Another nugget I found interesting from Brundle’s column:
The driving guidelines the stewards work to have been refined this year and a driver who ‘wins’ a corner by being sufficiently alongside is no longer obliged to leave racing room on the outside.
If Brundle is correct, that suggests that the FIA acted on Russell’s feedback to last year’s version of the guidelines:
I think there was maybe the odd sentence that needed to be gotten rid of. Such as if you were overtaking on the inside, you need to leave a car’s width apex-to-exit, hence why I got the penalty in Austin.
Last year, The Race reported that the guidelines then read:
For overtaking on the inside of a corner a driver must be given room if they satisfy the following conditions:
– Have their front axle at least alongside the mirror of the other car no later than the apex of the corner
– Be driven in a safe and controlled manner throughout the manoeuvre (which includes the entry, apex and exit)
– Without (deliberately) forcing the other car off the track at the exit, which includes leaving a fair and acceptable width for the car being overtaken from the apex to the exit of the corner
– Be able to make the corner within the track limits
I may be going out on a limb here, but if the FIA have actually gone and simply deleted the third condition, it would seem to imply that a driver overtaking on the inside does not even need to be fully alongside at the apex to own the corner at exit — they only need to have their front axle up to the other driver’s mirror at the apex to have the right to run the other driver off the road.
This might explain the stewards’ language in their ruling:
The Stewards […] determined that car 81 had its front axle at least alongside the mirror of Car 1 prior to and at the apex of corner 1 when trying to overtake Car 1 on the inside. In fact, Car 81 was alongside Car 1 at the apex. Based on the Driver’s Standards Guidelines, it was therefore Car 81’s corner and he was entitled to be given room.
The observation that “alongside Car 1 at the apex” is there, but almost as an aside; it seems that the controlling determination is that the front axle was alongside the mirror at the apex, and so even if the stewards deemed Verstappen were ahead slightly at the apex, as Red Bull argue, he still would not have been entitled to any room. (Ironic, considering it was Horner who, after Norris and Verstappen’s battle at Mexico City, complained that the driving standard guidelines were making it too easy to overtake on the outside.)
This creates a confusing inconsistency: When a driver is overtaking on the outside, they can earn the right to room by being ahead at the apex and through to the exit. But when a driver is defending on the outside, there is a significantly higher bar to clear, in that they must be so far ahead that the driver on the inside does not have their front axle up to their mirror. (In Jeddah, Piastri had pulled ahead of Verstappen before reaching the braking zone — so who was overtaking whom?)
Of course, this is all based on a best guess of what the driving standards actually say. The Race actually reported the opposite of Brundle — that the tweaks this year did not influence this incident, that the guidelines still hold that Piastri needed to leave room, and that the stewards would have looked differently on the incident had they felt Verstappen could have make the corner and/or forced a collision.
It seems high time for the FIA to publish the driving guidelines so that fans can actually understand what the rules are. Is there any other sport in the world where match-defining rulings are adjudicated under a secret rulebook that the governing body refuses to publish?