As complex as Formula 1’s rules can be, there are few regulations as simple to understand as the boundaries of the track.
Each grand prix circuit is defined by the white lines that run either side of the asphalt. Stray beyond those limits, as you’re effectively taking a short cut or breaking through an invisible wall that would otherwise keep you within the track.For years, F1’s approach to track limits was complicated and controversial. Certain corners were treated differently to others due to the nature of the kerbs or the exit of the corners naturally drawing drivers beyond the confines of the white lines through their natural racing line.
However, when the FIA installed Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas as the sport’s new race directors for 2022, the governing body also made a fundamental change to the how they would assess track limits infringements. Citing article 33.3 of the Sporting Regulations – which states that drivers “must make every reasonable effort to use the track at all times and may not leave the track without a justifiable reason” – the race director’s event notes for each round have simply stated that “the white lines define the track edges.” From the opening round of that year’s championship in Bahrain and up until the last round in Abu Dhabi last November, that has been the straightforward approach taken towards track limits in the sport.
But despite that seemingly simple interpretation of the rule, track limits has continued to be a major recurring headache in the sport, both for drivers and the FIA. In 2023, there was no let up of track limits infringements. Over the course of the 22 rounds of the season, 695 track limits infringements were committed in competitive sessions – qualifying, sprint qualifying, sprint races and grands prix.
By far the greatest mess of the year came at the Red Bull Ring, where the race results were only confirmed several hours later following a protest by Aston Martin, which led to multiple drivers receiving extra post-race time penalties.
But where were the most problematic venues and corners where drivers struggled to keep within the white lines and who were the biggest offenders over the year? RaceFans delved into the data to find out.
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1 & 2 – Turns ten and nine – Red Bull Ring, Austria: 89 and 60 offences
Unsurprisingly, given the goings-on at the Austrian Grand Prix, the Red Bull Ring was the scene of the most track limits infringements over the year. A total of 151 track limits offences were committed that resulted in either one or two lap times being deleted by the stewards. In that one grand prix alone, drivers were handed out time penalties for track limits infringements totalling two-and-a-half minutes.
The chief problem corners were the pair of fast downhill right-handers at the end of the lap. Turn nine saw 60 separate track limits infringements over the course of the Austrian Grand Prix weekend and the final corner was responsible for 89 – far more than any other corner on the calendar.
3 – Turn five – Losail, Qatar: 36 offences
Beyond the Red Bull Ring, the Losail circuit in Qatar was the second-worst track when it came to drivers struggling to keep within the white lines, with 87 offences over the weekend. The double-apex right handers at turns four and five were the trouble spots.
Turn four was responsible for 11 times being deleted over the three-day event, while the second right-hander of turn five resulted in 36 infringements as drivers tried to carry as much speed as possible out of the section.
The Losail circuit also saw 22 times deleted for drivers running wide at turn 13, which was the second of a triple-apex right-hander towards the end of the lap, as well as 23 times taken off the board for drivers running wide at the penultimate corner of turn 15, the left hander. This means Losail has the highest number of difficult corners of any circuit on the calendar.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the three circuits which saw the most track limits infringements – Red Bull Ring, Losail and Circuit of the Americas – all hosted sprint rounds last season. As those rounds featured four competitive sessions per weekend as opposed to the usual two, there would naturally be more instances of deleted times over the weekend. However, the two circuits with the fewest deleted times all year were also sprint rounds – Baku with only two track limits incidents, and Interlagos, which saw just one.
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4 – Harbour chicane – Monte Carlo, Monaco: 36 (29+7) offences
It might be surprising, given that Monaco is perhaps the world’s most notorious street circuit where barriers line the entire track, that the harbour chicane is the third-most prolific corner on the calendar when it comes to drivers exceeding track limits. Yet there were a total of 36 times deleted during qualifying and the grand prix at Monaco last year because of drivers cutting the infamous chicane – 29 times at the left-hander of turn ten and seven times for the right-hander at the exit, turn 11.
Despite the volume of infringements, the figures do not tell the whole story. Given how limited opportunities there are for drivers to move out of the way of rivals behind in qualifying, deliberately missing the chicane can be a convenient way to avoid an impeding penalty. Seven drivers had times deleted for missing the chicane in qualifying, with most not being on push laps at the time of the infraction.
Come race day, the late arrival of rain made it more challenging for drivers to keep their cars the right side of the kerbs at the chicane. In total, there were 29 infringements at the chicane over the course of the 78 laps – the bulk of which coming after the rain fell in the second half of the race.
5 – Club – Silverstone, Great Britain: 27 offences
As a popular circuit among drivers and fans, it might be surprising that Silverstone has one of the hottest spots on the calendar for track limits problems. But Club corner at the end of the Hangar Straight is just that, resulting in 27 times being deleted over last year’s British Grand Prix weekend.
