During the Austrian Grand Prix there were one, two, three incidents of drivers attempting
overtakes around the outside, only to get run wide and find themselves skittering across
the gravel. In all three occasions the defending driver
on the inside was punished by the stewards for not leaving enough room for their attacker.
Is this fair? And does it represent the racing we want to see? Let’s have a look.
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So our three key incidents here are Pérez vs Norris at turn 4; Leclerc vs Pérez at
turn 4 in a very similar accident; and then Leclerc vs Pérez again in turn 6.
Let’s start with Norris and Pérez. Norris was leading Pérez at the safety car
restart, but heading downhill towards turn 4, Pérez manages to get a good run on Norris
pulling alongside and to the left as they enter the braking zone.
Norris deliberately places his car on the inside line heading into turn 4 to force Pérez
to go the long way around. Had Pérez been able to tuck inside, it would have been a
much easier pass. For Norris, this is him taking the high ground in defense.
Pérez is actually momentarily ahead at the turn-in point to the corner, but the outside
line is the weaker of the two. Due to the slope of the geography, turn 4
is a bit off-camber, meaning the track slopes away to the outside, inducing understeer into
the car and coaxing it out wider than you’d want.
Lando holds position on the inside and, to be fair, Sergio remains quite significantly
alongside as they both navigate the corner. Norris’s natural racing line, when putting
his foot down, is to allow the car the full width of the track on exit and, as he reaches
the outside kerb, Pérez is still hanging in there and has nowhere left to go but off
track. Norris doesn’t actually touch Pérez, but
Pérez keeps out of contact by drifting across to the concrete and gravel, losing positions
in the process. Should Norris have allowed room for Pérez?
Some suggest the International Sporting Code mandates leaving at least a ‘full car’s
width’ to your rival when moving across the track, but this isn’t strictly true.
If we look at the International Sporting Code Appendix L, Chapter IV, which details the
code of conduct on racing circuits, it states: “Any driver moving back towards the racing
line, having earlier defended his position offline, should leave at least one car width
between his own car and the edge of the track on the approach to the corner.”
This is about drivers who defend INTO a corner and then move back across to take a sensible
racing line INTO the corner. Not about claiming the line through the exit of the corner.
Norris says he was entitled to complete the racing line through the corner as Sergio hadn’t
overtaken him and that Sergio knew the risks of going around the outside.
This last part is key in particular. If you’re going to throw a move around the outside you
KNOW there are risks involved of being muscled out of room and coming off worse. This is
a fact echoed by most pundits assessing the situation including Christian Horner himself,
who called it a racing incident even before Pérez went on to do very similar things in
defence later in the race. It’s also worth noting that at THIS part
of the battle, the only way for Norris to give room to Pérez is to give up the corner
completely. The car, at the speed it’s travelling, will naturally drift outwards.
To leave room on the outside, Norris would have to significantly slow down to tuck into
a tighter line which would have just given up the position. And the precedent there is
saying in order to overtake, you just need to be alongside going into the corner. Which
feels wrong. Nonetheless, the stewards deemed Norris to
be in the wrong, that he ‘forced another driver off the track’ and gave him a 5 second
penalty and two penalty points. Harsh. Let’s fast forward to Lap 41, where this
time Pérez is on the defense into the same corner and Leclerc is going for a move around
the outside. There are some slight differences here.
Most notably, they do touch. And secondly, Leclerc is slightly ahead of Pérez through
the corner. Not a lot - but in a way that Pérez wasn’t when making the move earlier
on Norris. If you watch the steering wheels through the
corner, Pérez is making every effort to steer through the corner, but it’s an understeery
corner and he was always going to drift wide. He bumps Leclerc very slightly midcorner and
continues his path across the full width of the track, in the same way Norris did.
Leclerc actually backs out once he’s touching the gravel so is able to tuck back onto the
track more quickly than Pérez was when he was pushed wide.
But again, Leclerc should have known the risks around the outside but went for it anyway.
Should Pérez have to pay the penalty for that?
Well, the stewards thought so. They gave him the same penalty as Norris.
