F1 track limits, explained

Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images

If you watched Formula 1 at any point this weekend, you might be wondering about track limits

Limits being exceeded was something of a theme this past weekend.

Certainly you have the ongoing transition at Twitter. Elon Musk outlined some changes to the social media website on Saturday, aimed at combating bots on Twitter. As a result users, including those subscribed to Twitter Blue, kept encountering “rate limit exceeded” errors, rending the website almost unusable for extended periods of time.

However, here we are focused on the Austrian Grand Prix. If you watched any of the Formula 1 action — whether qualifying on Friday, the F1 Sprint Saturday, the Grand Prix itself, or all of the above — you likely heard the phrase “track limits exceeded.”

During qualifying alone, 47 laps were deleted due to “exceeding track limits,” resulting in a shaken-up field and lots of angry drivers, teams, and fans. Then in the Grand Prix itself a number of drivers were hit with penalties for exceeding track limits, and it even led to a post-race protest from Aston Martin, inquiring whether all the appropriate penalties were levied.

That protest was upheld, and even more drivers were hit with penalties hours after the race concluded. An additional 12 penalties were handed out to 8 drivers, and race officials noted that they still were unable to review all 1,200 potential incidents of exceeding track limits.

So we thought it worth taking a moment to outline what that means, as well as the penalty process.

Simply put, “track limits” refers to the white lines along the edges of an F1 track. They define the edges of the circuit, acting as the boundaries for the “field of play,” as it were. They also play a key safety role, limiting how drivers can attack the circuit.

As long as drivers maintain contact with the white lines, even if slightly, they are in compliance. But if all four tyres cross the white lines to the outside, they are found to be in violation of Article 33.3 of the Sporting Regulations, which reads as follows:

Drivers must make every reasonable effort to use the track at all times and may not leave the track without a justifiable reason.

Drivers will be judged to have left the track if no part of the car remains in contact with it and, for the avoidance of doubt, any white lines defining the track edges are considered to be part of the track but the kerbs are not.

Should a car leave the track the driver may re-join, however, this may only be done when it is safe to do so and without gaining any lasting advantage. At the absolute discretion of the Race Director a driver may be given the opportunity to give back the whole of any advantage he gained by leaving the track.

So that is the rule, now let’s talk about the penalties.

Because here is where it gets even trickier.

During practices and qualifying, things are relatively straightforward. If a driver is found to have exceeded track limits, their time for that lap is deleted. In addition, if a driver is found to have exceeded track limits in the final corner of one lap, their time for the next lap may be deleted if race stewards determine that the driver gained an advantage for the subsequent lap.

That leads to results like Friday, where Sergio Pérez had three lap times deleted during Q2 for exceeding track limits. Pérez failed to post a lap time as a consequence, preventing him from advancing to Q3.

Drivers get a bit of reprieve during a race, but not much. While practices and qualifying see no warnings handed out to drivers, during a race receive two warnings for violations. The third such violation results in a black-and-white flag, which is the final warning. That tells the driver that any additional violation will result in a penalty.

As for what the penalties are, we saw them on Sunday. The first penalty is a five-second violation, which is served either at the driver’s next pit stop, or if no additional pit stops are made, gets added to the driver’s time in the race.

Any subsequent penalty will see ten seconds handed down, as was the case with Yuki Tsunoda in the Austrian Grand Prix.

Now, why was this such an issue in the Austrian Grand Prix? It has to do with the configuration of the circuit. Red Bull Ring has a number of long straights followed by hard, angled turns, such as Turn 1 and Turn 3.

There is also the setup of Turn 10, which is a right-handed turn coming after a downhill, which puts additional gravity stress on the cars, and the drivers. During the 47 violations during Friday’s qualifying session, 33 of them came at Turn 10.

As you might expect, drivers were frustrated by these decisions throughout the weekend. Most notably was Lewis Hamilton, who was one of the drivers first hit with a penalty during the Grand Prix. During the rest of the race Hamilton acted as a steward out on the track, continually pointing out violations by other drivers to his team over the radio.

But he was not alone, as drivers such as Lando Norris — who was drawing attention to Hamilton’s driving in the early stages of the Austrian Grand Prix — were doing the same.

“Yeah, I mean, it is, I think one of the worst tracks for it, with the track limits. Also, especially towards the end, the tyres are getting really hot so they’re not as agile anymore as well compared to the beginning of the lap,” said Max Verstappen after qualifying on Friday.

“But it’s super hard to judge around here. You have all the compressions as well, where if you hit it slightly wrong, the car immediately drops away from you or understeers and then it’s super easy to go over the white line. And I think today it looked very silly. It almost looked like we were amateurs out there, the amount of lap times that were getting deleted,” added Verstappen. “And also, some of them were so marginal, where even we spoke about it in the briefing before that, when it’s very marginal, it’s impossible to judge if it’s out or in, and they were still getting deleted. So I don’t think it was a good look today.”

“This track is particularly tricky, especially Turn 10, because the nature of the corner is that the car is getting lighter in the middle of the corner because there’s this drop in the track and then however the car is positioned there it has a big influence on the exit and from where we are, so low in the car, we cannot see anything,” said Charles Leclerc after qualifying on Friday. “I think the helmet cam is very representative of what we are seeing, and we are not seeing at all the white lines, so yeah, hopefully in the future in tracks like this we can have a bit more margin and that they understand that from the car it is just impossible to judge.”

Pérez, who finished third in the Grand Prix despite failing to advance to Q3 on Friday due to lap times being deleted for exceeding track limits, did his best to bit his tongue after the race.

“Yeah, it’s really nice to get back to the podium, especially at home, such a special weekend for the team and on our weekend that started overall really bad with… I don’t know how to say it, I don’t want to use a bad word… but for the track limits, I think everyone got hit by it at some point,” said the Red Bull driver in the post-race press conferences. “Hopefully next year when we come back, it’s something that it can be fixed.”

As for what could be done, it seems FIA is already making some requests of Red Bull Ring.

In an effort to give drivers more of a reason to stay within track limits, gravel could be added around certain areas of the track. That would force drivers to stay clear inside the lines, for fear of running into the gravel, and losing valuable time, or even worse, damaging the floors of their cars.

In addition, a more obvious physical deterrent would even aid the drivers in identifying the limits of the track. As Leclerc noted on Friday, sometimes the drivers simply cannot see exactly where the limits are.

“The problem is it’s very difficult for the drivers because they can’t see the white line from the car so you’re just purely doing it on feel and the circuit invites you to go there,” said Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner, speaking before the post-race penalties were announced. “So I think that it’s something that needs to be looked at for next year to perhaps add more of a deterrent for the drivers to be drawn onto that part of the circuit.”

According to this report from RaceFans, the FIA has requested that Red Bull Ring install a gravel trap at Turn 10, a request the FIA has made before. “In order to address the issue for future events we will renew our recommendation to the circuit to add a gravel trap at the exit of turns nine and 10,” said a spokesperson from FIA to RaceFans. “We note that while this is not a straightforward solution in relation to other series that race here, it has proved to be very effective at other corners and circuits with similar issues.”

Until then, however, expect to hear “track limits exceeded” a few more times.