Nico Hulkenberg was given two penalties totalling 15 seconds for abusing track limits during the Bahrain Grand Prix. However, in a departure from past practice, the stewards did not give him any penalty points on his licence.
The Haas driver, who was making his return to F1 for the first time since last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, was found to have left the track “without a justifiable reason” on five occasions during the race. After the third he was shown the black-and-white flag for unsporting conduct in line with the race director’s notes.When Hulkenberg left the track for the fourth time he was given a five-second time penalty. His fifth violation later in the race incurred an additional 10-second penalty, applied after the race.
Last year drivers who committed enough track limits penalties to receive a penalty were also given a single penalty point on their licences. This happened for Lando Norris, Pierre Gasly, Zhou Guanyu and Sebastian Vettel in the Austrian Grand Prix.
Drivers have repeatedly criticised the issuing of penalty points for minor violations such as track limits. The change indicates their concerns have been acted on.
Last year three Formula 2 drivers collected one-race bans during the course of the season for incurring 12 penalty points, some of which were issued for track limits abuses. Oliver Caldwell picked up seven penalty points in the Bahrain round alone, all for exceeding track limits.
F2 CEO Bruno Michel said last year giving drivers penalty points for track limits was “too harsh” and he wanted the rule to be looked at.
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Gabriel (@gabf1)
5th March 2023, 18:34
It’s a bit weird that he kept doing it. Was the car understeering to the point of being undriveable? Maybe due to the bit of front wing damaged early on?
Jimmy Cliff
5th March 2023, 20:56
Why did he collect 2 penalties? Previous you got a penalty when you went went over the allotted limit but then it would reset. So 4th track limit would be a penalty but then your 5th, 6th and 7th were penalty free – the 8th would be a penalty again.
Imagine the stewards applying this in 2021, with each penalty increasing with 5 seconds than Hamilton would have gotten 31 penalties totaling 40 mins & 40 seconds.
BasCB (@bascb)
5th March 2023, 21:01
So what is the purpose of the points then, if drivers do not get points docked for infractions?
RandomMallard
5th March 2023, 21:31
@bascb I personally, although not all may agree, would argue that the purpose of penalty points should be mainly for dangerous driving, and as far as I’m aware were designed to prevent another situation like Grosjean in 2012 where he kept causing accidents (particularly on lap 1), by introducing a measurable metric on how far away a driver is from a ban.
While unfair, exceeding track limits isn’t inherently dangerous (if they rejoined unsafely, or there was another factor that made it unsafe, then I think penalty points would be fair), and so I don’t think penalty points are necessary for track limits violations when a driver has already been penalised. Additionally, it was getting to a silly point where exceeding track limits one time too many could earn you the same number of penalty points as taking another driver out the race, which I would argue (again, in my personal opinion) are very different offences.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
5th March 2023, 21:37
Completely agree. Should only be for safety infractions.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
6th March 2023, 1:43
Again, I always like to remind you though, that there’s not ONE single driver who ever got a race ban for reaching 12 penalty points, grosjean got a direct race ban (maybe more than 1 race, don’t remember, wasn’t watching) but not the result of reaching a certain amount of points, so by definition, in answer to bascb, penalty points so far have been pointless, it’s not like if by a miracle a driver gets a race ban there’s a lot of likelihood that said driver is gonna lose a position in the championship, if he’s in a top team there could be a huge points gap between the driver behind and ahead, and if he’s a midfielder, it could be a race where the car is bad and he wouldn’t be in contention for points when he’s banned.
RandomMallard
6th March 2023, 8:51
@esploratore1
…in Formula 1. And that’s likely because I don’t think there has really been standards bad enough to warrant a race ban since Grosjean in 2012. Yes Romain had his fair share of accidents and 2018 in particular had quite a few, but I don’t think they were enough to warrant a ban. And while Latifi, Mazepin and even Schumacher were also quite accident prone, a lot of their crashes usually only involved them, meaning an investigation is rarely carried out so penalty points are unlikely to be awarded.
There have been several examples of drivers reaching a ban in Formula 2 though: Ragunathan (twice), Cordeel and Caldwell are the ones I can remember.
RandomMallard
6th March 2023, 8:58
As a follow up, Grosjean received a 1 race ban in 2012 after causing the pile up in Spa, which itself came after a string of other first lap accidents that year. Penalty points were introduced in 2014 after Grosjean’s ban, likely to provide a measurable and standardised metric about when to give a race ban.