Race director enforces maximum qualifying lap time to avoid traffic jams

2023 Italian Grand Prix

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Formula 1 drivers will be under increased scrutiny during today’s qualifying session after the race director enforced a maximum time for out-laps.

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Qualifying sessions at Monza have been the scene of some potentially dangerous near-misses in recent seasons due to traffic jams caused by drivers slowing on their out-laps in a bid to allow rivals to overtake them and pick up a slipstream for their flying laps.

However, due to drivers being reluctant to give the advantage to their rivals, large traffic jams of cars have regularly formed in the final sector of the lap, leading to dangerous situations where drivers pushing on their flying laps have had to navigate around packs of slow moving cars.

Infamously, the end of Q3 during the 2019 qualifying session saw multiple cars fail to reach the timing line before time expired to begin their final flying laps due to the melee of cars jostling for track position in the final minutes.

For many years, the FIA have applied a maximum time that drivers are allowed to take between the two Safety Car lines immediately after pit exit and before the pit entry to prevent drivers from coasting around too slowly on their in-laps and creating a hazard. This has been set at one minute and 43 seconds for this weekend, the same as last year.

However, FIA race director Niels Wittich has informed all teams that the maximum time will now be enforced for all laps in qualifying, including out-laps. Any driver who exceeds the 1’41 limit between the two Safety Car lines at any time “may be deemed to be going unnecessarily slowly” and will be investigated after qualifying under the threat of penalty,” the drivers were told in a document issued on Saturday morning.

Drivers will not be investigated if they exceed the limit under exceptional circumstances, such as slowing down due to a mechanical problem or because of a hazard.

It is the first time that a limit is being applied in such a manner during an F1 qualifying session. Friday’s qualifying sessions for the Formula 2 and Formula 3 categories also saw significant bunching of drivers during the sessions. This contributed to at least one red flag due to a collision in the F3 session and many F2 drivers failing to set a time at the end of qualifying as they waited too late to begins their laps.

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2023 Italian Grand Prix

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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16 comments on “Race director enforces maximum qualifying lap time to avoid traffic jams”

  1. Profile Photo

    Jere (@jerejj)
    2nd September 2023, 12:40

    Essentially only a relatively minor tweak to a general long-time approach.

    1. Profile Photo

      Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
      2nd September 2023, 14:03

      The tweak being that they might actually enforce the rule for once! Utterly insane that enforcing this is “new”

  2. S
    2nd September 2023, 12:51

    I’d like to say “Good, it’s ridiculous and potentially very dangerous having cars going so slowly” – but they won’t actually enforce it properly and nothing will change.
    When it (inevitably) happens, they’ll just say that other cars were involved so nobody will be penalised.

    1. MichaelN
      2nd September 2023, 13:07

      Or they only penalize the last one in said queue, like when Vettel correctly slowed down earlier in the lap in Austria, then ran into a queue in the final corners, and was penalized for ‘impeding’ one of those coming in on a flying lap.

      Anyway, specifying a lap time just leads to games being played with delta times. The rules for circuit racing are already very clear; hindering others or driving unnecessarily slow is not allowed. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow they’re going.

      1. S
        2nd September 2023, 14:14

        Yep, true.
        Problem is, in this day and age, the ‘umpire’ can’t decide what is too slow for any given context – the competitors demand that it be objectively specified in advance so that they can take exactly the approach to it that you describe, and then use it as a justification for why they shouldn’t be penalised.

        The end result is that we still see them driving around at dangerously slow speeds, often on the racing line, and nothing meaningful is done to stop this behaviour.
        It’s taken major crashes to stop it in other series, and clearly that’s what it will take in F1 too.

    2. SteveP
      2nd September 2023, 13:12

      they’ll just say that other cars were involved so nobody will be penalised.

      Some of the “penalties” don’t amount to much.
      e.g. MV penalised for pit lane speed violation during FP2 – 500 euro.
      I think based on a ratio of our salaries, that would be a fine of about 0.5 euro for the average reader of this forum – you probably lost more than that in change through holes in your pocket (assuming you’ve not spent most of the last 6-12 months using contactless payments)

  3. Profile Photo

    Gary Simmons (@gsimmonsonca)
    2nd September 2023, 13:01

    What is ironic is that the same drivers complaining about cars going slowly… are the same drivers driving the cars.

    1. SteveP
      2nd September 2023, 13:39

      What is ironic is that the same drivers complaining about cars going slowly… are the same drivers driving the cars

      I got the impression that Tsunoda was working through a list to complain about, pretty much a list of the ones he has been penalised for impeding in the last few race weekends.
      Laying the groundwork for a defence?

    2. S
      2nd September 2023, 14:18

      Exactly.

      Another great reason to ban such radio communications, IMO. Then the drivers would be on their own, driving alone and unaided as per the rules – and really would need to either stay a long way off line at all times, or maintain ‘safe’ speeds at all times.
      Preferably both.

  4. Profile Photo

    Bleu (@bleu)
    2nd September 2023, 15:27

    I think this rule clarification should have been done much earlier.

    1. SteveP
      2nd September 2023, 15:39

      I think this rule clarification should have been done much earlier.

      Somewhere prior to Monza 2019 would have been good.

  5. SteveP
    2nd September 2023, 16:06

    Oh, both Ferraris in line for a penalty under this one. At Monza…

    …no further action.

    1. S
      2nd September 2023, 16:16

      What a surprising outcome….

  6. Profile Photo

    Ronald (@mosquito)
    2nd September 2023, 17:21

    Very funny to read this article after qualy. Apparently Racefans forgot to report about the part of the refulations where Ferrari was excluded from this rule. 😂

  7. Profile Photo

    Esploratore (@esploratore1)
    3rd September 2023, 3:14

    Although the article mentions both 1.41 and 1.43, so not sure which it is, but looking at the 2017 quali, that is equal to driving 5-6 sec slower than a timed lap in a fully wet track, and interesting to see S was right with his prediction that it wouldn’t be enforced.

    1. SteveP
      3rd September 2023, 8:16

      Although the article mentions both 1.41 and 1.43, so not sure which it is

      Section 4.2 of this:
      https://www.fia.com/sites/default/files/decision-document/2023%20Italian%20Grand%20Prix%20-%20Race%20Director's%20Event%20Notes%20v3.pdf

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