The outside of Club corner used to be lined with grass and gravel for many years until the track was heavily revised in 2010, when Astroturf was laid on the outside of the kerbs. Last year, the corner had raised, jagged kerbing beyond the main kerb to try and deter drivers from running wide. However, that did not prevent 15 times from being deleted by the stewards due to drivers running wide there in qualifying last year, with another 12 offences counted over the grand prix itself.
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The biggest offenders
Keeping within the lines at over 250kph is a matter of skill and judgement, just like everything else when it comes to driving a Formula 1 car.
With a total of 60 infractions from competitive sessions throughout the 2023 season, the grid’s most prolific track limits abuser was Williams driver Alexander Albon. Not only did he have more times deleted for track limits infringements than any other driver, with five separate time penalties during races through the season for going beyond his track limit strike allowance, Albon broke the white lines 17 more times than rookie team mate Logan Sargeant did – and he had driver with the fifth-most offences in the season.
Second on the list was McLaren driver Lando Norris, who racked up 50 infractions over the 22 rounds last year, one more than Haas’ Kevin Magnussen. Pierre Gasly broke track limits on 43 occasions last year in his Alpine, ahead of Sargeant with 43 and seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton guilty of 41 track limits offences.
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At the other end of the spectrum, some drivers were far more successful at keeping inside the lines. Of the 19 drivers who competed in all 22 rounds last year, none had fewer infractions than Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas, who was caught outside the track limits only 12 times through the whole season.
Even world champion Max Verstappen, in the most dominant season ever seen, could not avoid having times deleted – most notably when he lost pole for the United States Grand Prix at the end of Friday qualifying for running too wide at the penultimate corner. But that was only one of just 26 times that car number one failed to keep in bounds over the season.
Due to the combination of Albon and Sargeant’s 103 combined offences, Williams were comfortably the team with the most track limits infractions in 2023. Haas were second with 87 ahead of McLaren in third with 79, Ferrari fourth with 75 and the Alpine drivers combining for 68. Unsurprisingly, the team with the fewest infractions was Alfa Romeo, with their combined 37 over 20 fewer than the next best time of Aston Martin, who tallied 58 offences.
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S
19th January 2024, 7:46
A combination of just how little current F1 drivers care about the most basic rule in any kind of sport, and how low the quality of current F1 drivers is.
I’m not sure which is worse…
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
19th January 2024, 7:54
… (cough) grass and a gravel trap …
… (cough) natural selection …
Oh, was the mic on?
I really meant to say: “Long live the modern kerbs and the chic blue paint at Paul Ricard, and everything that is Digital, Yayy.”
I’ll see myself out. :)
MacLeod (@macleod)
19th January 2024, 7:55
If driver want to drive over grass and gravel their choice slower and damaging their car…. :)
PacificPR (@streydt)
19th January 2024, 11:32
I have the perfect solution. Why not give the driver a small but irritating electrical shock every time he goes over the track limits – the voltage will go up after each mistake – that will teach them stay within the lines!
MurasamaRA300 (@murasamara300)
19th January 2024, 14:20
Bzzzt! :)
Yes! Excellent suggestion – Liberty might very well go for it!
By the way, this was my second comment in this thread…
Bzzzzzt! Ow!
Constantijn Blondel
20th January 2024, 10:34
Combine that idea with a Lovense and we have a solution to end all track limits solution :)
MacLeod (@macleod)
19th January 2024, 7:54
That means Valterri Bottas doesn’t drive on the limit he should retire …..
S
19th January 2024, 8:17
It means Bottas drives on the track, within the rules.
It also means he didn’t waste time or positions with completely unnecessary and avoidable time penalties.
Or, possibly – he just didn’t get caught.
Ferdinand
19th January 2024, 8:40
I was thinking the same about Ricciardo. This analysis is actually more telling than it looks and might explain why he isn’t killer material anymore. Too careful? Not exploratory enough anymore?
NM
19th January 2024, 9:32
Ricciardo did only did 8 races and none of them were the tracks mentioned above.
NM
19th January 2024, 9:32
– did
Jungle
19th January 2024, 10:18
His test drive at Silverstone Red Bull stated would have put him on the front row. Lando was only about 2 tenths of Max’s pole.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
20th January 2024, 9:06
It’s not a good thing to keep doing things against the rules…
Brell-9W
19th January 2024, 8:09
It’s a truly sad day for Formula One when there are articles recounting track limits ‘offences’. This sport raced from 1950 – 2019 and the drivers main concern was being on the limit and extracting the most lap time from the car.
Now this glorious sport has been ‘soccerised’ as if the greatest cars in the world tearing ferociously around a circuit is comparable with two dozen men running around a field.
