ROUND 23: 🇶🇦 Qatar
FORMULA 1 QATAR AIRWAYS QATAR GRAND PRIX 2024
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Lusail International Circuit
- First Grand Prix: 2021
- Number of laps: 57
- Circuit Length: 5.419 km
- Race Distance: 308.611 km
- Lap record: 1:24.319 Max Verstappen (2023)
- 2023 winner: Max Verstappen
Track Map
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Dumpster fire race directing. Should’ve been a quick VSC and we could’ve avoided the mess with the punctures and the penalties.
Happy for Zhou though!
How long can it possibly take to choose what to do?
There’s dangerous debris on the track, you’ve put yellow flags on the only DRS zone, and you leave it like that until it gets hit by someone several minutes later, then you leave it with scattered debris for another minute. In the mean time two people get their races ruined or made worse, and you also hand out a HUGE penalty for a driver missing a flag that should have been a VSC minimum from the start. So stupid.
The stewarding was unnaturally harsh this weekend. It started with the stupid pen for max in quali and then my god in the race. From the start, the 10 seconds penalty for stroll seemed excessive considering it was lap 1. Then the ridiculous stop and go for Norris and the drive through for lewis. The level of inconsistency in the stewarding is unprecedented. Great job by the FIA and bin Sulayem in firing all the competent people from the organisation.
The problem with inconsistent penalties is because there are a range of punishments for most offenses. Its meant to give discretion to the stewards to adjust the level depending on the malice and/or impact assigned to the offense. Obviously this completely falls down when you fail to define something so nebulous as malice or impact in these same rules and have different people interpreting it week to week.
If we had just one penalty for say forcing a driver off, or speeding in the pit lane, then had a multiplier if it was intentional or not, that would at least clear up the consistency around the size of a penalty. Overtaking by exceeding track limits should be a flat 10 second penalty for everyone as an example, not 5 seconds one week and 10 seconds the next.
Blocking on a hot lap should always be a 5 place grid drop, blocking on a slow lap should never be a penalty, but what even is the point of a 1 place drop? Like WTAF, its like they been told to punish Max (for something that should not be an offense) then chose the smallest possible punishment going.That simply shouldn’t be possible.
I missed the race yesterday and just watched the replay and oh my god what a dumpster fire of a race. Really bad race directing and ridiculously over the top stewarding. Honestly what a shit show of a race.
The fact that no VSC was called for the debris on the track(which was there for so many laps) is almost criminal and then the shitshow with penalties added to the stupidity. We were robbed of a great max vs Norris battle.
Tbf the VSC wouldn’t have helped as the field was pretty spread at the time. And a full safety is quite a big intervention for relatively minor debris, slightly off line. Also, it was about to be when ppl started pitting so throwing a safety car would have given most drivers a free pitstop and potentially killed the race. I don’t like how it was handled but can understand why they did what they did at least.
I’ve been following F1 since almost 30 years and one thing has been a constant - stupid rule changes, and one thing has been consistently getting worse - the stewarding, especially since Whiting’s passing.
Zero consistency and the punishments make zero sense. The mirror was lying around for what, five laps? Didn’t seem all that important to them.
