42 replies to this topic

[Risil]

When did stewards start handing out 5 second penalties? More and more, time blurs into one.

 

We end up doing strange arithmetic and as with Lewis today, sometimes you end up second on the road but somewhere else in the official results. Which is rarely as satisfying from a justicial standpoint as being called into the pits to be yelled at by the clerk of the course.

 

As 5 seconds is not going to destroy anyone's race, the penalty allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards. On the other hand, it allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards.

 

Should there be a 10 second, 20 second penalty as well? Should drivers have time deducted for good sportsmanship? (No.)

 

Anyway, perhaps it's worth a discussion.

[PayasYouRace]

It's the 5 second pitstop penalty but applied when there's no more pitstops to take.

[Risil]

It's the 5 second pitstop penalty but applied when there's no more pitstops to take.

 

We seem to have a lot of one-stop races though!

[Junky]

It is not about love. In some circumstances they are just fair. Which was what happen with Hamilton, in my opinion.

[William Hunt]

They're in many cases silly.
Today it made the difference between 2nd or 4th but in most cases it hardly makes any difference especially to the top teams because in a dominant car, like a Mercedes, you can easily build a 5 second gap in no time so if you get such in a penalty in a top car it's hardly a penalty, in many cases it will be equivalent to no penalty because their car is so far ahead, it only made a difference today because of a late safety car.

 

It allows top teams to break the rules whilst a midfield car like a Renault for example will feel the penalty so one team gets punished for something and another team gets away for the same thing just because their car is so much quicker.

 

In the past you used to get a stop & go penalty or a drive through penalty depending how heavy the mistake was, that really hit you and it could change the dyamic of a race seriously if it happened to a top car.

 

A 5 or 10 second penalty would be good if you take a corner too wide or if you push a button a fraction too quickly or a fraction too late at the beginning or the end of a virtual safety car but when you force a driver off track, ignore a yellow flag, have a false start or drive too fast in the quick then the penalty should always be a drive through or stop & go penatly so it really has an affect on the race result. 

 

I'm pretty sure that at one point they started to stop giving stop & go and drive through penalties and started giving 5 (or 10) second penalties under pressure / lobbying from the top teams because they have the most advantage of this system.

It's another way for the FIA to favour the top teams;

Edited by William Hunt, 05 July 2020 - 15:35.

[haryantofan666]

It's always 5s unless Hamilton Himself is the victum, then it's 10s (Silverstone 2018)

[jacdaniel]

I think the stewards need to look more at the bigger picture and weigh up everything.

Today, Lewis was on worn had tyres. Albon was on fresh softs and arguably in pole position to win the race.

If there is no contact, Lewis finishes 3rd and Albon either 1st or 2nd.

With the “penalty” applied, Lewis finishes 4th so drops a position.

Albon drops to last and ultimately car fails, possibly due to the contact.

Conclusion: The incident was deemed as Lewis’s fault and completely destroyed Albons race. But it only had a small impact on Lewis.

[William Hunt]

@ jacdaniel: true:: that's why Lewis should have been given a drive through or stop & go penalty. He still got 12 pts instead of 15 pts, Albon got zero instead of 25 and that's just not right.

[Spillage]

I think they're appropriate for minor incidents.

[PlatenGlass]

What is effectively aggregate races aren't ideal. So they should be avoided where possible. Certainly for all incidents that don't happen right at the end of the race.

[NixxxoN]

"I love them" would not be correct to say, but I think they are necessary

[Fastcake]

When did stewards start handing out 5 second penalties? More and more, time blurs into one.

We end up doing strange arithmetic and as with Lewis today, sometimes you end up second on the road but somewhere else in the official results. Which is rarely as satisfying from a justicial standpoint as being called into the pits to be yelled at by the clerk of the course.

As 5 seconds is not going to destroy anyone's race, the penalty allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards. On the other hand, it allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards.

Should there be a 10 second, 20 second penalty as well? Should drivers have time deducted for good sportsmanship? (No.)

Anyway, perhaps it's worth a discussion.

It was 2014 I think. The result of several seasons of the stewards not wanting to give drive-throughs for minor offences and instead issuing reprimands, which was met with backlash from in and out of the sport from those who felt drivers were taking the mickey a bit and not being deterred.

[Ruusperi]

Better to have more variety than just a single type penalty. I wouldn't mind for 4 sec or 6 sec penalties either, although it would become very difficult for stewards to justify one over another. On the other hand, collisions are an innate part of racing so unless someone crashes on purpose or show total lack of respect, I wouldn't penalize anyone. In case of Hamilton, I'm sure he didn't want Albon to spin.