Alex
19th January 2024, 8:18
I’m surprised how close the drivers are in infringements across the year. Bottas (12) is the only outlier. Otherwise, everyone from Ocon (23) to Albon (60) is basically within a multiple of two… and at worst has an average of under 3 times deleted per weekend.
There’s room for improvement: I’d like to see more immediate feedback to drivers, including in practice sessions, so they are ready for the race; clearly we don’t want the result delayed again
But on the whole, these figures show drivers sticking within the limits and infringing a fairly similar number of times to each other (Bottas aside).
notagrumpyfan
19th January 2024, 12:43
I wonder how you would describe it if the track limits were walls and drivers would hit these walls up to 60 times in a season.
MacLeod (@macleod)
19th January 2024, 13:06
Still the same but Albon would be much slower if the lines were walls.
Alesici
19th January 2024, 14:20
There were quite a lot of walls that Albon repeatedly skimmed super close to when he was holding off half the field for most of last year’s Canadian race. I basically watched the whole race from the in car camera right behind him, and was massively impressed. So he might have won the track limits penalty championship, but his approach of consistently and pretty accurately pushing those limits certainly helped him to a big haul of points that day.
F1statsfan (@f1statsfan)
19th January 2024, 8:25
Ocon being all the way down the list really surprises me given that he got 4 time penalties totaling 30 seconds in Austria.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
19th January 2024, 9:04
@f1statsfan I said exactly the same to Will after he first showed me the numbers. However I do remember later in the year Ocon saying he’d been extra-cautious after the Austria episode.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
19th January 2024, 9:09
Who would have thought it? The tracks with the greatest number of track limit infringements are the ones with acres of asphalt run-off, while the ones with the fewest are a street circuit and a traditional grass-and-gravel course. What could possibly be the solution, I wonder…?
Jonathan Parkin
19th January 2024, 14:18
And Qatar isn’t helping itself with some of the kerbs. The one in the picture is twice the width of an F1 car!
Derek Edwards
19th January 2024, 9:09
If you could let us know the results of the races as well, please, I’ll get off to the betting shop!
Robert (@rob8k)
19th January 2024, 9:50
I presume this takes into account track infringements also due to an error? It might be a small number but interested to see how many track infringements occured that would be beneficial to lap time than ones that wouldn’t have affected it.
Jere (@jerejj)
19th January 2024, 10:01
Red Bull Ring’s last two corners are definitely the biggest trouble spots (the opening two less so), although I’d also consider Copse among them & even more so than Club.
Losail’s entire high-speed section in S3 is seemingly problematic.
Monaco’s chicane mostly only features cutting when messing up on a flying lap, in which case drivers always abandon their push laps.
COTA’s penultimate corner has also been specifically problematic for a while, even if adding extra white line layer eased the situation.
Long story short, mostly single-apex high to medium-speed corners have been problematic since 2013, when track limit enforcement truly started to become a thing.
Jungle
19th January 2024, 10:51
Hi Jere,
I think the last 2 corners at Austria is a simple fix. Take the middle of the white line just a little further out. The drivers will find the limit of diminishing returns. Still safer than a sausage curb, kitty litter or back to grass!
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
19th January 2024, 15:29
Bring back the Jochen Rindt Kurve.
Jungle
20th January 2024, 1:01
Well there’s your huckleberry right there! How good would that be. Add in a bit of camber, feather the throttle then slingshot onto the main straight. More action into turn 1, counter attack down at turn 3.
RandomMallard
19th January 2024, 15:12
Given the definition of the track changed at Lusail midway through the weekend, I’m not surprised that turn 13 (where I believe the curbs brought inwards to try and avoid more tyre failures?) was a relatively high offender over the weekend.
I really don’t want to sound to much like a pedant, but is it not Stowe corner at the end of the Hangar Straight (and shown in the picture for that matter)? I mean they’re both quite big track limit areas (particularly when going wheel to wheel in the race as well), partly due to the amount of tarmac on the outside.
Robert Williams (@weiliwen)
19th January 2024, 15:25
I was shocked that Pierre Gasly wasn’t right behind Alexander Albon on this list; I just seem to have seen him exceed track limits more than others. But I watch his races more closely than most of the other racers, so it might be that I noticed more.
Coventry Climax
19th January 2024, 15:46
This all leaves out how well a car handles corners.
Compare a car that runs on rails and is super stable to one that is very nervous and lacks aerodynamical or mechanical grip. Compare a car that handles tyres well and consistently well, to one that eats them within a couple of laps.
Then there’s the combination of car and driver that hardly ever make it into the points as opposed to a combination that frequently ends up front.
Sure it’s all related: That’s what I’m saying; you can’t just blame it on the driver alone.
