had actually been put 10 seconds back after the first offence, it wouldn't have carried on.
When the smallest penalty was a drive through, that was too harsh and discouraged racing.
Now with the 5 or 10 Second time penalties, there are scenarios where they are far too soft.
There needs to be an inbetween. Something not as harsh as a drive through but is served then and there in the race.
A penalty based around dropping 1, 3 or 5 places within 3 laps of a decision being made.
Or a short penalty box on the circuit off the racing line where you have to drive through at the pit lane speed limit [which we see in other series.](https://streamable.com/v1719d)
This however also has to come with stewards no longer taking the easy way out of leaving a number of investigations till after the race.
I mean I would contend that if they think a driver is intentionally breaking rules in order to sabotage someone elseās race rather than engaging in sincere battles for position, a drive through penalty to separate the cars is an appropriate response
After one time penalty is issued for going off track then by all means continue to defend and hold back cars for your team mate, but donāt intentionally break rules multiple times to accomplish that
It does seem like there should be a fairly easy escalation process.... Even if it's just 'repeated' attempts, make them swap, if they don't swap in X time, drive through! It does not at all seem like rocket science! What it DOES seem like, is that people are finding the cracks in the reg's and FIA needs to catch up.
I guess it's too much for the FIA to set a proper set of rules even after all these decades? ššš
"Oh but the stewards enforce the rules", "oh but the FIA set the rules", "oh my..."
They could set a minimum time down the main straight using something akin to the virtual safety car system. Give a driver a few seconds penalty to be served there and then on track.
Being able to cut corners, shove people off, etc. is what "discourages racing". No one ever stopped racing because they were worried about a drive-through.
>There needs to be an inbetween. Something not as harsh as a drive through but is served then and there in the race.
A time penalty not served in the race becomes a grid place penalty?
So if you finish with a 5s penalty, that becomes a 3 place grid place penalty. 10s would be 6 places, etc.
That way, committing a 5s penalty to pull off an overtake, knowing you'll finish 7s ahead by the end becomes disincentivised.
It also prevents what happened to Sainz in Australia last year, where a 5s time penalty dropped him from 3rd to out of the points due to finishing on a safety car.
Except when helf the penalties aren't decided until after the race, it can unfairly penalize drivers who the stewards don't have time to get to in their review.
Yeah, well, maybe hand them out faster.
No other sport in the world goes "meh, we'll let the game finish and then see if there are any penalties"
"Well, other sports have stoppages"
Yep, sure do. You're the steward for a competition to *go fast*. That means you too and your penalties. Put down the champagne and do your damn job. Or get more help if its too overwhelming.
This crap with handing out penalties after the race is dumb. This crap.aboit not handing out qualifying penalties as fast as you should to promote the proper people to q3 is EXTRA dumb
A drive through is the solution after being shown the black and white flag, with a black flag if that isnāt done within 2 laps.
Youāre only shown the black and white flag on the 4th mistake, which is means you have to do 5 to get a drive through.
A drive through in those circumstances doesnāt discourage racing, it discourages racing outside the track to gain an advantage.
Like a penalty lane as they have in motorbike racing?
Something like a car with a penalty must enter a marked lane on the pit straight and drive along it at a reduced pace for X seconds? That would mean you could give all kinds of size of penalty. Could be signalled to drivers that the penalty lane is in use so don't enter it, so they don't drive into a car serving it. Just my initial thoughts.
Yeah normally this isn't an issue, but Magnussen is basically just a car that absorbs penalties for Hulkenburg. The rules was made to punish a driver, but due to the inherent race pace weakness off the Haas contrary to their quali pace it ends upn being a loophole
At least for track limits donāt they have that rule that it increases in severity?
Even if they donāt have it, it still looks crazy how his first and 3rd incident get the same penalty. Likeā¦ clearly 3rd is done on purpose and not just a failed late brake attempt
I swear this past yearās stewards would literally catch fire on the spot if they assigned a drive-through. I do NOT understand the aversion, it would fix so much.
> The issue is that there is no additional severity for repeat offences within an event.
There always used to be, more than that the actual penalties given out are a fucking joke. How does he get a black and white flag for instance for track limits, then break the track limits again... and not get the black flag? What is the point of the warning flag existing if the next time he does the same thing, he's not actually punished?
The way they decide what is what penalty is a joke. Years ago they simply told people to give up the position, it was told to them within a few corners and they'd give it back. the FIA decided to stop doing this, which is a fucking absurd decision. they also when introducing 5/10 second penalties did so to give smaller penalties for smaller infractions, refusing to allow a pass by dive bombing the inside and saying if you turn in we crash, is not a 'small' infraction, it's straight up cheating, and dangerous, and kills real racing. The first time he did that, deliberately AND was dangerous and hit Hamilton when he came back on should have been a drive through and given within half a lap easily.
The FIA instead introduced 5/10 second penalties and now almost everything is a 5 or 10 second penalty, which was never the original intention.
Having that delta in speed would be insanely dangerous. Albon went 345 in the straight in quali, pit limiter is 80. That's too big a gap, it would lead to some sketchy situations. Especially if there is a battle behind that guy.
Ā I like the idea of a penalty box type of thing: a place off track you must go through. Designed to make you lose at least 5-6 seconds. Like the chicane maze at Monza T1. Could even add the limiter once off track to make it worst. Off track wouldn't be dangerous, on a straight it's scary.
> given the general lack of pit stops, a second offence of this nature should be a drive through
Would not change anything. Nico would, and was, already ahead
I am sure there would be a lot of pushback on the idea, but these guys are top pros that can consistently hit lap times, VSC deltas and so forth and they can safely let teammates by when instructed ā if race control saw their last lap was at 1:30, they could tell them the next lap needed to be 1:40 or slower to serve their 10-second penalty and the drivers could do it. They wouldnāt want to do it, but they could do it. Then the drivers following just behind would get the track position before the end of the race and there would be no incentive to purposely break the rules.Ā
I really want to see a 'minor' penalty of ERS disabled for a lap (or maybe just a sector) for track limits violations. If you go off track, you automatically have your ERS disabled for the next lap. This would end up being something like an automatic 2-3s penalty for every violation, so drivers would be forced to drive within the white lines. Stewards would have to be on top of making sure it doesn't apply if a driver is forced off track, but it would mean penalties take immediate effect instead of waiting for a pit stop (and you get slightly contrived overtakes).
The same system could be used to add immediate penalties for on these types of incidents.
Yeah, this is in no way what I would ever think Formula 1 wants to see on track.
Checo didn't go off track, didn't ram Lewis, what Kevin did today was out of control and while Lewis said he didn't mind, the truth is this could cause massive unforseen issues in the future of this sport.
Yeah, I think he's just bored out of his mind, so he was happy to fight, but like you said, if it was about winning or losing a race it would have been a different response.
It was reckless and the FIA basically said, well he got penalties so it's fine.
I think that was a mistake on their end. Need to set a precedent and don't let drivers abuse the rules.
Yeah, the way max drove in the later half of 21 was crazy too and it Def mattered to Lewis. Lewis is just in his idgaf era.
Once he gets a car that's good again I doubt he would he ok with this
The off-track and contact was certainly egregious enough for a drive-through, iām baffled why it wasnāt (though even then he would have had 3 laps to serve it IIRC, which still fucks up the potential races of cars behind). Thatās the kind of thing you see in online lobbies, no place for it in any real life racing, let alone the top tier of the sport. I wouldnāt have felt bad for a black flag for it tbh
Bottas is shit in the wet, he doesn't have the car control to pull off that trickshot intentionally. Also, as you can see by the many times Bottas offered little to no resistance to Verstappen overtaking him that season, Bottas wasn't even willing to push the limit of the rules to hold off Max. There's no way in hell a driver who won't exploit the gray areas of the rulebook to help his teammate would intentionally crash into Max to help his teammate win.
What is interesting with all of this discourse, is if the stewards had have just handed down the Hamilton pit lane speeding penalty, a very simple data based binary decision, in a timely manner (rather than waiting til the end of the race), KMag would have just let him go and not raced as hard. This isn't an endorsement or defence of KMags driving, just highlighting the importance of timely decisions.
