Austrian GP dividing lines: F1 track limits, team orders & Verstappen vs the rest

The Austrian Grand Prix official results look quite different to the order across the line thanks to an unprecedented number of track limit penalties. But thankfully they didn’t alter the podium places, with Max Verstappen reeling off his seventh victory from nine races and going ahead of Ayrton Senna’s career tally into the bargain. He was challenged through the first few corners by Charles Leclerc but was over 24sec ahead of the Ferrari three laps from the end, enough to give him the luxury of pitting for a new set of soft tyres with which to take the fastest lap and the extra point which goes with it.

Sergio Perez’s multiple track limits infringements in qualifying on the Friday had left him starting 15th but his underlying pace was good and he was able to deliver a sparkling recovery drive to third, his late attack on Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari particularly entertaining, though probably more difficult than it should have been given that he consistently failed to use the DRS detection point to his advantage at Turn 3. He had to make the pass the hard way instead.

Sainz was very disappointed to be only fourth across the line, feeling he had better pace than Leclerc in the first stint and that he should not have been brought in on the same lap as Leclerc under an early VSC. Being stacked behind the other Ferrari lost him around 7sec and several positions. Making them back up used up tyre reserves which could otherwise have been used more productively. He was even more disappointed when the accumulated penalties for track infringements dropped him down to sixth in the official results, behind Lando Norris’s McLaren and Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin.

A total of 20 track limit penalties were applied (12 in the race, eight post-race), more than 80% of them from drivers running wide at the fast final turn where the white line denoting the track extremities is impossible to see from the cockpits. This has long been the case here, but the difference was that the FIA now has more personnel available to monitor and report – enough to overwhelm race control’s ability to keep up in real time. A better solution needs to be found. There used to be a similar problem at Monza’s Lesmo 2 before the FIA got the organisers to move the gravel trap closer to the edge of the kerb. That instantly switched the problem off. That was recommended last year for this track but the organisers are reluctant because the track also hosts MotoGP and for the bikers gravel traps are considered a lethal hazard.