Then this:
I disagree. Fully.
For years, the approach was simple: nonexistent. And since everyone was violating the limits, there was zero controversy too.
It’s the FiA and none other, that created the controversy, the complications and the intolerable delay and inconsistency around the subject, while apparently refusing to automate the issue.
Mind you, I’m all for cars staying within the limits. But there’s more ways to skin a cat. Said automation is one. Another is just make it inefficient again, and self punishing, to go beyond the lines, and without endangering people and drivers. It’s been discussed here before, and there are options to do it.
Controversy however, seems to be a business model in F1 these days.
Nick T.
20th January 2024, 9:12
Agreed. However, the amount of infractions doesn’t seem to mirror chassis performance outside the Williams drivers.
Coventry Climax
20th January 2024, 11:39
Like I said, there’s the relation between it all: For the top offenders, the driver situation/quality/competitiveness plays an important role in the mix of causes:
– Albon seems to have a decent desire to be regarded highly. (Wish more drivers showed that, to be honest.)
– Norris needs to prove he’s better than his surprisingly well driving rookie teammate. His career’s at stake here.
– Magnussen lost out fully to Hulkenberg. Tried desperately, I suppose, but it’s not his car, to say the least.
– Gasly needs to prove he’s faster than Alpine’s (for whatever reason) designated no. 1, Ocon.
– Hamilton and Leclerc are dealing with strong teammates as well, and feel they may have something to prove (still).
Further down the line it gets a bit more evident (but also was already there for the top ‘contenders’) that chassis and tyre handling have to do with it all as well.
So again; while the order is on driver’s offense numbers, the underlying cause certainly isn’t about driver quality/capacity alone, which is what the stat and article seem to imply.
Or, at least, that’s my take on it all.
AlanD
19th January 2024, 16:11
For years we used to admire the way a car or driver was able to take a bit of kerb without damaging the suspension or bouncing off the kerbing. I’m sure kerbs have been made much gentler so that everyone can ride a kerb these days. Wouldn’t it be better if they went back to kerbing that will shake your fillings out?
SteveP
19th January 2024, 17:10
I believe that was the very reason that we had a race where pit stops were mandated after 20 laps of use.
The curbs did rattle the driver a bit, but unfortunately the tyres are made by Pirelli and couldn’t stand the hammering handed out by the saw-tooth of the kerbs.
MichaelN
19th January 2024, 19:40
Compared to kerbs in the 1990s those of today are indeed extremely smooth. Some are practically flat and can easily be driven over full throttle, and those are often very wide as well. But like the ill-conceived kerbs in Austria some years ago, it’s no good to make the kerbs outright dangerous in the event a driver or rider, for whatever reason, loses control of their car or bike. So something in between would still give the drivers some tactile (and perhaps auditory) warning, and make it less of an advantage to drive there. Making the kerbs a lot smaller, like half a car’s width at most, would also improve this aspect.
It’s sometimes said that a driver can’t really do much about the trajectory of their car once they decide to apply throttle on the apex, but this is very hard to believe. Even lifting the throttle just slightly instantly slows the car down. Ultimately the drivers will keep going over the lines if it allows them to, once in a while, get a perfect exit. That’s all that matters in a session where only the best time counts. The rest of the laps can be deleted, and nobody will care. Only when they fail to get perfect lap will they complain that the rules are somehow bad. It’s just a risk/reward calculation, and losing a bunch of laps is not a big deal.
Chris Horton
19th January 2024, 18:23
It’s Stowe at the end of the Hangar straight, not Club.
Stowe is also pictured, so I’m assuming that is the corner you mean.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
20th January 2024, 9:04
Well, at least we know the future will be the same as last season for these drivers ;)
Coventry Climax
20th January 2024, 11:49
Followed by two that didn’t have a particularly strong season at all.
So that ‘Will quote’ seems a classic example of selectively finding the backing for an argument and draw conclusions that can’t be drawn.
To be honest, the same holds good for your crystal ball, but the smiley at the end suggest you already knew that.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
20th January 2024, 15:11
It’s commenting on the fact it looks like it is telling us the future due to the mistake with the year. We obviously don’t know anything for this season.
Silent but Deadly
20th January 2024, 13:58
For 2024, if anyone has a competitive car, whoever tries to race with MV will be pushed wide/shunted off, so we’ll need a special category for that.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
20th January 2024, 18:01
i know for a fact that most of the violations were not declared, especially for some drivers. so the number of infringements should be well over 200, for the biggest offender. with multiple violations occuring within 1 lap.
RR
20th January 2024, 18:54
Surprised to see Norris ahead of Leclerc and Perez in the offenders chart, because they spring to mind straight away, as does kMag.
Ricciardo in the goody boys’ corner!! What a teacher’s pet.