Max Verstappen and Lando Norris criticised Formula 1 stewards for their handling of track limits in Austria.
Since the season began, the new race directors have enforced a strict policy whereby all lap times are deleted if a driver crosses the white line with all four wheels without a justifiable reason.
While this has caught out a few drivers, notably Norris in Q2 in Spain, the Red Bull Ring was the first circuit where the matter really descended into a farce.
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Sergio Perez was demoted from P4 to P13 several hours after qualifying as stewards hadn’t picked up the Mexican going off-track at Turn 8 on his fastest lap in Q2.
Then in the race, four drivers picked up five-second penalties for excessive track limits violations as 16 of the 20 drivers in total had at least one lap time deleted for crossing the white line.
“You can’t see the white lines, it’s just guessing and I’m obviously not good enough at guessing,” Norris, who was among the four penalised in the race, told Sky Sports.
“I think when I really had to be I could be, it’s just you’ve got to back off a bit, so it’s more about risk-reward in a way.
“But even sometimes, like I got a warning from Turn 1 and it was just a complete mistake. I lost time, so when you look at it that way, I can say it’s a bit stupid.
“I’ve locked up, I’ve hit the exit kerb, I’ve lost like three or four tenths. So it’s not like not punishing me for the last corner where you just commit to running off and gaining an advantage.
“This was just me making mistakes. So I don’t feel like I should be punished for it.”
Verstappen went further in his criticism, believing the excessive focus on track limits in Austria hurt the action in all categories.
“I don’t think necessarily it depends on one race director, I think it’s more about working with the drivers instead of just keeping your stance and just being stubborn,” he explained.
“Like track limits, I think the track limits debate this weekend has been a bit of a joke, not only in F1 but in F2 and F3.
“It’s easy to say from the outside, ‘yeah, but you have to just stay within the white lines.’
“It sounds very easy, but it’s not because when you go that quickly through a corner and some of them are a bit blind, if you have a bit more understeer, tyres are wearing, it’s easy to just go over the white line, but do we actually gain time? Maybe yes, maybe not.
“To be honest, there’s only two or three corners where you can really just go a bit wider and yeah, I don’t think we should have this value on one millimetre over that’s a penalty or whatever.
“I think it just doesn’t look good for the sport as well and this is just one thing. Then the other thing is racing incidents and stuff. Yeah for sure we can do better. I think we will work on it, we’ll try to make it better.”