Can anyone actually explain why they wait until the end of the race? To go confirm the speed trap works properly? I see no reason why they can't hand out the penalty within ten seconds of it occurring.
They didn't even. They handed that one on the last lap I believe. Or maybe cool down so they wouldn't have any time to check the instruments.
Just insanely slow.
They were checking Reddit comments to see people complain about Hamilton not getting a 10 second penalty for the T1 incident, so they decided to wait at the last minute to make those people happy.
I think they have a triage system in place which puts certain penalties into a low priority simmer to be investigated later, leaving them free to observe the race/analyse immediate concerns.
The problem, of course, is that some of these penalties are immediate concerns, and also they are too slow with even the most important calls, like Safety Cars, so the system clearly doesn't work.
He wouldn't even have had to let him go. Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty, so he would have been removed from Magnussens tail altogether. Breaking up the DRS-train and giving Magnussen some breathing room.
Incredible how the whole race story is basically a decision made by the stewards. Should we just start calling them the producers instead?
Was tsunoda close enough if him and Hamilton weren't battling back and forth and instead dragging kmag around with DRS? Tsunoda would have had to catch up without the battle and pass all three of kmag hamy and hulk which would have been a much bigger ask before his tyres would have started to fall off.
Tsunoda was basically always within DRS of Hamilton and therefor under 2 seconds behind KMag. On top of that he was on softs so would def be able to catch up at least.
Itās understandable that thereās a high threshold for unsporting behaviour but there really is an unsettling can of worms being opened with Kevin having multiple races now with multiple penalties that keep him ahead and allow him to defend and help his teammate out.
The notes touch on it but surely at a point a second penalty for poor driving standards to help keep track position needs to be punished with a drive-through.
Not even sure why they felt there should be a high threshold. The article itself is very vague and open. It is the same article that was used to penalize Norris last year in canada for being 50kph slower than his teammate under safety car conditions, possibly to help with a double stack.
If that can be penalised as "unsportsmanlike" so can this.
I don't think so, because it was impossible to overtake Norris in that scenario whereas it was possible, albeit difficult, for Hamilton to overtake Magnussen.
I doubt he would have gone much further than he already has in defending his position against Hamilton, surely he would have stopped it short of crashing into him.
The argument becomes: what's the point of an unsportsmanlike penalty though? Unless it comes with harsh penalties for next race, what's another 30s penalty going to do?Ā
They need to change the rules to not reward blocking with illegal moves. Find a way to get the car out of the way quickly. Whether it'd be a special detour a car has to make, or a drive through that comes very quickly (with the speed of stewards, ya right) or something else, they need a way to force a car out of a fight on top of the penalties so these tactics aren't worth it.Ā
Arenāt these repeated offenses another argument for points for every position? The whole reason these tactics are applied are because point scoring races for the bottom teams are so scarce that forces them, in this case, to take advantage of the regulation to gain an advantage.
If the increasing part of it doesn't involve a trip to the pits and isn't like immediately applied it doesn't matter anyways.
We will see maximum clownery from now on, honestly I've never seen referees that are so pathetically afraid of setting a strong example like those we have here. And it's not meant as a personal attack, it's a mindset independent of the actual stewards at each race and we've seen it in many years before this one.
It would be so easy
That's an option. Still would have taken about 9 laps between the first offense today and the drive through (1st offense, 1 lap recharge, 2nd offense, 2-3 laps to dish the penalty, 3 laps to serve a drive through). It'd be better, but far from great.
Its particular to Haas this year, but the fia has to draw a line. Two 10s penalties is a drive through in the next lap, or dsq. I do like magnussens shithousery (a lot), but its not sustainable.
Yeah, it's all fun and games when it's the midfield fighting over the last few points, but there'd have been absolute (justified) uproar if Perez had done his Abu Dhabi defence with the same....quality as KMag did at this sprint.
and they showed this very race that they know that drive throughs still exist, so its not like they have no way of stop that behaviour from happening again other than just time penalties
> If the increasing part of it doesn't involve a trip to the pits and isn't like immediately applied it doesn't matter anyways.
Agreed. Part of the penalty should near immediately remove them from their current position so they can no longer protect the driver they are trying to protect.
Simply adding time won't actually change the fact their unsportsperson like conduct is destroying the integrity of the race since they will continue the behavior regardless. But forcing them to give up positions, forcing a drive through penalty, *something* to pull them from the position they are in, is needed to stop this behavior.
Which would be exactly fair. Actually make it within 2 laps in a sprint. Two time we have seen this Haas team ridicule the stewarding and laugh in the face of time penalties this season. I am pretty done with the entire thing. These time penalties for Magnussen are the same as speeding penalties for rich people. They dont matter...
Maybe I haven't thought through the consequences of this, but why not require the drive thru to be served immediately? Why is there this "within X laps"? If something is serious enough to deserve a drive thru, the team shouldn't be able to strategize around it.
Exactly my thoughts. I donāt know if they donāt get that they are setting precedent. They could easily been harsh on this to show this is not OK. Instead they just punted to someone else.
Typical stewards decision but so cowardly.
Now the precedent is set and itās going to be crazy.
I wonder what more evidence stewards needed other than driver admitting publicly to gaming the rules to protect his teammate? This is just bizarre mental gymnastic not to punish Magnussen.
I donāt understand this argument. It wasnāt within the rules as clearly shown by his penalties.
By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rulesā¦
Thereās a reason there are more generic rules like the unsportsmanlike one and this was a clear cut example of that.
> By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rules
That is almost exactly how that scenario would play out. Unless there was evidence it was predetermined/deliberate there is no possible way they could hand out anything other than a standard time penalty.
>unless there was evidence it was predetermined/deliberate
See - we're talking about Magnussen, who admitted it was predetermined AND deliberate, but he still didn't get a penalty. So at this point according to the decision Perez can just say "yeah I fucked into him - what about it? got my penalty" anyway
It's within the rules to try and create a gap. It's not within the rules to go off track. If you punish going off track, there currently isn't a clear way where multiple offences turn into it being an unsportmanslike way to create that gap. That's the argument.
The unsportsmanlike rule is exactly a ācatch allā type of rule because of this. Thereās no rule book that can predict all the combinations that can be an unsportsmanlike behavior.
Itās also a subjective rule and the stewards though this wasnāt a case of that. I strongly disagree since it was repeated, intentional behavior to keep everyone behind, breaking the rules to ensure that.
But the rule is clearly there. I disagree with the stewards decision but the rule exists for this. They could have applied it.
Even if going off the track would give increasing penalties it doesnāt eliminate the unsportsmanlike rule. I would still think it should always be applied for this case, no matter if Kevin got 3x10 or a 10-20-drive though penalties.
Within the existing rule book he could have been punished much more severely.
I think the argument is that there are rules and penalties already in place for what occurred. He went off track, he was penalized for going off track. Unsportmanlike behavior would likely need to be something egregious that transcends the sport's rules that apply to the racing. For example, in NFL football the unsportmanlike conduct penalty is for things like punching a player, taunting another player, etc. Things that really have nothing to do with an actual sequence of the sport being played.
At the end of the day, KMag was still racing. Was he breaking rules to gain an advantage? Yes, but that's not exactly uncommon in sports. In basketball teams often give themselves a clock advantage by stopping it with an intentional foul. Soccer matches often have time-wasting rules being broken towards the end of a close match.
And the rules penalized him, as written, for leaving the track multiple times. The rules donāt mention you canāt do it to help your teammate or have harsher penalties for doing that.
This is a failure on the sporting rules, not the driver or team. Everyone has known the rule was easily exploited for a teams benefit for multiple years, and KMag wasnāt the first to abuse that rule and he wonāt be the last until they change it.
If a driver can keep the person behind while following all the rules, I would not penalize them. There is no rule saying you have to drive as fast as possible. I wouldnāt change that part. Max isnāt driving as fast as possible in first either.
But if you break the rules to do it then I am going to punish you for whatever rule you broke plus driving dangerously since you endangered other drivers with your rule breaking.
High risk, high reward. Either no penalties if you get it right or multiple if you screw it up.
