Following the departure of the amicable F1 race director, the drivers have been engaged in a season long row with the FIA. During the early races certain teams and drivers were heavily critical of the new car design regulations that have made it much easier to follow and overtake but resulted in some F1 car designs bouncing excessively.

Whilst the bouncing row has died down, other contentious issues have arisen, the latest being the management of the Austrian GP race.

There were 43 breaches of track limits during the race and most of the drivers received a warning. Lando Norris, Sebastian Vettel, Pierre Gaasley and Yuki Tsunoda all received 5 second time penalties for repeated offences, while Lewis Hamilton was shown the black and white flag and Charles Leclerc & Max Verstappen both had two breaches to their credit.

Max Verstappen commented on  the FIA’s race management in the press conference following the chequered flag. 

“Of course everyone has their own opinions about certain things,” he said, “but like track limits, I think track limits debate this weekend has been a bit of a joke. Not only in F1 but in F2 and F3.”

Track limits has always been more of an issue at the Red Bull Ring than elsewhere and part of the reason is due to the number of blind corners around the circuit.

“It’s easy to say from the outside, yeah,” Verstappen continued. “but you have to just stay within the white lines. It sounds very easy, but it’s not because when you go that quick through a corner and some of them are a bit blind, if you have a bit more understeer, tyres are wearing, it’s easy to just go over the white line.

“But do we actually gain time? Maybe yes, maybe not, and to be honest, there’s only two or three corners where you can really just go a bit wider.”

Over the past 20 years F1 track designer Hermann Tilke designed new circuits with huge car park like tarmac run off areas. The theory being that the gravel traps were dangerous.

Charlie Whiting then added to the issue insisting that circuits like Monza remove the gravel traps and pave the famous Parabolica corner. Verstappen thinks F1 may have made a mistake.

“I don’t think we should have this value on one mill over that’s a penalty or whatever. Just add a wall or put some gravel back where we… like Turn 6 on the exit. I think that’s great because there is gravel, you punish yourself if you go wide”, said Verstappen.

“These are things where we have to look into how we can make it better because also for the stewards and just the people involved with checking these track limits, I mean it’s almost impossible to check these kind of things because you need what… almost like one guy on one car the whole race to check the whole lap if he’s not going outside of the white line, where on this track, at least, in some places, you get naturally penalised if you just you know go a bit wider and you touch the gravel.”

The sheer number of track limits warnings created a story which in previous years may have provided some interest during what has been a processional race. Yet the new car design saw exciting racing up and down the field as teams are now prepared to try less conservative tyre strategies because track position is now less vital as the cars can overtake.

Verstappen concludes the FIA need to look at how they manage the races. ”These kind of things, I think it just doesn’t look good for the sport as well and this is just one thing. Then the other thing is racing incidents and stuff. Yeah for sure we can do better. I think we will work on it we’ll try to make it better.”

During the driver briefing on Friday, the FIA were criticised heavily fore their inconsistent approach to race control, such that Sebastian Vettel stormed out of the mandatory meeting and received a 25,000 euro fine.

The war of words between the drivers and the FIA rumbles on as F1’s governing body released a statement late in the evening after the Austrian GP.

“The monitoring of track limits during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix has been consistent with all previous events this year,” it said in a brief statement.

“At each circuit, the white line is used as the defined limit of the track, and this has been implemented following discussions with the drivers and teams to improve consistency and clarity for the competitors and fans.

“The number of penalties today is proportional to the number of infringements of Article 33.3 of the Sporting Regulations, with drivers during the race given two ‘strikes’ for crossing the white line with all four wheels, followed by a black and white flag for the third infringement, and referral to the stewards for each subsequent infringement.”

READ MORE: “Scandel” in Austria as Hamilton gets angry