[noikeee]

The dodgy thing about 5 sec penalties is they're disproportionally worse if there's a very late safety car that bunches everyone up and puts you at risk of losing a couple of positions. Whereas if everyone's spread out it may make no difference whatsoever to your finishing position. That feels rather arbitrary.

 

Also, since they're the lightest penalty, they're often given for things that don't feel like they should be penalised. Today half the board thinks Lewis shouldn't have gotten a penalty - and those of us that think it's a penalty have to admit it's the tiniest of mistakes. So there's a good argument for not penalising honest minor mistakes and just letting the flow go. But the problem is that if you do that, then next race a highly popular driver is taken out by a highly unpopular driver in similar circumstances, isn't penalized, and everyone's up in arms about it. Also when F1 goes on its moods of "let's just let them race" then over-aggressive drivers take the opportunity to bully others out of their way unfairly and fully take the advantage of the rules. And we go back to handing out penalties again.

 

So we're kinda stuck with 5 second penalties for these things as the least bad option.

 

Now a lot of people resent these penalties because they remember that way back then in the good old days, they weren't necessary. The problem is they weren't necessary because a) it was unsafe as hell, you could die with the tiniest mistake so apart from 1 or 2 lunatics, drivers gave room to one another. And b) we didn't have TV coverage of every corner, every car onboard - incidents went unpenalised because the stewards didn't have footage of it! And also c) the cars were often ridiculously spread out and there was very little wheel-to-wheel action, the races were so much more boring, I dare you to go watch early 80s races start to finish on F1TV.

 

Since I don't want drivers to die. I don't want to lose the comprehensive TV coverage. And I don't want to lose the nice regular wheel-to-wheel action we have. Again, we're kinda stuck with penalties. And I'm not seeing any great alternatives to 5 sec penalties anyway. Lose 1 position? Awful, imagine losing a race that you won by 50 seconds due to one of these. Lose 1 championship point? Awful, imagine losing a championship to one of these. Etc. Let's just stick to this. 

[Lennat]

I'd prefer one minut of reduced power or something like that, so that the finishing order was the real result. Save the time penalties for incidents at the very end of the race when there isn't enough time for the stewards to give another penalty.

[Gareth]

When did stewards start handing out 5 second penalties? More and more, time blurs into one.

 

We end up doing strange arithmetic and as with Lewis today, sometimes you end up second on the road but somewhere else in the official results. Which is rarely as satisfying from a justicial standpoint as being called into the pits to be yelled at by the clerk of the course.

 

As 5 seconds is not going to destroy anyone's race, the penalty allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards. On the other hand, it allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards.

 

Should there be a 10 second, 20 second penalty as well? Should drivers have time deducted for good sportsmanship? (No.)

 

Anyway, perhaps it's worth a discussion.

The effect of the penalty can vary hugely, too.

 

When the final car retired with 2 laps to go, I thought there was a good chance of an SC (any car on the side of the track had produced an SC prior to then), and the 5s penalty would have changed from 2 positions lost to being out of the points.

 

All feels a bit arbitrary, but I guess what else do you do?

[ANF]

When did stewards start handing out 5 second penalties? More and more, time blurs into one.

In 2014. Before that, it was either a drive-through penalty (introduced in 2002) or a 10-second stop-and-go.

[Wander]

The effect of the penalty can vary hugely, too.

When the final car retired with 2 laps to go, I thought there was a good chance of an SC (any car on the side of the track had produced an SC prior to then), and the 5s penalty would have changed from 2 positions lost to being out of the points.

All feels a bit arbitrary, but I guess what else do you do?

Placement penalty. Lose 1, 2, 3, etc places at the end of the race.

Not that that would be particularly preferable except in some rare cases.

[ANF]

I'm often critical of the 5-second penalties that are handed out. I often feel that drivers deserve a harsher penalty (for example for defending their position or even overtaking by cutting a chicane).

However, a drive-through penalty would have been too harsh in the case of Hamilton vs Albon. The 5 seconds were just right.

Somebody suggested a penalty loop. I laughed it off at the time, but I have now come to the conclusion that it would be a very good idea. Create a loop where drivers would lose 5 seconds before they can rejoin the track. Did the driver cause a more serious incident? Take to the penalty loop two or three laps in a row.

With a penalty loop the positions on the road would be the same as on the timing screen, which is very important.

[Jordan44]

I mean I prefer it to when they used to throw drivethrough penalties about for everything.

Edited by Jordan44, 05 July 2020 - 16:51.

[Gareth]

Placement penalty. Lose 1, 2, 3, etc places at the end of the race.