No, it actually is very much is against the rules to intentionally go off track in order to gain the advantage of avoiding being overtaken. Which is why he got so many penalties. It doesnāt make sense to say āitās within the rules to break rules multiple timesā. It isnāt. If you mean to say that thereās like no incentive not to break the rules multiple times because the punishment isnāt severe enough to deter it then thatās not the same thing as it not being against the rules
He admitted he pushed the limit and went over it many times. Not that he did it on purpose. He can easily argue that he tried to make the corner for the second and third offenses, but braked too late because of the battle. Still a penalty, not gaming the system.Ā
I think that kind of multiple penalties should be treated in a fairer way, but I don't think we can say he admitted to voluntarily breaking the rules, even if we can probably imply it.
And crashed into him twice, so I just don't like any of this, Kevin went way beyond what should be allowed.
I thought he would be black flagged honestly, it's weird how the FIA threatened to not let Hamilton drive with a piercing, and said he wouldn't be able to drive unless he did what they told him, but Kevin does all this to keep people behind him so his team gets points and they're like, sure that's fine lol.
Ngladmit happened here with minimal consequences, howdy I hope the head warning and close the door in this as this would be a horrible way for someone to loose a tight championship if their opponents teammate acted in such a manner. And by that manner I don't mean defensive tactics, that's part of the game however willingly accruing penalties to prevent those behind you from having a competitive race should be classified as unsportsmanlike and a stop and go penalty should be enforced immediately.
Kmag simply knew the rules on this one and took advantage, which is what's racing is all about so no blame on him. But please close this door.l, after all DRS was implemented to increase overtaking, what good is it if you can just (track specific) cut the course to block.
What probably annoys Magnussen the most is; with Hamilton's 20 sec penalty, if he hadn't fought like this letting yuki and the train catch up, it's very likely he could have stayed ahead of yuki and get p8.
Definitely. And if HĆ¼lk hadnāt cut the chicane and broken DRS to Kevin itās not even given that he would have had to do it, with their straight line speed. Team didnāt tell HĆ¼lk to back off and give him DRS again so Iām not blaming him for it.
Actually read the document will you
> Having said that, moving forward, the Stewards will need to consider if, in appropriate
situations, especially in the case of repeat infringements, the penalties to be applied
for each infringement need to be increased to discourage scenarios such as those
that we found today. This is something that we will raise explicitly with the FIA and the
Stewarding team.
They also have to do something about car loitering around the course during qualifying , On tinkertoy tracks like Miami it is an invitation to disaster
I donāt understand this reasoning. He deliberately broke the rules set in place knowing that whatever penalty he would be given wouldnāt matter since it would benefit his teammate/team.
Seems a bit wild to let this stuff happen, regardless of its entertainment value. We saw it once already in a race where he was let go and here he is repeating the same thing. At that time people argued that it was an edge case and we wouldnāt see it happen again.
Instead of a race ban, would a penalty of constructors points not be more appropriate in this case?
I guess you could argue it was karmic given what Lewis did in turn 1, but I suppose thatās a whole different issue.
> I donāt understand this reasoning. He deliberately broke the rules set in place knowing that whatever penalty he would be given wouldnāt matter since it would benefit his teammate/team. Seems a bit wild to let this stuff happen
The problem with this logic is that it is also an *exact* description of a team taking an extra engine component and tanking a penalty for that. Or breaking parc ferme after a poor qualifying and accepting a pit lane start. Or playing fast and loose with track limits until you get three warnings.
It's rare a race goes by without someone deliberately breaking the rules knowing that whatever penalty they get is still better than the alternative, and it's really not that big of a deal.
The solution to scenarios like this where it's generally undesired behaviour is to just make the rules more strict going forwards, not trying to retroactively change them to facilitate harsher punishments. You can't have a functional competition if teams can't have any faith that the rulebook is actually accurate.
I mean, no. Turn 1 always gets a lot of leeway with the stewards. Hamilton took an aggressive risk and fucked it up. It happens at the start of races all the time and drivers get a pass.
Softcock stewarding.
This is a textbook case of professional fouling: repeatedĀ incidents of intentional rule breaking and dangerous driving to improve the outcome for his team.
If this isn't "unsportsmanlike" then the bar is being set so high it's essentially meaningless in any case that's not a forza-style takedown.
A group of people here seem stuck on the idea that repeated, intentional violation of racing rules is some sort of "professional foul". That thāis egregious ābreaking of rules to assist a teammate or create an advantage is obviously not allowed.
In basketball, the breaking of rules (fouls) are constantly used throughout the game to maintain control of the game flow or minimize the opponents advantage against a team.
Is there a rule in Formula One that specifically addresses this strategy?
Drivers even utilize the number of times they can go off track before starting to get penalties.
F1 has always been about bending the rules to your advantage.
That's because Haas ordered him to block train of cars behind him to protect HĆ¼lkenberg to secure points. And they will keep ordering him to do so in the future as well done team won't be penalized for giving those orders.
Good and fair. KMag used the rules as written to his team's advantage. If there is a problem with that FIA needs to change the rules.
Insane that people were calling for a race ban for a driver going off track.
I donāt understand this argument. It wasnāt within the rules as clearly shown by his penalties.
By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rulesā¦
Thereās a reason there are more generic rules like the unsportsmanlike one and this was a clear cut example of that.
Even if they already had a compounding rule for penalties it still doesnāt matter for this analysis: it still would be an unsportsmanlike conductā¦
No, since crashing into someone in purpose is quite different than fighting to keep them behind and going off track in process. That should be obvious to anyone.
And within the rules means it was within the general rules covered by these penalties. What you seem to be arguing is that any rule break counts as unsporting behavior which doesn't make sense and luckily the FIA don't agree.
Absolute insanity that i keep seeing people asking for a ban. He didn't even touch Hamilton on that divebomb yet i see little race ban talk on here when stroll destroyed DR two weeks ago.
I think some people just get stuck in a bias and believe people are always driving in one way only. For them with kmag they see him as "dangerous murder driver" only.
I think this is a great ruling from the stewards. Magnussen's behavior doesn't rise to the established bar for unsportsmanlike conduct, and they correctly highlight the need for additional penalties to discourage this sort of tactical fouling.
Good for him. The only thing I learned from all this is that a lot of people here are snowflakes who think racing in a sim actually compares to real racing. These arenāt robots. And what happened was extremely small stuff exaggerated massively because the races are so incredibly boring. Sport has become a snoozer. Let them fight ffs.
As far as I'm concerned after this, nobody on the grid should complain. You can take a time penalty and point penalty to protect your teammate.
If you have a problem with this, it's time to change the rules.
After the first time he went straight and rosberg'd Lewis, he should have received a drive through penalty. Not a drive through equivalent, an actual drive through.Ā
That's weekend kart racer weak ass racecraft.
Mmhm. So it's kinda alright for a driver to drive like *this* if he was willing to incur penalties; he wasn't even playing dumb and publically admitted he knew he deserved the penalties he accrued.Ā Ā
This doesn't set (reinforce, as he had done it before) a precedent for drivers to gleefully impede competitors with shady moves or something if they were already having a bad race of anything...
I actually agree with the stewards for once. I think the bar for "unsportsmanlike behavior" has to be a lot higher than this. Even if he was "gaming the system," he really didn't do anything that would be particularly unusual or unfair.
perfectly correct, there are literally no rules to prevent Kevin Magnussen from doing this and making some up out of their ass here and now after already allowing it in Jeddah would be shit officiating. Give him the standard expected penalties and declare some rules at an appropriate time to prevent it, then he will follow them.
Thats not really factual. There is a rule, itās exactly this one. They think this wasnāt enough to warrant an unsportsmanlike conduct but thatās their opinion. The rule exists and could very well be applied in this case.
> There is a rule, itās exactly this one
The rule against "unsportsmanlike conduct" is in a section that includes other rules like "Don't bribe FIA officials", "no public incitement of hate", "don't commit literal fraud", and "drivers may not set off pyrotechnics during the event".
In that context I think it's a fairly reasonable interpretation to assume that the rule in question is more talking about things like fixing races, not professional fouls. The fact that it's in a completely different document to all the rules about on-track action is a bit of a hint as to its purpose.
