FIA clarifies F1 grid penalty rules following recent Monza chaos

The motor racing governing body has come under fire at Monza after it took nearly four hours after qualifying for the final grid to be sorted following a host of penalties.

Fans were upset that they didn’t know what was going on, while some teams themselves weren’t sure how things would ultimately turn out, as there were no formal regulations detailing the process by which sanctions were applied.

Alpha Tauriit is Pierre Gasly took to Twitter to ask if anyone knew where he would be starting: ‘Can someone tell me what position I’m going to start tomorrow’s race in?’ he asked while waiting for the gate.

Ferrari Team principal Mattia Binotto was one of the key figures in F1 who later said the situation needed to be sorted out.

“The reason why it took so long [to publish the grid] it’s that there are definitely different interpretations and the regulations aren’t clear enough,” Binotto said.

“It’s something we definitely need to sort out in the future – I think not only the way we decide grid position based on penalties, I think the amount of penalties we also have is too much. raised.”

Following the events at Monza, the FIA ​​has now made changes to the F1 regulations to explicitly explain the process that will be undertaken to settle penalties.

Following a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in London on Wednesday, the revised rules have already been incorporated into the 2022 sporting regulations.

While this will not speed up the process the FIA ​​is undertaking to publish a provisional grid first, which may still take several hours on Saturday evening as post-session scrutineering has yet to take place, clearer rules will allow the less to teams and fans to work out the grid themselves in a simple way.

What the new rules look like

The revised regulations, which are detailed in the F1 sporting regulations grid item for sprint weekends and normal events, outline how penalties are imposed.

This explains in detail the new process that was introduced a few years ago that locks the riders on the grid drops, rather than continuously moving the riders forward as has happened in the past.

Here is what the new rules in Article 42.2 say about how grid penalties are handled:

a) Classified drivers who have received 15 or less cumulative grid penalties will be allocated a temporary grid position equal to their qualifying classification plus the sum of their grid penalties. If two or more drivers share a temporary grid position, their relative order will be determined according to their qualifying ranking, with the slowest driver retaining their temporary grid position, and the other drivers gaining temporary grid positions immediately. in front of them.

b) Following the allocation of temporary grid positions to penalized drivers in accordance with point (a), drivers classified as not penalized will be allocated any unoccupied grid positions, in order of their qualifying classification.

c) Following the allocation of grid positions to non-penalized classified drivers, penalized drivers with a temporary grid position, as defined in (a), will be moved up to fill any unoccupied grid position .

d) Classified drivers who have accumulated more than 15 cumulative grid position penalties, or who have been penalized for starting at the back of the grid, will start behind any other classified driver. Their relative position will be determined based on their qualification ranking.

e) Unclassified drivers who have been cleared to participate by the Stewards will be allocated grid positions behind all classified drivers. Their relative positions will be determined in accordance with Article 39.3 (b).