FIA race director Michael Masi says he would “love” a “hard” solution to track limits at all circuits but accepts it’s not practical today.
This year, the topic has once again been high on the list of talking points after Max Verstappen had to hand back a race-winning move in Bahrain, then lost pole and the fastest lap by running too wide in Portugal.
What has made the track limits chat worse is how different corners are policed in different ways on some circuits, and it was no surprise when the Dutchman called for action to find a lasting solution two weeks ago in Spain.
“I think we do need to find a solution,” Verstappen said.
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“I understand, some tracks we race together on with MotoGP, and of course they want a bit different kerbs to what we like, but I think we still need to find a bit of, let’s say, a middle way which works for both.
“With our cornering speeds, basically we can really abuse the whole track because of the grip we have with the cars, which just makes it really difficult sometimes to really judge proper track limits.
“From my side, I think we should try and put a bit more gravel back in places. Of course, it’s sometimes not what tracks want because when you have track days and people go off, the gravel comes onto the track, they need to clean it, it all costs money to put it back in place.
“But I think it’s just sometimes a bit confusing, also from the outside where, you know some places you run onto a kerb, some places are policed with a white line.
“I think we can make it a lot better by making sure that there is a hard limit when you go off, a kerb or whatever.”
A working group is understood to have been set up to look at ways of making track limits easier to define, with even the basic principle of staying within the white lines considered not appropriate.
“Ideally we would love to have a hard limit everywhere,” said Masi. “But the facts are with the circuits, it has been an ongoing evolution process.
“There are some places that are track-limits issues one year, aren’t the next and vice versa. It’s an ongoing issue that we’re working on with each of the circuits.
“It obviously requires significant investment from them from that perspective and yes, it would be in one sense, lovely to have walls everywhere as we will see next time in Monaco or in Baku.
“Obviously, we are racing at different types of circuits all the time so when we look at everything from a safety perspective, we need to find the best balance of everything in each and every situation,” added the Australian.
“Each corner is different and each circuit is different.”