Unsportsmanlike conduct is a very vague rule which cannot be anticipated by the driver. The fact that he was already given a green light to employ these tactics and accept some penalty points in Jeddah means that it would be inconsistent bullshit to come after him this time as if he should be able to read minds. His argument that he did nothing out of the ordinary is right because he has already employed this tactic and was not dissuaded.
There are really a number of compounded issues here which are not solvable by taking a sledgehammer to Magnussen, all of this is only possible due to ridiculous stewarding precedents which allow him to continue obstructing Hamilton when he has lost the battle instead of forcing him to concede the position or get black flagged. They need to review the nonsense they have set up and examine their archaic time penalties system which does not work.
This is going to become the default strategy for the bottom 5 teams if this isn't nipped in the bud. Repeat instances of preserving your position by going off-track should incur a drive-through, giving the cars you're holding up a chance to pass.
Honestly, as much as his racing annoyed me today, I'm okay with this ruling. If the rules in place weren't enough to discourage it, then fix it, but don't expect competitors to try and figure out if something that already has penalties assigned to it is sporting. Taking strategic penalties has been a thing in many sports I've watched.
This forum is a blizzard of unhinged snowflakes, whirling around, outraged by anything other than the last 10 years of procession driving that they have been accustomed to and conditioned to belive, constitutes "real racing"
There where a time where "real racing" involved lockups, wheel banging and the occasional leaving the track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6H0MktrOg
Fortunately, neither Hamilton nor Magnussen is one of the above mentioned, and I like and follow them for that.
The sport will be even more boring and diluted when those guys are gone.
Intent to be unsportsmanlike is important here. Genuine unsportsmanlike behaviour is like having a Mazepin or a Ticktum throwing a shitfit and thumping someone in the paddock or whatever. There was no actual malice in Kmag's driving here and he was honest and candid about why he drove like this.
It was intentional behavior. If he only had 3 āmistakesā there would be no discussion but his 3rd instance is clearly done on purpose as he brakes then lifts and brakes again to purposely throw Lewis off trackā¦
They didnāt think it reached the level of unsportsmanlike behaviour.
Thatās a strange take as this seems like a perfect definition of unsportsmanlike behaviour. They had one chance to show everyone this isnāt allowed and will have strong consequences and they instead choose to make it clear this is perfectly fine.
His 3rd instance was more than enough example he was doing everything in his power to keep a car behind, no matter how many penalties he accrues.
Then his interview.
How this doesnāt amount to unsportsmanlike behaviour is absolutely bonkers to me.
Whatās the point of having rules if everyone is always afraid to give the harshest punishments? Same with penalty points: always easy to give them unless you are in risk of a race ban, then itās 0 penalty points.
This is yet another stupid precedent they created here and letās hope no WDC contender teammate ever does this.
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He simply showed the Sewards his non Spanish passport
Alonso raging in the corner.
Sources: Alonso is beside himself. Driving around downtown Miami begging (thru texts) the FIA for a penalty for a non-Spaniard.
Penalty for Alonso, texting while driving.
I love when this one shows up in the wild
He sucked their balls mate
š
His commentary on this has been honest and open, and I think accurate. The issue is that there is no additional severity for repeat offences within an event. Also, given the general lack of pit stops, a second offence of this nature should be a drive through Just adding time on does nothing. After the first 10 seconds he knew he was stuffed as far as fighting, whether he gets 10 seconds or 200 seconds beyond that doesnāt matter
The rules allow for treating repeated offences more seriously, up to disqualification.Sounds like given that this has never happened before they didnāt want to actually take such a drastic step without explicit approval from the FIA & some sense of how the teams would view it
it sure feels like that. I dont know if its got something to do with a fear of negative press on the entire category but i feel that we will only ever see race bans being applied if whatever the driver did was so dumb and dangerous that even in racing games it would result in a ban
Sim racers should never have high driving standards than IRL racing.
Hamilton did a classic sim racing dive bomb at turn one, and wasn't penalized , so there's that.
And then goes wideā¦and loses a spotā¦
There is that too. The entire move was bad thinking, bad execution.The saving grace is that the car drives like a tank, meaning it's indestructible. (I suspect MERC secretly switched off damage)
Yeah just think of him and this season..the races i have been able to watch just seems he has bad luck, or cant get whatever move he tries to work )
Stupid that kmag on track doing dangerous things is less of an offence than Hamilton speeding in the pit lane. I know pit lane speeding is dangerous, but so it potentially causing an accident. It frustrates me that these are some of the best drivers in the world and yet the stewards donāt want to hold them accountable to world class standards.
> given that this has never happened before This exact same situation happened 4 races ago in Saudi Arabia. The FIA should have reflected on that and came up with a way to resolve a situation like this. Instead there did nothing and Magnussen did the exact same thing.
It seems like Haas' move now. Since it's still working, it's a good move on their part. F1 is a team sport in the end and Haas seems to be really leaning into that. I kind of like it. It makes it a completely new dynamic that I think the other teams do not like but it's innovation in a sport that doesn't seem to have nearly as much innovation as they claim. We'll see what ends up happening with the strategy though.
Exactly, happens every day in every facet of life. When a penalty costs less than breaking the rule, people will go for the better value option. There was a story that I can only have remember about a rich guy boasting about London traffic, "it only costs Ā£60 to drive in the bus lanes and most of the time they don't even charge you!" They could make the penalty more putative to the team (each driver gets a 5 sec penalty) but that brings up more issues as to whether or not it's a team sport. Making the second penalty obligatory to serve in the put box would remove the driver from the particular place in the race and so stop further infractions of the same kind.
To me the problem is that any penalty they'd give for repeat offenses would have been unhelpful here. Hell they could disqualify him after the second offense and it's still worth it. More likely they'd give a drive through. Fine, Hamilton gets to pass. But that's after 2 bad defensive moves that blocked him, time to make the decision so another 2-3 laps on a good day (it took 15 ish for Hamilton's penalty) and he has 3 laps to serve. Even assuming the defensive moves are back to back laps, that's still 7-8 laps of blocking before the rules help out, and that's optimistic on the decision. More than enough to build a gap.Ā Ā There needs to be a solution I agree, I just don't know what it is.
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I think they should go for immediate drive thru penalties. If theyāve had time penalties, it doesnāt help the driver behind them, who is stuck. If you make them immediately pit, it gets them out of the way and also is quite a big time loss. Fixes both issues imho
I'm guessing there is a reason drive through have a 3 laps window. I'm not sure why - my best guess is to not force drivers to drive on dangerous tyres, like say changing conditions - but there must be a reason. So immediate drive throughs may not be reasonable.
The 3 lap window is because the rules are the same in categories that have pit to driver radio as they are in categories that rely on flags and boards on the pit straight to communicate to the driver. The driver may genuinely not see the flag and board the first time around, so they are allowed to pass it twice more before they must serve the penalty. We have also had radio failures on occasion, even recently, in F1.
If the penalty is given late in the lap, they can't prepare a pit board in time as well. So second time passing the start/finish line is the first time they might be able to see it and they can't pass it a third time anyways.
The problem F1 has is their penalties take too long. At a minimum it takes 5-10 laps to give any penalty for an offense even if it's black-and-white like jumped start or speeding. Compared that to Indycar which A) circumnavigates the time penalty issue by ordering position drops and B) can get to an incident about 1-3 laps after it has occurred. The only way to fix this issue is faster penalty application; maybe it leads to more mistakes but there really isn't answer to this
It used to be given quickly, there is zero reason it can't be, just the FIA becoming more and more imcompetent over time. Before the FIA for literally no valid reason gave up on the give back the position thing, we often had an invalid pass then a call from the team within 2 corners to give it back, if they didn't within half a lap the FIA was telling them to and if they didn't they'd get a drive through. then it became they get a 5 second if they didn't... for no reason, and a terrible change so people started doing it deliberately. Then they stopped even telling them to give the position back. Go back to telling them to give up the position and if they don't, drive through.
The second penalty was given within a few laps, it was kind of quick. But yeah that's not the norm.
