[Exomaniac]

[Will Buxton] Caught up with Derek Warwick at the airport on the way home today. I'm still in agreement with his and the stewards' decisions yesterday. He told me how much they had to wrestle with Lando's initial penalty but that ultimately, it was a pretty clear breach of the regulations.

When the attacking car is substantially alongside, racing room has to be given. This is as true in corners as it is on straights. If the leading car edged the attacking car off track on a straight it's a slam dunk penalty. The same goes in corners. You can't just run people off.

Let's imagine the move was on the inside. If the attacking driver had managed to get up and level and the lead driver slammed the door shut to such an extent that the attacker was pushed off the track... again, you'd say slam dunk penalty.

But just as shoving your nose up the inside doesn't guarantee a pass, neither does having a sniff around the outside. You've got to be alongside or marginally ahead at some point of the corner (braking zone included) to be judged as being owed that racing room.

And the "he's just following the racing line" argument doesn't wash either. If the lead driver was on the racing line at T4, the inside line is the only way through. For an outside pass to be possible, the lead driver has to have changed line and gone defensive already.

This isn't making overtaking easy. It isn't making defending impossible. It's simply reinforcing the requirement for racing room. And ultimately that all comes down to respect and racecraft.

Personally I've never been a fan of crowding / edging another driver out of room in a corner. To my mind it isn't "hard racing." You don't see it in Indycar. You don't see it in NASCAR. Because if you don't run 2 or 3 wide with respect for each other over there, people get hurt.

Interstingly, I've seen folks getting quite angry about the fact I used the regulations to back up this argument yesterday. (Sporting Code Appendix L). The rules are there for a reason. Everyone knows them. They shouldn't be surprised that they get penalised when they break them.

Twitter


Odgovor Jacka Nichollsa:

Agree with everything in this thread. The problem is that the rules have not been enforced for too long, in scenarios such as Ham v Lec at Monza, Ver v Lec in Austria, even Gas v Nor 2 weeks ago. If there is tarmac run off, it seems you ARE allowed to push a car off.

Twitter


Ovaj incident je izgledno otvorio vrlo velik sukob između fanova o tome kako tko želi da izgleda utrkivanje, više wheel-to-wheel borbi ili nečeg drugoga.