One year ago the Red Bull Ring was the location for the Formula 1 stewards setting a precedent to allow drivers to race one another harder in the future, when Max Verstappen aggressively forced his way past Charles Leclerc late on and was allowed to keep the win.
Unfortunately, what we saw last weekend at the same circuit, at the very same corner when Lance Stroll lunged Daniel Ricciardo to try to take sixth place was not in the interest of a hard-but-fair racing philosophy.
“I look back at Leclerc and Verstappen last year, it was very similar,” said Ricciardo. “Same corner and a similar incident.
“The difference though is that Verstappen stayed on the track, so you could say that he pulled off the move.
“Yeah, there was a bit of contact, but that’s where in Charles’ position you say ‘I left the door open for him, so I put myself in that position but he pulled the move off’.”
Last weekend, Stroll didn’t pull the move off. At least not by staying on track. The Racing Point driver’s move resulted in both him and Ricciardo going wide off the road. As well as dropping behind Stroll, Ricciardo was also passed by Lando Norris’s McLaren and fell to eighth.
Yet the officials elected to take no action over Stroll’s pass.
“Firstly he didn’t really get past, he forced both of us off the track,” Ricciardo had said immediately after the race.
“I’ll always be critical of myself, I should’ve closed the door, but I don’t think he was ever making the move, so I think it was desperate.”
Stroll gained from that move because he passed Ricciardo then maintained track position against Norris, but Ricardo lost two places as a result.
I don’t like penalties being applied in a way that discourages drivers from ‘having a go’ – were there no negative consequences from Stroll’s failed attempt and they both went off-track before resuming in the same positions, I’d say crack on.
But his move is the sort of thing that should be punished.
“If Lance stayed on the track today and pushed me wide, then I wouldn’t expect anything to happen,” said Ricciardo.
“I think that’s hard but fair enough racing at this level. It can’t always be polished but I think that’s good enough.
“But the fact that he went off, then if I turned in I’m going to be involved in an accident…”
What the Ricciardo/Stroll incident suggests is that a driver can make a reckless, out-of-control move and get away with going off-track and forcing the other car off as well, as long as there’s no contact
This is the only argument I can see for that being viewed a “racing incident”, that there was no contact. And this is a troubling, dangerous precedent for the stewards to set.
Let’s look ahead to what precedent this sets. Imagine we go to the Hungaroring this weekend, and Max Verstappen is chasing Lewis Hamilton for the victory. They go down the start-finish straight, Verstappen’s not immediately in range, but he goes for it anyway.
He doesn’t make contact, but he goes into hot – Hamilton doesn’t turn in because he notices Verstappen has taken too much speed into the corner, and chooses to go off track to avoid him rather than turn in and let the contact happen.
They both run off, rejoin and Verstappen takes the position. He should keep his win based on the precedent set by the Ricciardo/Stroll verdict, when it would clearly be an unfair overtake for the win.
Ricciardo’s commentary of the Stroll incident fits perfectly with this hypothetical scenario.
“The simple one there is if we go off on track limits and gain an advantage,” he said. “Essentially he’s attempted a move, gone off and kept the position. He’s gained an advantage by going off track.
“I have no issue with him attempting it, I’m not angry with him or anything like that. He tried it, it was clear he failed because we both went off.
“The position should be ‘give it back’. I think that would be fair and clear for everyone.”
It’s worrying that this wasn’t the position with Ricciardo vs Stroll because it implies that there needs to be a physical consequence, such as contact, for the stewards to determine fault.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen that already this season.
In the first Red Bull Ring race, Hamilton was handed a five-second penalty for not much of a misjudgment at all in battle with Alex Albon. In fact, Albon was the aggressor in that scenario, trying to pass Hamilton on the outside, and he didn’t use as much of the track as he could have. They collided as a result and Hamilton received a five-second time penalty.
So if the key differentiator between these incidents is that Ricciardo was not hit by Stroll, and not spun around, then that implies that consequence is everything.
Sometimes this is necessary, absolutely. But what the Ricciardo/Stroll incident suggests is that a driver can make a reckless, out-of-control move and get away with going off-track and forcing the other car off as well, as long as there’s no contact.
And it was out-of-control, otherwise, Stroll would have kept his car on-track. Like Verstappen just about did a year ago.
The other issue with consequence-based decision-making is it makes a verdict biased, focused on the outcome rather than the offence itself.
It was interesting to see how Verstappen pulled off a round-the-outside overtake on Valtteri Bottas at Turn 4 despite the Mercedes being positioned very similarly to Lewis Hamilton’s last week when Hamilton collided with Alex Albon.
The key difference was Verstappen letting his car run out to the kerb, whereas Albon did not – had Verstappen put his car where Albon did there’s a good chance he’d have collided with Bottas.
It’s not concrete proof and I’d like to see a good replay comparison to be sure, but it’s reinforced my view that Albon played a part in last weekend’s clash with Hamilton. The car on the inside did little different. It’s the position of the car on the outside that determined whether there was contact.
F1 should allow flexibility to interpret different penalties and to rule on ‘racing incidents’, but not to the point of setting new precedents every other weekend
Albon was involved in another similar incident this week, trying to hold off Sergio Perez. On this occasion, he was right over the exit kerb, but Perez still ran wide into him.
That contact was definitely the fault of the car on the inside, much more so than in Hamilton’s. Yet Perez, presumably because he broke his front wing rather than hurt Albon, wasn’t punished. Consequence dictated he got away with it, while Hamilton was punished for being less at fault.
These incidents are not identical. But the comparison, like the Ricciardo/Stroll outcome, does support the view that decisions are consequence-driven to a point of overruling the mechanics of the incident itself.
Albon vs Hamilton? Albon was spun off, so Hamilton is penalised.
Ricciardo vs Stroll? Ricciardo was not spun off, no penalty.
Albon vs Perez? Perez the aggressor broke his wing. So no penalty.
F1 should allow flexibility to interpret different penalties and to rule on ‘racing incidents’, but not to the point of setting new precedents every other weekend. That’s when the rules of racing change and it becomes hard to follow.
It also cannot get to the point where a driver has to ruin another driver’s race in order to be punished.
There’s surely a middle-ground here, between ‘penalties for everything’ and ‘penalties only for the harshest offences’.
But the verdict on the Ricciardo/Stroll incident suggests F1 is still struggling to find it.