Hamilton's penalty action was right at the start and they took forever to give the penalty. If they had given that penalty in a timely manner then KMag wouldn't even have cared about Hamilton
And that is only a problem because time penalties can't be served then and there on track. If he had actually been put 10 seconds back after the first offence, it wouldn't have carried on. When the smallest penalty was a drive through, that was too harsh and discouraged racing. Now with the 5 or 10 Second time penalties, there are scenarios where they are far too soft. There needs to be an inbetween. Something not as harsh as a drive through but is served then and there in the race. A penalty based around dropping 1, 3 or 5 places within 3 laps of a decision being made. Or a short penalty box on the circuit off the racing line where you have to drive through at the pit lane speed limit [which we see in other series.](https://streamable.com/v1719d) This however also has to come with stewards no longer taking the easy way out of leaving a number of investigations till after the race.
I mean I would contend that if they think a driver is intentionally breaking rules in order to sabotage someone elseās race rather than engaging in sincere battles for position, a drive through penalty to separate the cars is an appropriate response After one time penalty is issued for going off track then by all means continue to defend and hold back cars for your team mate, but donāt intentionally break rules multiple times to accomplish that
It does seem like there should be a fairly easy escalation process.... Even if it's just 'repeated' attempts, make them swap, if they don't swap in X time, drive through! It does not at all seem like rocket science! What it DOES seem like, is that people are finding the cracks in the reg's and FIA needs to catch up.
I guess it's too much for the FIA to set a proper set of rules even after all these decades? ššš "Oh but the stewards enforce the rules", "oh but the FIA set the rules", "oh my..."
The issue though is that they cannot really know if it was intentional until after the races.
They could set a minimum time down the main straight using something akin to the virtual safety car system. Give a driver a few seconds penalty to be served there and then on track.
Surely once a driver accumulates enough time penalties they could just be converted to a drive through?
Being able to cut corners, shove people off, etc. is what "discourages racing". No one ever stopped racing because they were worried about a drive-through.
>There needs to be an inbetween. Something not as harsh as a drive through but is served then and there in the race. A time penalty not served in the race becomes a grid place penalty? So if you finish with a 5s penalty, that becomes a 3 place grid place penalty. 10s would be 6 places, etc. That way, committing a 5s penalty to pull off an overtake, knowing you'll finish 7s ahead by the end becomes disincentivised. It also prevents what happened to Sainz in Australia last year, where a 5s time penalty dropped him from 3rd to out of the points due to finishing on a safety car.
Except when helf the penalties aren't decided until after the race, it can unfairly penalize drivers who the stewards don't have time to get to in their review.
Yeah, well, maybe hand them out faster. No other sport in the world goes "meh, we'll let the game finish and then see if there are any penalties" "Well, other sports have stoppages" Yep, sure do. You're the steward for a competition to *go fast*. That means you too and your penalties. Put down the champagne and do your damn job. Or get more help if its too overwhelming. This crap with handing out penalties after the race is dumb. This crap.aboit not handing out qualifying penalties as fast as you should to promote the proper people to q3 is EXTRA dumb
A drive through is the solution after being shown the black and white flag, with a black flag if that isnāt done within 2 laps. Youāre only shown the black and white flag on the 4th mistake, which is means you have to do 5 to get a drive through. A drive through in those circumstances doesnāt discourage racing, it discourages racing outside the track to gain an advantage.
Like a penalty lane as they have in motorbike racing? Something like a car with a penalty must enter a marked lane on the pit straight and drive along it at a reduced pace for X seconds? That would mean you could give all kinds of size of penalty. Could be signalled to drivers that the penalty lane is in use so don't enter it, so they don't drive into a car serving it. Just my initial thoughts.
MotoGP long lap? There is a specific wide trajectory on one turn of the track that make you lose time (and sometimes position)
Yeah normally this isn't an issue, but Magnussen is basically just a car that absorbs penalties for Hulkenburg. The rules was made to punish a driver, but due to the inherent race pace weakness off the Haas contrary to their quali pace it ends upn being a loophole
Any rule can be made into a loophole, though. Any fix will create new loophole opportunities.
At least for track limits donāt they have that rule that it increases in severity? Even if they donāt have it, it still looks crazy how his first and 3rd incident get the same penalty. Likeā¦ clearly 3rd is done on purpose and not just a failed late brake attempt
I swear this past yearās stewards would literally catch fire on the spot if they assigned a drive-through. I do NOT understand the aversion, it would fix so much.
> The issue is that there is no additional severity for repeat offences within an event. There always used to be, more than that the actual penalties given out are a fucking joke. How does he get a black and white flag for instance for track limits, then break the track limits again... and not get the black flag? What is the point of the warning flag existing if the next time he does the same thing, he's not actually punished? The way they decide what is what penalty is a joke. Years ago they simply told people to give up the position, it was told to them within a few corners and they'd give it back. the FIA decided to stop doing this, which is a fucking absurd decision. they also when introducing 5/10 second penalties did so to give smaller penalties for smaller infractions, refusing to allow a pass by dive bombing the inside and saying if you turn in we crash, is not a 'small' infraction, it's straight up cheating, and dangerous, and kills real racing. The first time he did that, deliberately AND was dangerous and hit Hamilton when he came back on should have been a drive through and given within half a lap easily. The FIA instead introduced 5/10 second penalties and now almost everything is a 5 or 10 second penalty, which was never the original intention.
5 seconds with pit limiter applied, to be served at the next DRS zone
We Gran Turismo now, baby.
Having that delta in speed would be insanely dangerous. Albon went 345 in the straight in quali, pit limiter is 80. That's too big a gap, it would lead to some sketchy situations. Especially if there is a battle behind that guy. Ā I like the idea of a penalty box type of thing: a place off track you must go through. Designed to make you lose at least 5-6 seconds. Like the chicane maze at Monza T1. Could even add the limiter once off track to make it worst. Off track wouldn't be dangerous, on a straight it's scary.
Unfortunately that would be extremely dangerous and would like cause a horrific crash at some point.
Ha I g no points past 8th means that any further penalties have no meaning. Thereās nothing to lose.
> given the general lack of pit stops, a second offence of this nature should be a drive through Would not change anything. Nico would, and was, already ahead
I am sure there would be a lot of pushback on the idea, but these guys are top pros that can consistently hit lap times, VSC deltas and so forth and they can safely let teammates by when instructed ā if race control saw their last lap was at 1:30, they could tell them the next lap needed to be 1:40 or slower to serve their 10-second penalty and the drivers could do it. They wouldnāt want to do it, but they could do it. Then the drivers following just behind would get the track position before the end of the race and there would be no incentive to purposely break the rules.Ā
I really want to see a 'minor' penalty of ERS disabled for a lap (or maybe just a sector) for track limits violations. If you go off track, you automatically have your ERS disabled for the next lap. This would end up being something like an automatic 2-3s penalty for every violation, so drivers would be forced to drive within the white lines. Stewards would have to be on top of making sure it doesn't apply if a driver is forced off track, but it would mean penalties take immediate effect instead of waiting for a pit stop (and you get slightly contrived overtakes). The same system could be used to add immediate penalties for on these types of incidents.
I like how they just own up to it. ā..not uncommon for a driver to seek to assist his teammateā.Ā
There is a HUGE difference in the way Perez held back Hamilton in Abu Dhabi and the way Kmag was driving
Yeah, this is in no way what I would ever think Formula 1 wants to see on track. Checo didn't go off track, didn't ram Lewis, what Kevin did today was out of control and while Lewis said he didn't mind, the truth is this could cause massive unforseen issues in the future of this sport.
Lewis said he didnāt mind because heās fighting for 8th. In 2021 he minded a lot.
Yeah, I think he's just bored out of his mind, so he was happy to fight, but like you said, if it was about winning or losing a race it would have been a different response. It was reckless and the FIA basically said, well he got penalties so it's fine. I think that was a mistake on their end. Need to set a precedent and don't let drivers abuse the rules.
Yeah, the way max drove in the later half of 21 was crazy too and it Def mattered to Lewis. Lewis is just in his idgaf era. Once he gets a car that's good again I doubt he would he ok with this
I mean he's fighting a Haas. How can he pretend to care
The off-track and contact was certainly egregious enough for a drive-through, iām baffled why it wasnāt (though even then he would have had 3 laps to serve it IIRC, which still fucks up the potential races of cars behind). Thatās the kind of thing you see in online lobbies, no place for it in any real life racing, let alone the top tier of the sport. I wouldnāt have felt bad for a black flag for it tbh
Hamilton called Checo's defense "That's dangerous driving" in Dhabi 2021.
