Changes to Formula 1’s racing guidelines covering driver attacking moves on inside lines are expected following a lengthy meeting with the drivers ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix.
The FIA committed to reassessing F1’s ‘Driving Standards Guidelines’ that inform stewards’ decisions on contentious racing moves, as well as how the drivers go about implementing their manoeuvres, following Max Verstappen’s battle with Lando Norris at Austin last month.
It decided it would present its findings to the drivers at this weekend’s Qatar round, after they had collectively agreed changes were needed around the circumstances of the Red Bull driver’s moves against his McLaren rival.
The reason for coming back to the drivers before the 2024 season concluded was to get their subsequent feedback on the proposed changes, as well as getting them tested in race situations.
The meeting took place at 7.30pm local time in Qatar on Thursday – instead of the usual post-FP2 slot for the typical drivers’ meeting because of the sprint format this weekend – and lasted nearly an hour.
This was longer than many teams had been expecting, as it is understood the discussions covered a lengthy range of racing scenarios and ideas for improvements.
But Mercedes driver George Russell – the only currently racing director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association – said afterwards, “The main discussion was about overtaking."
“A lot of drivers are aligned that if you are the overtaking car on the inside, rule number one is you have to be able to stay on the circuit,” he continued, when asked by Autosport if Verstappen’s Austin tactics had been closed off as a result of the meeting.
“If you're able to stay on the circuit, you are in your right to run the driver wide, as it has been for all of us since go-karting: if you're overtaking somebody on the inside, you've got the right to run them wide.”
He later added, “Right now there is a line of regulation that says the inside driver needs to leave room to the guy on the outside from the apex to the exit” and explained, “I think that's going to be getting binned off and I hope it's going to be from this weekend onwards”.
“It was pretty productive,” Russell said of the meeting overall. “I think we all agree that the guidelines, they don't need massive changes.
“I think they just need the odd sentence removed or adjusted. But I think everybody's clear with what happened in Austin, what should have been a penalty, what happened in Mexico [Verstappen was sanctioned twice for his subsequent moves against Norris] was rightly penalised.
“And generally speaking, over the course of the year, I think the decisions have been pretty good. It was just probably Austin that was the outlier. So, yeah, just fine tweaks.”
When Verstappen faced the media shortly after Russell, he said, “The main problem is the tracks that allow these kind of things” and reckons, “If you have gravel, that actually stops you from doing things that – taking a bit more risk than normal."
Russell said of this: “We also concluded that most of these issues are down to the circuits.
“We spoke about a number of the issues in Austin. I think a lot of the overtakes wouldn't have even been attempted had there been gravel there such as, Austria Turn 4 – the downhill right-hander
“You're going to go in the gravel if you go in 1-2% over the limit.
“Silverstone, at Stowe there was obviously a great race in a couple of years ago with Lewis [Hamilton] and Checo [Perez] and Charles [Leclerc, in 2022].
“Ultimately everyone was off the track, but that's because the track allowed you.
“The circuits are the root cause and the guidelines are kind of like an interim fix that we need to agree on until we can get all of the circuits in a proper manner.”
When pressed what the meeting meant for the guidelines on a driver overtaking on the outside, Russell replied: “I think the overtaking rules on the outside will not be changing much and I don't think we've really seen much of a problem [with that].”
Hamilton revealed the scale of the discussions on Thursday night when he stated, “there was talk of like a warning” being issued to drivers that went against the racing rules – similar to such rules in other sports.
“That's basically like yellow card in your hand, you know you're gonna have that one warning,” he added.
But the seven-time world champion explained that the drivers had agreed this was a non-starter, as “if you waited for the last race of the year to utilise your one warning, that doesn't work”.
“So, we're just working away together,” he continued. “I think just from that meeting we will definitely be moving in the right direction.”
Hamilton also said, “That's the best meeting I would say we’ve had” on such matters, which reflects suggestions from Autosport sources that the mood of the meeting was positive overall.
And when Russell’s comment from Mexico that “19 out of 20 drivers said, 'well, if it's incorrect, make the change today',” was put to Verstappen, given the implication that he was the only driver to object to such a suggestion following the Austin race, he responded by saying on Thursday, “No, it was not the case that it was just one particular driver agreeing or disagreeing with certain things”.
A public statement on the results of the meeting is expected to be issued on Friday in Qatar.