If we wind back to this point of the corner, we can ask - what are Leclerc’s options
at this point? Either he thinks he’s going to completely overtake Pérez in a clean sweep
around the outside or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t think he is going to fully
make the move then holding on around the outside is a big risk. He must know Pérez is going
to drift out towards him. His other option is to hold a wider line into
turn 4 and sling the car in for a better run up through the next sequence, countering the
slower speed Pérez has had to take holding through the inside.
And this is what he does six laps later. Leclerc’s wide entry into turn 4 allowed him to straighten
up earlier and gives him great acceleration, pulling alongside Pérez on the inside of
turn 5. The cars are side by side into turn 6, but
now Leclerc is back on the outside again, but attempts to hold position against Pérez.
They are super close, side by side as they exit the corner and honestly might both have
made it through. Pérez is well aware of Leclerc’s presence and, from his steering angle, looks
to be giving him just enough space. Unfortunately, as he heaves on some acceleration,
the car twitches with oversteer, sending it drifting out slightly and squeezing Leclerc
off track once again. So you could kind of give Pérez a bit of
blame here as he lost control of the car and Leclerc suffered for it. The stewards once
again gave Pérez a five second penalty and ANOTHER two points on his licence.
Four penalty points in one race for some marginal calls there that some might say were all racing
incidents. So, in all these incidents we can ask - did
the attacking driver claim the position? Did they win the corner? I think we can agree
they had not, at any point, beaten their opponent and made the overtake. The corner was still
in contention. Okay but had they won the right to have more
space given them? That seems to be the contentious issue.
I mean, I’m glad the stewards were consistent at least. After their call on Norris they
HAD to hand out the same penalties to Pérez and… well, Pérez again. They were all functionally
pretty similar. But do we agree with the call in general?
Will Buxton recounts Derek Warwick’s analysis on the situations. Warwick was one of the
driver stewards making the calls during the race weekend.
There are a few main points here, the main being that if an attacking car is substantially
alongside then racing room has to be given. And I think there’s some argument in that,
to be honest though I think Buxton gives two flawed analogies in his reasoning.
He first imagines a scenario on a straight in which a defending car edges an attacking
car off the track. He also suggests a scenario in which the attacking
car is on the INSIDE of the corner and the defending car closes the door on them.
Both scenarios are slam dunk penalties, he says. And yes, this is true.
But the key difference here is that in both these scenarios, the natural forces acting
on the car aren’t pulling it in these directions needed to boff the other driver off track.
On the straight, the car will continue to travel straight unless the driver tells it
to do otherwise. The driver needs to tell the car to close the door on an attacker on
the straight. And if the attacking car is alongside, then yeah that’s a penalty.
Through a corner, the natural inclination of the car is to not go through the corner.
It will drive wide unless you force it to do otherwise. Turning into a car attacking
through the inside of a corner is again a more conscious choice on the part of the defending
driver. And as the inclination of a car is to drift
wide through a corner, THAT’S why attacking around the outside is a massive risk because
you’re sticking your foot in a naturally closing door.
So the argument becomes - should a defending driver give up their speed and position if
an attacker is able to pull up along the outside? And part of me actually thinks...yes?
Here’s the thing - in order to overtake through a corner, you need to compromise the
car you’re attacking. By placing yourself alongside your opponent you’ve kind of successfully
said ‘this part of the track is mine. If you want to complete the corner you now have
to take a compromised line’. Which… is kind of fair. I don’t think you should be
run off the road for that. I think your opponent has to react to this
attack by working with the space they’ve been left with once you’ve forced them into
a tighter area by being fast enough to pull alongside.
So… I think the actual penalties given were harsh, particularly the penalty point given.
But there is definitely a lot to be said about leaving your rival room if they are actually
significantly alongside you. Even if Will Buxton’s analogies were bad in this instance
and people are misreading the international sporting code.
In all three cases the defending driver was in the wrong. But… HOW much in the wrong?
I don’t think -this- wrong. But maybe just the five seconds of wrongitude. What do you
think?