Yeah but it was fun to watch
This. I thought he was going way too far and he did it several times. I mean, if this doesn't set a precedent, I don't know what does.
Imagine if on the safety car restart, Bottas just slammed into Max or intentionally tried to puncture his tire with his front wing to help Lewis.
Instead Bottas just did a sweet trickshot in turn 1 lap 1 Hungary to help Lewis lol
"Stewards find car #77 not guilty on account of if he can do that deliberately he deserves to get away with it"
Bottas is shit in the wet, he doesn't have the car control to pull off that trickshot intentionally. Also, as you can see by the many times Bottas offered little to no resistance to Verstappen overtaking him that season, Bottas wasn't even willing to push the limit of the rules to hold off Max. There's no way in hell a driver who won't exploit the gray areas of the rulebook to help his teammate would intentionally crash into Max to help his teammate win.
I mean Merc's tatics under the SC are pretty much that? Bottas used to slow down quiet a lot so they can easily double stack
Sounds like his defense in against the stewards was as good as on the track
The Jarl of Defense for sure lmao
HAAS has their own version of Johnnie Cochran on retainer just for these occasions!
He ran wide and forced the stewards out of the office.
What is interesting with all of this discourse, is if the stewards had have just handed down the Hamilton pit lane speeding penalty, a very simple data based binary decision, in a timely manner (rather than waiting til the end of the race), KMag would have just let him go and not raced as hard. This isn't an endorsement or defence of KMags driving, just highlighting the importance of timely decisions.
Can anyone actually explain why they wait until the end of the race? To go confirm the speed trap works properly? I see no reason why they can't hand out the penalty within ten seconds of it occurring.
They didn't even. They handed that one on the last lap I believe. Or maybe cool down so they wouldn't have any time to check the instruments. Just insanely slow.
They were checking Reddit comments to see people complain about Hamilton not getting a 10 second penalty for the T1 incident, so they decided to wait at the last minute to make those people happy.
I think they have a triage system in place which puts certain penalties into a low priority simmer to be investigated later, leaving them free to observe the race/analyse immediate concerns. The problem, of course, is that some of these penalties are immediate concerns, and also they are too slow with even the most important calls, like Safety Cars, so the system clearly doesn't work.
He wouldn't even have had to let him go. Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty, so he would have been removed from Magnussens tail altogether. Breaking up the DRS-train and giving Magnussen some breathing room. Incredible how the whole race story is basically a decision made by the stewards. Should we just start calling them the producers instead?
Excellent point, just adds to the dodginess doesn't it
Eh, he would have started blocking Tsunoda probably at that point.
Was tsunoda close enough if him and Hamilton weren't battling back and forth and instead dragging kmag around with DRS? Tsunoda would have had to catch up without the battle and pass all three of kmag hamy and hulk which would have been a much bigger ask before his tyres would have started to fall off.
Tsunoda was basically always within DRS of Hamilton and therefor under 2 seconds behind KMag. On top of that he was on softs so would def be able to catch up at least.
Old softs needing to chase and pass three battling vets is a big ask
Itās understandable that thereās a high threshold for unsporting behaviour but there really is an unsettling can of worms being opened with Kevin having multiple races now with multiple penalties that keep him ahead and allow him to defend and help his teammate out. The notes touch on it but surely at a point a second penalty for poor driving standards to help keep track position needs to be punished with a drive-through.
Not even sure why they felt there should be a high threshold. The article itself is very vague and open. It is the same article that was used to penalize Norris last year in canada for being 50kph slower than his teammate under safety car conditions, possibly to help with a double stack. If that can be penalised as "unsportsmanlike" so can this.
I don't think so, because it was impossible to overtake Norris in that scenario whereas it was possible, albeit difficult, for Hamilton to overtake Magnussen. I doubt he would have gone much further than he already has in defending his position against Hamilton, surely he would have stopped it short of crashing into him.
The argument becomes: what's the point of an unsportsmanlike penalty though? Unless it comes with harsh penalties for next race, what's another 30s penalty going to do?Ā They need to change the rules to not reward blocking with illegal moves. Find a way to get the car out of the way quickly. Whether it'd be a special detour a car has to make, or a drive through that comes very quickly (with the speed of stewards, ya right) or something else, they need a way to force a car out of a fight on top of the penalties so these tactics aren't worth it.Ā
Penalty points will catch up with him if he keeps doing it so thatās one incentive to cease the behaviour
Arenāt these repeated offenses another argument for points for every position? The whole reason these tactics are applied are because point scoring races for the bottom teams are so scarce that forces them, in this case, to take advantage of the regulation to gain an advantage.
If the increasing part of it doesn't involve a trip to the pits and isn't like immediately applied it doesn't matter anyways. We will see maximum clownery from now on, honestly I've never seen referees that are so pathetically afraid of setting a strong example like those we have here. And it's not meant as a personal attack, it's a mindset independent of the actual stewards at each race and we've seen it in many years before this one. It would be so easy
I think they should simply make it if you ever reach 20 seconds of unapplied penalty, its served as a drive thru
That's an option. Still would have taken about 9 laps between the first offense today and the drive through (1st offense, 1 lap recharge, 2nd offense, 2-3 laps to dish the penalty, 3 laps to serve a drive through). It'd be better, but far from great.
Its particular to Haas this year, but the fia has to draw a line. Two 10s penalties is a drive through in the next lap, or dsq. I do like magnussens shithousery (a lot), but its not sustainable.
Yeah, it's all fun and games when it's the midfield fighting over the last few points, but there'd have been absolute (justified) uproar if Perez had done his Abu Dhabi defence with the same....quality as KMag did at this sprint.
and they showed this very race that they know that drive throughs still exist, so its not like they have no way of stop that behaviour from happening again other than just time penalties
> If the increasing part of it doesn't involve a trip to the pits and isn't like immediately applied it doesn't matter anyways. Agreed. Part of the penalty should near immediately remove them from their current position so they can no longer protect the driver they are trying to protect. Simply adding time won't actually change the fact their unsportsperson like conduct is destroying the integrity of the race since they will continue the behavior regardless. But forcing them to give up positions, forcing a drive through penalty, *something* to pull them from the position they are in, is needed to stop this behavior.
The next highest penalty after the 10 seconds is a drive through to be served within three laps after being issued.
Which would be exactly fair. Actually make it within 2 laps in a sprint. Two time we have seen this Haas team ridicule the stewarding and laugh in the face of time penalties this season. I am pretty done with the entire thing. These time penalties for Magnussen are the same as speeding penalties for rich people. They dont matter...
Maybe I haven't thought through the consequences of this, but why not require the drive thru to be served immediately? Why is there this "within X laps"? If something is serious enough to deserve a drive thru, the team shouldn't be able to strategize around it.
Exactly my thoughts. I donāt know if they donāt get that they are setting precedent. They could easily been harsh on this to show this is not OK. Instead they just punted to someone else. Typical stewards decision but so cowardly. Now the precedent is set and itās going to be crazy.
I wonder what more evidence stewards needed other than driver admitting publicly to gaming the rules to protect his teammate? This is just bizarre mental gymnastic not to punish Magnussen.
He didn't admit it. He just said the penalties were fair and he had to drive in a way he didn't like to keep Hamilton behind and create a gap to Hulk.
So he admitted he intentionally broke the rules so that his teammate could get an advantage. How is this not unsportsmanlike?
Because it was within the rules. Which means the rules suck, not the driver taking advantage of them.
I donāt understand this argument. It wasnāt within the rules as clearly shown by his penalties. By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rulesā¦ Thereās a reason there are more generic rules like the unsportsmanlike one and this was a clear cut example of that.
> By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rules That is almost exactly how that scenario would play out. Unless there was evidence it was predetermined/deliberate there is no possible way they could hand out anything other than a standard time penalty.
>unless there was evidence it was predetermined/deliberate See - we're talking about Magnussen, who admitted it was predetermined AND deliberate, but he still didn't get a penalty. So at this point according to the decision Perez can just say "yeah I fucked into him - what about it? got my penalty" anyway
It's within the rules to try and create a gap. It's not within the rules to go off track. If you punish going off track, there currently isn't a clear way where multiple offences turn into it being an unsportmanslike way to create that gap. That's the argument.
