[Keith Collantine]

Since the five-second time penalty was introduced a few years back it’s become the stewards’ favourite penalty. That’s made it probably only a matter of time until we saw an incident like last weekend, where one cost a driver a win.

The sight of a driver crossing the finishing line in first place but actually being classified second isn’t a great one. So is there a way F1 could impose a short time penalty such as this on a driver during in the race itself?

Obviously this can happen already at a pit stop. But very often drivers get these penalties after they’ve already made their last pit stops, which was the case on Sunday.

Perhaps each track could have a designated ‘slow line’ around one corner which stewards could require a driver to take. Other championships have tried something similar – it could be a bit like taking the ‘joker lap’ in rallycross. That way the penalty is served in the race and we don’t have the kind of unfortunate scenes we had last weekend.

Or there could be a technological solution. A driver could be required to back off by a certain amount – while not blocking other drivers – and the timing system on their steering wheel could inform them when they’ve slowed enough to comply with the rules. This would probably be trickier to apply, however – I like the other, simpler idea better.

What do you think? Are there any other better solutions?

[Jeanrien]

While the 5 sec penalty has allowed the steward to penalize a driver without having too much impact, I agree that it didn’t always have the intended effect and sometimes stripped us from some great battle (other cars just sticking to the back of the car ahead instead of attempting any overtaking).

I see some issues with above solutions. Slow line might be difficult to implement at some tracks (street circuits) and the slow down kind of penalty, while the technology exists and have been used (America cup for instance), it is not always spectator friendly (It’s a bit lite VSC, the effect might vary depending on where the driver takes it).

I saw a good suggestion in the comment section which is to have a give one place back or one place to driver X. If Vettel was asked to let Hamilton by, this would have negated the “advantage” he gained by cutting the track and given a chance to Vettel to still win it and amend for his mistake.
It would also prove very useful for the drivers tempted to cut the track to overtake on difficult to overtake tracks, where they usually get a 5sec penalty for cutting but can easily build a gap greater than 5sec making the penalty useless. That way everything is sorted on track and is a bit more fair.
Then additional questions need to be solved such as, should driver X still give the place back to driver Y if driver Z overtook driver Y and is in between the other two (I would say yes). What happens if driver Y pits before driver X can give the place back (then 5 sec penalty applied?). And probably other situations that I didn’t think about.

[Anonymous]

Keith,

By the way you wrote that with an ‘alternative penalty’ I assume you thought Seb should have a penalty?

Personally I didn’t – it was there if you wanted to go by the rule book, but for me that was just pure hard racing, no more, no less.

We need younger viewers to start to love F1, few do as I see, decisions like that wont bring them to F1.

[Deleted User]

Moaners will be moaning about any other penalty regardless, so why bother – leave it as it is.
I think 5 seconds penalty is perfect.
Simple, straightforward, easy.

Alternative (if someone prefers artificial “show”) – if the driver overtook\blocked someone and is penalized for that – he can forfeit his position. If there’s a battle behind him, and he fails to let by only one driver (for whom he was penalized) and instead lets several drivers by – well, bad luck, another effect of the “penalty”.

Then he can have “exciting” new battle with several drivers ahead.

[Author]

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