Up Next
Formula 1’s racing guidelines will be adjusted for 2025 after controversial incidents this season including clashes between title rivals Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.
A new document attempting to set some baseline parameters for what is and is not allowed in wheel-to-wheel racing was created for 2024 and used as the main reference for F1 ahead of a planned introduction into the FIA’s International Sporting Code next year.
It was a formal follow-up to an initial set of guidelines that were put together in the wake of F1’s controversial 2021 title run-in, which featured several flashpoints between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
The 2024 rules have been criticised for wording that meant Verstappen went unpunished in this year’s United States Grand Prix for going off-track while defending against Norris – something that was intended to be outlawed after 2021, and has (inadvertently or not) been legitimised again.
Furthermore, drivers believe that the reality of wheel-to-wheel racing has been skewed by the fact several tracks have extensive run-off areas.
The F1 drivers briefing at the Mexican Grand Prix, one week after the Verstappen and Norris duel and other inconsistent policing of the rules at Austin, included an extensive debate about how to best adapt the guidelines for the future – with the FIA open to making changes before the end of this season.
An extensive meeting at the Qatar Grand Prix, described by Lewis Hamilton as the "best" he could remember, included a broad agreement on the areas to refine but this is not going to happen before 2025.
THE QATAR MEETING
Back in Mexico, it was decided that the next part of the conversation around the rules would take place a month later at this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix - giving the FIA an opportunity to consider what had been raised initially, have some discussions with relevant parties, and bring a first proposal for possible changes to the table.
That has happened this week, at a meeting between the stewards, members of FIA race control, the drivers and team representatives. It was part of a wider annual review that gives competitors and officials the chance to debrief on a variety of issues.
The Qatar meeting was hosted by chairman of the FIA F1 stewards Garry Connelly and included FIA single-seater sporting director Tim Malyon, and new race director Rui Marques (pictured above). Connelly called it “the most productive one we’ve attended”, and said the drivers had been “fantastic” and “very constructive” with their input.“As stewards, we are not here to inflict pain on drivers,” Connelly said.
“We're here to provide a level playing field. It's not us against the drivers, it's the drivers against the drivers and we're here to make sure everyone gets a fair go.
“We have an open-door policy. The door to the stewards’ room is always open to any driver who wants to come up and talk to us about a decision that's been taken either in relation to them or in relation to any other driver.
“We think Thursday’s meeting emphasised that open-door policy.”
This was echoed by drivers, including Mercedes pair Hamilton and George Russell. Grand Prix Drivers Association director Russell said it was “pretty productive” and there was an agreement that the rules don’t require “massive changes” because “generally speaking over the course of the year the decisions have been pretty good”.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton praised the FIA and the stewards for “taking the time to sit down with us” and called it “the best meeting” they’d had.
“They don't have an easy job at all,” Hamilton said.
“It helps, us all sitting with them, having a discussion. In their minds, it has been better this year in terms of consistency. But everyone wants it to be perfect.
“For them to fully understand from where we're sitting, from where we're fighting, what we're fighting for and what we think is right or wrong in certain scenarios, it's good for them to hear and us to work on really clear guidelines, so that also from in the car you know exactly what we have.
“For example, there was talk of [regularly imposing] a warning. But that's like a yellow card – you'll have that one warning, if you wait for the last race of the year to utilise your one warning, that doesn't work.
“We're just working away at it together. Just from that meeting we're definitely moving in the right direction.”
RULE CHANGES
The guidelines will change for 2025, although exactly how remains a little unclear.
Russell implied after the Thursday meeting that the wording would be tweaked so that the driver on the inside of a corner must be able to keep their car on-track.
If they could, they would then still be permitted to crowd their rival out on the exit if they got ahead at the apex, because there would need to be a degree more control in the initial manoeuvre – which would stop egregious divebombs.
“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,” said Russell.
“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.”
What is not certain is whether other parts of the guidelines will be tightened up to match that. For example, at present there are different requirements on the car on the inside depending on whether they are overtaking, or being overtaken. This was crucial to McLaren’s complaints about Verstappen being unpunished at Austin, as it felt that Norris had technically completed his pass on the outside on the straight – and therefore Verstappen became the driver overtaking on the inside, rather than Norris overtaking on the outside.
That confers a different set of responsibilities on the drivers, and expectations of what they should. The FIA has not indicated whether this will be clarified.
“The driving standard guidelines are a living document, so every year, as the F1 stewards we try to meet with the drivers, sporting directors and FIA representatives, to see if we need to tweak the guidelines to use the experience of the last 12 months and see what improvements we can make to ensure consistency,” said Connolly.
“The goal of the guidelines is consistency.
“As stewards, if drivers and teams and the FIA agree that they want rules or guidelines to allow more aggressive driving, we'll apply those rules or guidelines.
“Likewise, if they want stricter driving standards, we'll apply those.”
TRACK CHANGES
It has been clear since Austin that drivers advocate a change of track design philosophy alongside rule tweaks, or maybe as an even bigger priority.
Drivers have long since complained about track limits but the existence of extensive run-off is a key factor in wheel-to-wheel battling depending on the corner profile. This was considered key to the Verstappen/Norris fight at Austin, and others that weekend, because the long straight there leads into a slow, tight corner with a lot of run-off on the exit.
That encourages high-risk moves on the inside and outside because drivers don’t fear the consequences, although Verstappen said that depends on the track and the corner type.
“Overtaking in a low-speed corner on the outside is way more complicated than a medium-speed or a high-speed corner, because that's where most of the time you carry momentum,” he said.
“And then it's a bit different. Plus when there is no gravel, you can just drive off the track without any consequences normally.
“But at some tracks that we go to, you see either a clear overtake around the outside or people backing out of it. Because you're afraid to go into the gravel, from the car on the inside or the outside.
“That already cancels out 90% of our issues that we have nowadays."
A solution that many favour is to roll-out the clever track modification used in Austria this year, where a short 2.5-metre wide strip of gravel was placed in the immediate run-off area at the final two corners.
“We’ve concluded that most of these issues are down to the circuits,” Russell said.
“We spoke about a number of the issues in Austin, a lot of the overtakes wouldn't have even been attempted had there been gravel there.
“The circuits are the root cause, and the guidelines are kind of an interim fix that we need to agree on until we can get all of the circuits in a proper manner."
Malyon said that the driver meeting in Qatar highlighted what can be prioritised in the FIA’s work to evolve the circuits that are being used.
“It was very useful to get the insight of the drivers and see how they prioritise the gravel track concept, not only for track limits, but also for managing some of the situations that have arisen with overtaking during the course of the last four or five races,” said Malyon.