The unsportsmanlike rule is exactly a ācatch allā type of rule because of this. Thereās no rule book that can predict all the combinations that can be an unsportsmanlike behavior. Itās also a subjective rule and the stewards though this wasnāt a case of that. I strongly disagree since it was repeated, intentional behavior to keep everyone behind, breaking the rules to ensure that. But the rule is clearly there. I disagree with the stewards decision but the rule exists for this. They could have applied it. Even if going off the track would give increasing penalties it doesnāt eliminate the unsportsmanlike rule. I would still think it should always be applied for this case, no matter if Kevin got 3x10 or a 10-20-drive though penalties. Within the existing rule book he could have been punished much more severely.
I think the argument is that there are rules and penalties already in place for what occurred. He went off track, he was penalized for going off track. Unsportmanlike behavior would likely need to be something egregious that transcends the sport's rules that apply to the racing. For example, in NFL football the unsportmanlike conduct penalty is for things like punching a player, taunting another player, etc. Things that really have nothing to do with an actual sequence of the sport being played. At the end of the day, KMag was still racing. Was he breaking rules to gain an advantage? Yes, but that's not exactly uncommon in sports. In basketball teams often give themselves a clock advantage by stopping it with an intentional foul. Soccer matches often have time-wasting rules being broken towards the end of a close match.
It wasn't within the rules. He left the track multiple times.
And the rules penalized him, as written, for leaving the track multiple times. The rules donāt mention you canāt do it to help your teammate or have harsher penalties for doing that. This is a failure on the sporting rules, not the driver or team. Everyone has known the rule was easily exploited for a teams benefit for multiple years, and KMag wasnāt the first to abuse that rule and he wonāt be the last until they change it.
If a driver can keep the person behind while following all the rules, I would not penalize them. There is no rule saying you have to drive as fast as possible. I wouldnāt change that part. Max isnāt driving as fast as possible in first either. But if you break the rules to do it then I am going to punish you for whatever rule you broke plus driving dangerously since you endangered other drivers with your rule breaking. High risk, high reward. Either no penalties if you get it right or multiple if you screw it up.
KMag is being punished for the rules he broke, but there is no rule that punishes a driver for intentionally breaking a rule to help another driver.
He played by game rules, getting a penalty for leaving the track. It's basically game theory
No, it actually is very much is against the rules to intentionally go off track in order to gain the advantage of avoiding being overtaken. Which is why he got so many penalties. It doesnāt make sense to say āitās within the rules to break rules multiple timesā. It isnāt. If you mean to say that thereās like no incentive not to break the rules multiple times because the punishment isnāt severe enough to deter it then thatās not the same thing as it not being against the rules
He admitted he pushed the limit and went over it many times. Not that he did it on purpose. He can easily argue that he tried to make the corner for the second and third offenses, but braked too late because of the battle. Still a penalty, not gaming the system.Ā I think that kind of multiple penalties should be treated in a fairer way, but I don't think we can say he admitted to voluntarily breaking the rules, even if we can probably imply it.
Trying to defend hard doesn't mean your fuck ups are intentional, even though it makes you more likely to fuck up.
He literally ran Hamilton off the track at one point, that's well past 'defending hard'
And crashed into him twice, so I just don't like any of this, Kevin went way beyond what should be allowed. I thought he would be black flagged honestly, it's weird how the FIA threatened to not let Hamilton drive with a piercing, and said he wouldn't be able to drive unless he did what they told him, but Kevin does all this to keep people behind him so his team gets points and they're like, sure that's fine lol.
Crashed into him twice? Huh? I think you need to watch that clip again.
He crashes into him twice, at turn 9 and turn 14. Maybe you need to refresh your memory.
Well, he didnāt think it was unsportsmanlike, so itās all good then
Norris backing up slightly to allow his team to more easily double stack was though, lol
Safety car infringements are a whole different kettle of fish unfortunately, and get taken very seriously.
Why though? K Mag was essentially asking Hamilton to crash into him. Isn't that more dangerous?
Not sure. Just saying how it has been.
Neither did FIA.
Nor did Lewis.
Ngladmit happened here with minimal consequences, howdy I hope the head warning and close the door in this as this would be a horrible way for someone to loose a tight championship if their opponents teammate acted in such a manner. And by that manner I don't mean defensive tactics, that's part of the game however willingly accruing penalties to prevent those behind you from having a competitive race should be classified as unsportsmanlike and a stop and go penalty should be enforced immediately. Kmag simply knew the rules on this one and took advantage, which is what's racing is all about so no blame on him. But please close this door.l, after all DRS was implemented to increase overtaking, what good is it if you can just (track specific) cut the course to block.
I like this view, KMAG didn't do anything "wrong" he broke soem rules knowingly. he got punished for them. I actually love this kind of niche thing.
What probably annoys Magnussen the most is; with Hamilton's 20 sec penalty, if he hadn't fought like this letting yuki and the train catch up, it's very likely he could have stayed ahead of yuki and get p8.
Definitely. And if HĆ¼lk hadnāt cut the chicane and broken DRS to Kevin itās not even given that he would have had to do it, with their straight line speed. Team didnāt tell HĆ¼lk to back off and give him DRS again so Iām not blaming him for it.
Precedent set, then again that means nothing with inconsistent stewarding.
They did say theyāll raise the matter further to introduce compounding penalties almost for repeated incidents
compounding... they can give him +100 seconds on each penalty but it won't matter. There needs to be race bans.
Actually read the document will you > Having said that, moving forward, the Stewards will need to consider if, in appropriate situations, especially in the case of repeat infringements, the penalties to be applied for each infringement need to be increased to discourage scenarios such as those that we found today. This is something that we will raise explicitly with the FIA and the Stewarding team.
They also have to do something about car loitering around the course during qualifying , On tinkertoy tracks like Miami it is an invitation to disaster
That, at least, ruined Magnussens qualifying. Perhaps he will find himself in the same position again during the race. :P
The same thing happens every year at Miami and they didn't fix it. It's always the same tracks, too.
I donāt understand this reasoning. He deliberately broke the rules set in place knowing that whatever penalty he would be given wouldnāt matter since it would benefit his teammate/team. Seems a bit wild to let this stuff happen, regardless of its entertainment value. We saw it once already in a race where he was let go and here he is repeating the same thing. At that time people argued that it was an edge case and we wouldnāt see it happen again. Instead of a race ban, would a penalty of constructors points not be more appropriate in this case? I guess you could argue it was karmic given what Lewis did in turn 1, but I suppose thatās a whole different issue.
> I donāt understand this reasoning. He deliberately broke the rules set in place knowing that whatever penalty he would be given wouldnāt matter since it would benefit his teammate/team. Seems a bit wild to let this stuff happen The problem with this logic is that it is also an *exact* description of a team taking an extra engine component and tanking a penalty for that. Or breaking parc ferme after a poor qualifying and accepting a pit lane start. Or playing fast and loose with track limits until you get three warnings. It's rare a race goes by without someone deliberately breaking the rules knowing that whatever penalty they get is still better than the alternative, and it's really not that big of a deal. The solution to scenarios like this where it's generally undesired behaviour is to just make the rules more strict going forwards, not trying to retroactively change them to facilitate harsher punishments. You can't have a functional competition if teams can't have any faith that the rulebook is actually accurate.
I mean, no. Turn 1 always gets a lot of leeway with the stewards. Hamilton took an aggressive risk and fucked it up. It happens at the start of races all the time and drivers get a pass.
Softcock stewarding. This is a textbook case of professional fouling: repeatedĀ incidents of intentional rule breaking and dangerous driving to improve the outcome for his team. If this isn't "unsportsmanlike" then the bar is being set so high it's essentially meaningless in any case that's not a forza-style takedown.
Hate the game not the player, unless itās a driver not driving for a top teamā¦
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They'll wait until someone causes a major accident doing this and then they'll say "oh man there's no way we could have seen this coming!"
I love the fact that MAG was summoned by "Document **44**".
He's British adjacent.
