Max Verstappen wasn’t the only driver to pass a rival by short-cutting turn two in Jeddah yesterday.
While Verstappen took the lead from Oscar Piastri by missing the second turn at the start of the race, right behind him Andrea Kimi Antonelli did the same thing to Charles Leclerc. Later on in the race Fernando Alonso also emerged from the same corner ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto having missed the turn when the Sauber driver squeezed him in the braking zone.
The difference between those cases lay in what the driver ahead did next. “I quickly gave back the position, because I was not making the corner, to avoid any penalty,” Alonso explained. Antonelli did the same. Verstappen did not.
Although Verstappen’s team Red Bull argued vociferously that he was entitled to the corner, the replays made it clear Piastri had got ahead of him after the start and the Red Bull only appeared ahead of the McLaren driver again because the pole-winner committed to running wide and could therefore carry more speed.
In choosing not to return the position to Piastri, Verstappen weighed two alternatives. Either drop behind Piastri and spend the opening stint in the McLaren’s wake, or accept the inevitable penalty but spend the opening stint in free air. He opted for the latter.
This should give the stewards pause for thought. If a penalty is so lenient a driver prefers it over complying with the rules, it’s insufficient.
Red Bull surely had a clear idea of the penalty they were likely to get for this infringement. Team principal Christian Horner confirmed he discussed this scenario with race director Rui Marques before the start.
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Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase urged him to keep a lid on his complaints over his five-second time penalty after it was communicated to him. But the stewards confirmed their sanction was actually more lenient than indicated by the guidelines.
Liam Lawson received a 10-second time penalty for, in the stewards’ view, leaving the track and gaining an advantage at the same corner. He had passed Jack Doohan before the braking zone, then ran briefly off the track between turns one and two.
The advantage Lawson gained was tiny compared to Verstappen’s, yet his penalty was twice as severe. The stewards explained they mitigated Verstappen’s penalty because the incident occured on the first lap of the race.
“Ordinarily, the baseline penalty for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage is 10 seconds,” they stated. “However, given that this was a lap one and turn one incident, we considered that to be a mitigating circumstance and imposed a five-second time penalty instead.”
The stewards wielded this ‘first lap’ dispensation when looking into the collision between Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly. But the fact Verstappen and Piastri’s incident occured on lap one was immaterial. No other car was even peripherally involved. The same incident could just as easily have happened on any other lap of the race.
Indeed, the fact it occured at the start of the race made Verstappen’s breach even more egregious. Cutting the first corner, having lost the lead at the start, handed him the benefit of running his entire first stint in clear air.
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As Piastri remarked during last year’s Belgian Grand Prix, “clean air is king”. This is very much still the case today, as F1’s cars remain exceptionally sensitive to turbulence and their tyres prone to overheating if they are not looked after.
“The first stint was tough behind Max,” Piastri acknowledged afterwards. “Once I had some clean air, it was a bit easier to manage.”
Leclerc spelled out just how valuable an unimpeded run can be. “I think free air dictates a little bit who is going to win the race,” he said. “That’s always been the case. Maybe this year a little bit more than other years.”
Last year the stewards increased their ‘baseline’ penalty for gaining an advantage off the track from five seconds to 10 precisely. They did this because teams had realised it was often better to take a five-second hit than remain stuck behind a rival in dirty air.
Softening the penalty on this occasion made no sense when Verstappen had clearly decided not to hand the position back precisely to bank the advantage of running in free air. The stewards need to wise up when drivers try this kind of thing again, and consider imposing penalties which must be served immediately, such as a drive-through, rather than one which is deferred until a driver’s pit stop.
But we shouldn’t leap to blame the stewards first for calls like this. They are being called upon to perform a service which the track has failed to do: punish a driver for failing to stick to the circuit.
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The FIA has made a lot of progress in this area in recent seasons. Many tracks which previously had forgiving asphalt run-offs have installed proper deterrents. The Red Bull Ring, Hungaroring, Silverstone, Shanghai and others have sprouted gravel traps and grass strips.
But why does Jeddah continue to get a free pass? Its first corner has been a problem since it was built, which was only four years ago. New tracks should not have flaws like these in the first place.
The defence that Jeddah is a ‘street circuit’ and therefore lacks the space to install physical deterrents for track limits doesn’t hold water. Drivers do not race on real streets in Jeddah, its track is purpose-built.
In the case of turns one and two, that purpose appears to have been to generate controversy. A better solution to enforce the track limits at turns one and two is badly needed before F1 returns to Jeddah.
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