Not that that would be particularly preferable except in some rare cases.

Yeah, reminds me of the Schumacher penalty in Monaco for overtaking on the final SC lap after the green flag.

 

 

It was right that he lost the position he gained, but the rules were sufficiently unclear that I don't think he did anything really bad by giving it a whirl. Should have been a 0.942s (or whatever was needed to drop 1 spot) penalty.

[MikeV1987]

I don't mind them. I think if you ruin someones race then you deserve more than 5 seconds though.

[Clatter]

I don't like the time penalties at all, but if we have to have them then they should be meaningful. 3 or 5 seconds is barely a punishment, and often the driver can make that time up. Make the minimum a drive thru so that it hurts.

[SenorSjon]

We've seen 10s stop&go for pitlane speeding in the past while it now had a 5s penalty.

[Paa]

I don't like them. They are generally given in case of accidents, when the other (innocent) driver's race is ruined.

 

However, with the 5 sec penalty the driver only loses 1-2 positions most of the time. In many cases doesn't even lose one.

Considering that there is a chance that he doesn't even get the 5sec penalty, and if he does he only lose 0-3 position I don't think this penalty has enough retentive force.

 

I think for case like this I would give them a fix 3 position penalty. That would be also more consistent. 

[le chat noir]

In terms of fairness to the offended party, you should drop back behind them (give the place back a la cutting a chicane to overtake or passing under safety car etc). Of course, if the offended party has dropped out of the race, then you go to a 10 second stop go.

Minor incident with minimal repercussion means neither driver is overly penalised, minor incident with major repercussion means both drivers suffer. Major incident and the offender gets to continue the fight but from way back.

#penaltiessolved

[Fastcake]

The dodgy thing about 5 sec penalties is they're disproportionally worse if there's a very late safety car that bunches everyone up and puts you at risk of losing a couple of positions. Whereas if everyone's spread out it may make no difference whatsoever to your finishing position. That feels rather arbitrary.

 

Also, since they're the lightest penalty, they're often given for things that don't feel like they should be penalised. Today half the board thinks Lewis shouldn't have gotten a penalty - and those of us that think it's a penalty have to admit it's the tiniest of mistakes. So there's a good argument for not penalising honest minor mistakes and just letting the flow go. But the problem is that if you do that, then next race a highly popular driver is taken out by a highly unpopular driver in similar circumstances, isn't penalized, and everyone's up in arms about it. Also when F1 goes on its moods of "let's just let them race" then over-aggressive drivers take the opportunity to bully others out of their way unfairly and fully take the advantage of the rules. And we go back to handing out penalties again.

 

So we're kinda stuck with 5 second penalties for these things as the least bad option.

 

Now a lot of people resent these penalties because they remember that way back then in the good old days, they weren't necessary. The problem is they weren't necessary because a) it was unsafe as hell, you could die with the tiniest mistake so apart from 1 or 2 lunatics, drivers gave room to one another. And b) we didn't have TV coverage of every corner, every car onboard - incidents went unpenalised because the stewards didn't have footage of it! And also c) the cars were often ridiculously spread out and there was very little wheel-to-wheel action, the races were so much more boring, I dare you to go watch early 80s races start to finish on F1TV.

 

Since I don't want drivers to die. I don't want to lose the comprehensive TV coverage. And I don't want to lose the nice regular wheel-to-wheel action we have. Again, we're kinda stuck with penalties. And I'm not seeing any great alternatives to 5 sec penalties anyway. Lose 1 position? Awful, imagine losing a race that you won by 50 seconds due to one of these. Lose 1 championship point? Awful, imagine losing a championship to one of these. Etc. Let's just stick to this. 

Your first point is true, but that is the same with a drive-through penalty after a safety car as well. Before a safety car you may have built up a big enough gap to negate the ~20 seconds through the pits; take one within three laps of the safety car coming in and you're guaranteed to be at the back.

 

I don't know what an ideal penalty is, but maybe a range of options might work. Having the option to deduct time at some point during or after the race, or lose time immediately with a drive-through, or to adjust the positions with a position drop all could work. There's certainly a natural justice benefit in penalising a driver three places to drop them behind the person they wronged. Then again, too many options will just lead to people arguing why one driver had a time penalty and another in a similar incident got a position drop, so that isn't great either.   

 

I do agree with you point about the fallacy of letting the driver's race. Lot's of people are obstinately for it, then their favourite drivers gets punted off by a bad piece of driving and suddenly the ban hammers come crashing down.

[AustinF1]

I've always disagreed with time penalties. IMHO position penalties would be much more appropriate.  I mean ... the idea here is to penalize that car by moving it back, right? Just specify a number of positions and be done with it.