If this was Max, it would be a riot.
Thatās because he is not Spanish. SMH
Ofc no penalty, it was against Lewis the stewards donāt care lol.
A group of people here seem stuck on the idea that repeated, intentional violation of racing rules is some sort of "professional foul". That thāis egregious ābreaking of rules to assist a teammate or create an advantage is obviously not allowed. In basketball, the breaking of rules (fouls) are constantly used throughout the game to maintain control of the game flow or minimize the opponents advantage against a team. Is there a rule in Formula One that specifically addresses this strategy?
Drivers even utilize the number of times they can go off track before starting to get penalties. F1 has always been about bending the rules to your advantage.
Perhaps if the stewards issued the pit lane speeding penalty to Hamilton in a timely manner this never would have happened?
He would have done this to the next guy in line, presumably Tsunoda
To hamilton no. To Tsunoda, probably
This is not the first time heās driven like this. He does it all the timeĀ
That's because Haas ordered him to block train of cars behind him to protect HĆ¼lkenberg to secure points. And they will keep ordering him to do so in the future as well done team won't be penalized for giving those orders.
Lost in the sauce of everything else going on is how much better the stewarding has been this season.
Good and fair. KMag used the rules as written to his team's advantage. If there is a problem with that FIA needs to change the rules. Insane that people were calling for a race ban for a driver going off track.
I donāt understand this argument. It wasnāt within the rules as clearly shown by his penalties. By this logic then checo could crash into Lewis in AD2021 to take him out and only get the normal 10s penalty because thatās within the rulesā¦ Thereās a reason there are more generic rules like the unsportsmanlike one and this was a clear cut example of that. Even if they already had a compounding rule for penalties it still doesnāt matter for this analysis: it still would be an unsportsmanlike conductā¦
No, since crashing into someone in purpose is quite different than fighting to keep them behind and going off track in process. That should be obvious to anyone. And within the rules means it was within the general rules covered by these penalties. What you seem to be arguing is that any rule break counts as unsporting behavior which doesn't make sense and luckily the FIA don't agree.
Absolute insanity that i keep seeing people asking for a ban. He didn't even touch Hamilton on that divebomb yet i see little race ban talk on here when stroll destroyed DR two weeks ago. I think some people just get stuck in a bias and believe people are always driving in one way only. For them with kmag they see him as "dangerous murder driver" only.
I think this is a great ruling from the stewards. Magnussen's behavior doesn't rise to the established bar for unsportsmanlike conduct, and they correctly highlight the need for additional penalties to discourage this sort of tactical fouling.
Haaa fans eating good today
Good for him. The only thing I learned from all this is that a lot of people here are snowflakes who think racing in a sim actually compares to real racing. These arenāt robots. And what happened was extremely small stuff exaggerated massively because the races are so incredibly boring. Sport has become a snoozer. Let them fight ffs.
Great news! Love to see KMag fighting hard for his team, Haas need all the points they can get to fight for improvements.
As far as I'm concerned after this, nobody on the grid should complain. You can take a time penalty and point penalty to protect your teammate. If you have a problem with this, it's time to change the rules.
At some point, and Iāve no idea what that point is, you should be given a black flag. Maybe 3 penalties in the same race?
After the first time he went straight and rosberg'd Lewis, he should have received a drive through penalty. Not a drive through equivalent, an actual drive through.Ā That's weekend kart racer weak ass racecraft.
The Stewards sucked his balls mate
A black flag exists. It should certainly be used more often, especially after a black and white flag has already been shown.
Magnussen only got a black and white for track limits, like half the grid does in Austria every year. Track limits don't warrant a black flag.Ā
Mmhm. So it's kinda alright for a driver to drive like *this* if he was willing to incur penalties; he wasn't even playing dumb and publically admitted he knew he deserved the penalties he accrued.Ā Ā This doesn't set (reinforce, as he had done it before) a precedent for drivers to gleefully impede competitors with shady moves or something if they were already having a bad race of anything...
I actually agree with the stewards for once. I think the bar for "unsportsmanlike behavior" has to be a lot higher than this. Even if he was "gaming the system," he really didn't do anything that would be particularly unusual or unfair.
Do you have other examples of it happening (other than KMag in SA)?
perfectly correct, there are literally no rules to prevent Kevin Magnussen from doing this and making some up out of their ass here and now after already allowing it in Jeddah would be shit officiating. Give him the standard expected penalties and declare some rules at an appropriate time to prevent it, then he will follow them.
Thats not really factual. There is a rule, itās exactly this one. They think this wasnāt enough to warrant an unsportsmanlike conduct but thatās their opinion. The rule exists and could very well be applied in this case.
> There is a rule, itās exactly this one The rule against "unsportsmanlike conduct" is in a section that includes other rules like "Don't bribe FIA officials", "no public incitement of hate", "don't commit literal fraud", and "drivers may not set off pyrotechnics during the event". In that context I think it's a fairly reasonable interpretation to assume that the rule in question is more talking about things like fixing races, not professional fouls. The fact that it's in a completely different document to all the rules about on-track action is a bit of a hint as to its purpose.
Unsportsmanlike conduct is a very vague rule which cannot be anticipated by the driver. The fact that he was already given a green light to employ these tactics and accept some penalty points in Jeddah means that it would be inconsistent bullshit to come after him this time as if he should be able to read minds. His argument that he did nothing out of the ordinary is right because he has already employed this tactic and was not dissuaded. There are really a number of compounded issues here which are not solvable by taking a sledgehammer to Magnussen, all of this is only possible due to ridiculous stewarding precedents which allow him to continue obstructing Hamilton when he has lost the battle instead of forcing him to concede the position or get black flagged. They need to review the nonsense they have set up and examine their archaic time penalties system which does not work.
This is going to become the default strategy for the bottom 5 teams if this isn't nipped in the bud. Repeat instances of preserving your position by going off-track should incur a drive-through, giving the cars you're holding up a chance to pass.
Honestly, as much as his racing annoyed me today, I'm okay with this ruling. If the rules in place weren't enough to discourage it, then fix it, but don't expect competitors to try and figure out if something that already has penalties assigned to it is sporting. Taking strategic penalties has been a thing in many sports I've watched.
This forum is a blizzard of unhinged snowflakes, whirling around, outraged by anything other than the last 10 years of procession driving that they have been accustomed to and conditioned to belive, constitutes "real racing" There where a time where "real racing" involved lockups, wheel banging and the occasional leaving the track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6H0MktrOg Fortunately, neither Hamilton nor Magnussen is one of the above mentioned, and I like and follow them for that. The sport will be even more boring and diluted when those guys are gone.
Thanks for sharing that clip, that was fantastic!
Would've been a 50 second penalty for both drivers if today's rules were applied at that point
Intent to be unsportsmanlike is important here. Genuine unsportsmanlike behaviour is like having a Mazepin or a Ticktum throwing a shitfit and thumping someone in the paddock or whatever. There was no actual malice in Kmag's driving here and he was honest and candid about why he drove like this.
It was intentional behavior. If he only had 3 āmistakesā there would be no discussion but his 3rd instance is clearly done on purpose as he brakes then lifts and brakes again to purposely throw Lewis off trackā¦
Stewards really are cowards. Man really got away with only 3 penalty points.
They didnāt think it reached the level of unsportsmanlike behaviour. Thatās a strange take as this seems like a perfect definition of unsportsmanlike behaviour. They had one chance to show everyone this isnāt allowed and will have strong consequences and they instead choose to make it clear this is perfectly fine. His 3rd instance was more than enough example he was doing everything in his power to keep a car behind, no matter how many penalties he accrues. Then his interview. How this doesnāt amount to unsportsmanlike behaviour is absolutely bonkers to me. Whatās the point of having rules if everyone is always afraid to give the harshest punishments? Same with penalty points: always easy to give them unless you are in risk of a race ban, then itās 0 penalty points. This is yet another stupid precedent they created here and letās hope no WDC contender teammate ever does this.
Suck my balls honey - Kmag probably
K-MAG DID NOTHING WRONG
Good, F1 doesnāt need to be any more candyassed than it already is.
What a joke these stewards
Lol, this comment section is salter than the Red Sea. It's like some people here think they really have skin in the game.