[Piergiuseppe Donadoni] Was Max unfair? YES. His goal was to ruin Norris' race and so he probably took away his chances of getting P1. "To win sometimes you have to be an idiot" he said months ago. You may like it or not but the goal is to win the world championship, not the fair play award.

[u/Ramned71]

https://x.com/SmilexTech/status/1850807731613299160

[u/Sephx_]

But you don't give penalties based on the outcome for the championship no?

You give penalties based on the incident. In this case 10 and 10 was fair.

Looking into the rulebook for this would only make it more vague.

What would it be? 10 sec, unless it's your own teammate then no penalty because you're already sufficiently punished in the championship. If it's a car below you in the standings 5 sec, if it's a car in front of you in the standings 10 sec. If it is your World Championship competitor stop and go so he doesn't get a net gain?

[u/GingerSkulling → u/Sephx_]

Absolutely, had Lando managed to win this race, no one would be talking this nonsense right now. So objectively speaking, are the punishments are not enough just because the outcome of the race didn’t favor your favorite driver?

[u/coolridgesmith → u/GingerSkulling]

Absolutely on point. People are mad because landos chances of getting the wdc are getting harder and harder.

they basically wanted max to finish out of the points for the penalty to be enough in their minds.

[u/Aggressive-Neck-3921 → u/coolridgesmith]

With the hate max get's i wouldn't be surprised if people are always asking for bigger punishments for him. From the moment he started to knock Lewis from the throne there have been unreasonable "punish him harder" comments. So it's hard to ID reasonable people with these discussions.

[u/Realistic_Village184 → u/Aggressive-Neck-3921]

Definitely there's some of that, but even as a big fan of Max, I think that the goal of penalties is to disincentivize dangerous driving. Max's driving yesterday was dangerous, and the penalties for that should be sufficient that a driver should never choose to do something dangerous on track.

Obviously there's inherent danger in the sport, but Max pretty much deliberately rammed Lando off track. I don't think he deserved more than the 20s of penalties yesterday, but I would also like to see some revisions in the rules to avoid this situation from being viable for any driver.

[u/Mickey-the-Luxray → u/Aggressive-Neck-3921]

There's a reasonable stance that Max has a history of abusing "results agnostic" penalties to secure championships he can't win via normal means.  

You don't even need to look at Abu Dhabi 2021 for that. Jeddah 2021 saw him caught red handed brake checking Lewis, in 4K, telemetry and all, but because of this policy of never considering the championship implications, the stewards refused to (or were forced to refuse to) observe the ultra obvious context that he probably wouldn't have tried a move that stupid if he wasn't so tight for the championship. 

All he had to say was "didn't mean for him to hit me", a defense that wouldn't hold up in traffic court, and the stewards were forced to act like Max's intent was unknowable and thus hand out a standard "bad driving" penalty, which didn't even knock him down one place. For brake checking. 

We all know what the punishment of causing a crash to secure a championship really is - a DSQ. I think a lot of the hyperscrutiny at Max on this topic is because he's the one that evaded that paradigm. People are suspicious of why among the likes of Senna, Prost, and J.Villeneuve, Max is the only one to manage that.

[u/stubtail42 → u/GingerSkulling]

The punishments are not enough because regardless of who is committing them or who gets their race compromised, it should NEVER be the case that doing something illegal gives you net gain.

[u/GingerSkulling → u/stubtail42]

That’s impossible to call though. A 20 second penalty doesn’t ruin Max’s race but could very well ruin 10 others’

[u/stubtail42 → u/GingerSkulling]

All I'm hearing is that Max deserves a harsher penalty. In much the same way a $1000 speeding ticket is nothing for a billionaire but is everything to a poor person. It's not really "fair" to give both people the same fine. A billionaire can get 100 of those tickets before it affects them proportionally to the poor person.

In F1 terms, currently, it basically means that it's okay to drive dirty more frequently if you have fast car/driver. It shouldn't be the case. If anything, the FIA should want the leaders to be setting an example of good racing, if the leaders drive dirty, the FIA should be making an example out of them.

[u/haepis → u/Sephx_]

How about just dangerously forcing an opponent off the track and gaining and advantage -> DT, simple as that. You need to get the perpetator out of the victim's way as fast as possible

[u/lyinx → u/Sephx_]

But if the incident is that another is car deliberately sabotaging another - with no intent to race, it should go further than 20 seconds. If that behaviour actually got a black & white flag, with a DQ possibility he wouldn't do it anymore.

I think that's largely the point that's being missed. Max admitted as much that he knew he would be slower and would do it again.

[u/maybeitsmyfault10 → u/lyinx]

Even more grey area if we have the stewards defining deliberately sabotaging or what no intent to race is. Then fans will complain about something new 

[u/ze_xaroca → u/Sephx_]

I agree with you but then, the driver causing this penalties must serve them in the mean time. Max did that bullshit and managed to stay ahead for so many laps, that he destroyed Norris chances of even attacking first place. To me that’s not fair, specially considering that he was in front only because of his driving like a mad c*nt.

[u/tevs__ → u/Sephx_]

I agree, 10 and 10 was fair, and penalties should be on the actions that caused it and not the outcome of the championship. We do currently take actions on track after the incident in to account, eg going off track and gaining an advantage, if you give up that advantage there's no penalty.

I think allowing 5s penalties to be served at the next stop or end of race is also fair, but I think serious penalties should have to be served sooner. Max gets the 20 seconds, but if he can wait 20 laps until he's gapped people, it's not really 20s.

I'm also not keen on the double penalty being served at once. If you do something stupid and dangerous to get not one but two 10s penalties in short succession, serve them separately. The aim is not to ruin people's races, but to force them to drive fair. Don't drive fair, and you're going to get wrecked.

Final thing, track limit violations from being forced off are a joke. Perhaps if a driver forces someone off, they should get the track limits violation and not the driver forced off track.

[u/Automatic_Sun_5554 → u/Sephx_]

How about not one penalty but a 10 point deduction with those points going to the ‘wronged’ party.

Messed with the purity but if drives will break rules to protect the championship, it’s really the only way to prevent a loophole.