Edited by AustinF1, 05 July 2020 - 21:44.

[Myrvold]

We've seen 10s stop&go for pitlane speeding in the past while it now had a 5s penalty.

 

That was idiotic.

I'm sure it's down to how much he speeded by, but still. Absolute black&white situations were there are no maybe. You either have broken the rule or not. And when those rules are solely there due to safety, giving out a 5sec penalty is laughable.

[Marklar]

my main problem with 5 seconds penalties is that it just depends so much on other factors how hard the punishment actually is.

Overtake a car by leaving the track, then pulling a gap -> that's no penalty, but a reward

Have a minor infregment, then a SC -> could drop you from 1st to outside the points easily

Sure, if somebody is 30 seconds up the road on merrit and has a minor infregment I guess it's too harsh to demand position penalties, but there are many situations where I wish this was the case.

[ANF]

I'm often critical of the 5-second penalties that are handed out. I often feel that drivers deserve a harsher penalty (for example for defending their position or even overtaking by cutting a chicane).

However, a drive-through penalty would have been too harsh in the case of Hamilton vs Albon. The 5 seconds were just right.

Somebody suggested a penalty loop. I laughed it off at the time, but I have now come to the conclusion that it would be a very good idea. Create a loop where drivers would lose 5 seconds before they can rejoin the track. Did the driver cause a more serious incident? Take to the penalty loop two or three laps in a row.

With a penalty loop the positions on the road would be the same as on the timing screen, which is very important.

I just learned that MotoGP introduced a Long Lap Penalty last year – a penalty that is served on "a route ... at a safe point around the track, (usually an asphalt runoff area outside of a turn), which is some seconds slower than the normal racing line" – so what is F1 waiting for? https://www.motogp.c...troduced/284714

[pdac]

I just learned that MotoGP introduced a Long Lap Penalty last year – a penalty that is served on "a route ... at a safe point around the track, (usually an asphalt runoff area outside of a turn), which is some seconds slower than the normal racing line" – so what is F1 waiting for? https://www.motogp.c...troduced/284714

 

Isn't that the same as the drive-through penalty that they used to use.

 

I still prefer to see a "lose a place" penalty, where you have to let the car behind pass you (regardless of how far back they are)

[realracer200]

5 seconds is stupid drive-through is much better, also there way too many penalties it's ridiculous.

[Squeed]

When did stewards start handing out 5 second penalties? More and more, time blurs into one.

 

We end up doing strange arithmetic and as with Lewis today, sometimes you end up second on the road but somewhere else in the official results. Which is rarely as satisfying from a justicial standpoint as being called into the pits to be yelled at by the clerk of the course.

 

As 5 seconds is not going to destroy anyone's race, the penalty allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards. On the other hand, it allows lesser infractions to be punished by the stewards.

 

Should there be a 10 second, 20 second penalty as well? Should drivers have time deducted for good sportsmanship? (No.)

 

Anyway, perhaps it's worth a discussion.

The problem with time penalties, IMO, is that the effect of the penalty on the final standings is often too large, and often not large enough.  

 

For example, if you take a 5 second penalty for wrecking a guy while battling for the lead, and the field is 10 seconds behind, then it’s no penalty at all.  You still get rewarded for dirty driving.

 

But then you can also have a racing incident where it’s not clearly a breach of any rules, but the stewards believe there’s enough there to cast blame nonetheless, and you end up losing 2-3 spots in the finishing order because the field is tight.  

 

To me, it would be more meaningful if time penalties were assessed relative to the field such that it’s equivalent to losing one spot on track according to the delta between to offender and the car immediately behind them (adjusted for pit stops if there are some cars that haven’t pitted yet).

 

For a car in the lead, that would make more sense for situation like the one between Vettel and Hamilton in Canada 2018.

 

A 1-2 second penalty for Vettel would have made the end of that race immensely more exciting vs. a penalty that allowed Hamilton to back off and just cruise well clear of Vettel’s dirty air. 

Edited by Squeed, 14 August 2020 - 02:23.

[ATM]

For me, a 5-second penalty was a good thing. Beforehand, we had 10-second and 15-second penalties and stop-and-go, which ruined a driver’s race for sure. The problem is not that the 5 second penalty is too soft, but that it tends to be used in almost every offence, regardless of its gravity. We still have harsher penalties in the rule book, but nobody dishes them out anymore, not even in the case of serious offences.
With a better stewarding and more consistent punishment, I don’t think we would have this issue.

[Sterzo]

The underlying problem is the concept of penalising mistakes. That's what most of these five second penalties are for. Totally pointless. If penalties were imposed only for a clear decision by a driver to break a rule, e.g. by moving late under braking, then a heavier penalty should be applied, minimum a stop-go. The added benefit woud be that the race order is as it appears on the track.

[kralizec]

I just learned that MotoGP introduced a Long Lap Penalty last year – a penalty that is served on "a route ... at a safe point around the track, (usually an asphalt runoff area outside of a turn), which is some seconds slower than the normal racing line" – so what is F1 waiting for? https://www.motogp.c...troduced/284714

One of the advantages of the long lap is that it happens on the spot. Imagine this not so unusual case: a driver is stuck behind a much slower driver after a botched pit stop, losing a ton of time and ruining his strategy.

 

Then he decides to overtake by going off-track, and gets a 5s. penalty for that, but now he has free air, and can build a huge gap, so all in all it's worth for him. If he had to do something like a "long lap", he'd have to do it in the next 1-2 laps, and while he would probably still lose these 5s. he would most importantly also lose track position (perhaps even more than one), so he wouldn't be able to benefit from the infraction.

 

Worst case (if the driver was so fast that he could build up the gap in 3 laps), it won't be any worse than applying the penalty after the race, with the added benefit that the positions will be "definitive".

 

Now, for this to work the stewards need to hand out penalties reasonably soon...

[pdac]

The underlying problem is the concept of penalising mistakes. That's what most of these five second penalties are for. Totally pointless. If penalties were imposed only for a clear decision by a driver to break a rule, e.g. by moving late under braking, then a heavier penalty should be applied, minimum a stop-go. The added benefit woud be that the race order is as it appears on the track.

 

The problem is that the cars are not racing in isolation.They are all sharing the same track and if you make a mistake, it can affect the other cars around you. So on the face of it, you get a penalty for what might be an honest mistake, but in reality it is (or should be) more about redressing the problems you have caused for others by your mistake. That's why it's so tricky to apply the correct penalty.

 

For me, I prefer to punish innocent mistakes rather than have drivers ruin others races and not have their own race unduly affected.

[shure]

Generally I'm opposed to them because they can end up being completely arbitrary and have a completely different effect depending on what car you're driving.  I think the penalties should be equipment-independent, although saying that I don't have a realistic alternative to mind.  Maybe an x-place position drop at the end of the race, same as a grid drop?  Haven't thought it through so possibly not

 

But if you're steaming away at the front 5s will have a different effect than if you're labouring in the middle of the pack.  And it's also circuit-dependent.  I don't think it's an effective punishment

[pdac]

Generally I'm opposed to them because they can end up being completely arbitrary and have a completely different effect depending on what car you're driving.  I think the penalties should be equipment-independent, although saying that I don't have a realistic alternative to mind.  Maybe an x-place position drop at the end of the race, same as a grid drop?  Haven't thought it through so possibly not

 

But if you're steaming away at the front 5s will have a different effect than if you're labouring in the middle of the pack.  And it's also circuit-dependent.  I don't think it's an effective punishment

 

I will restate my feeling that, in a lot of situations, a "drop a place" penalty seems to me to be a good compromise. By that, I mean the offending car has to slow enough to let the car behind pass (regardless of how far behind the next car is).

 

Once the car has passed (maybe allowing 1 or two more turns), then the offending car is free to try to take the place back. Of course, the idea of "drop 2 places" or "drop 3 places", etc. should not be discounted. The Stewards would also have alternative penalties available, should "drop a place" seem too severe for the offence. But the point is that the penalty relates directly to the race situation and has to be served immediately.

[robefc]

I think 5 sec penalties are great compared to the previous option of no penalty or draconian drive through.

Lewis v Albon in Austria is a good example where it could be argued either racing incident or slightly more Lewis’s fault. I don’t have too much of an issue with a 5 sec penalty for something like that whereas if he’d got a drive through I would have been going bananas.

Wish it was around (and 10 sec) in 2008...

[MikeTekRacing]

I think 5 sec against Magnussen last week was too little. He was an idiot there

[absinthedude]

I am sure I recall time penalties used to be applied in the 80s for sure. Then when refuelling came in for 1994 there was the option of the "5 second stop and go" penalty added to the list of punishments. When refuelling was taken away again, time penalties became more common. I am unsure if there was a period of time when they weren't in the list of punishments.

 

They're not always ideal but they are a good way of seeing that an infringement of the regulations is dealt with during a race. A mandatory run through the pits will usually cost around 20 seconds which could totally ruin a driver's race whereas the 5s or 10s penalty might cost them a place or two in most circumstances.