With no less than nine drivers taking various penalties on the Italian Grand Prix grid, figuring out who would start where was always going to present some complications. Even the drivers themselves were confused. While Fernando Alonso was telling a group of journalists with the media pen that he was expecting “P7” to start, Max Verstappen was at the FIA press conference insisting that it was the same position where he would line up. Meanwhile, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly took to social media to ask their followers where they would start. “I have no idea,” admitted the Alpine driver. The process by which F1 grids are decided when multiple penalties are involved has changed several times in recent years. This is often because the penalties themselves have changed. In today’s case, penalties of varying degrees were imposed on five drivers. These included combinations of both the regular ‘grid drops’ and the ‘starting at the back of the grid’ penalty which was introduced in 2018 to simplify the system. The drivers’ penalties were as follows: When it comes to applying their penalties, the first thing to understand is that the “start at the back of the grid” penalty takes priority. Even a driver with a 100-place penalty will line up ahead of a driver ordered to start from the back. Furthermore, any additional penalties beyond that count for nothing, so it makes no difference that Sainz was twice penalized for ‘starting at the back of the grid’, nor that Tsunoda had additional falls on top of him. Advertisement | Become a RaceFans supporter and click ad-free According to F1 sporting regulations, grid drops are applied before any “start at the back of the grid penalties”. Taking into account their qualifying positions, the six drivers who only had grid crashes were to be relegated to the following positions:
Verstappen: Qualified second, dropped to seventh Perez: Qualified fourth, dropped to 14th Ocon: Qualified 11th, dropped to 16th Bottas: Qualified 12th, dropped to 27th Magnussen: Qualified 19th, dropped to 34th Schumacher: Qualified 20th, dropped to 35th
Of course, that left the final three drivers with impossible starting positions on a 20-car grid. Initially they would move up to the last positions. However, there were three drivers with ‘starting at the back of the grid’ penalties. These were always to occupy the last three positions on the grid, ranked in the order in which they qualified, according to the rules. As a result, their positions are: PositionDriver18Carlos Sainz Jnr19Lewis Hamilton20Yuki Tsunoda Advertisement | Become a RaceFans supporter and click ad-free Almost all the other drivers with grid drops had to move up the order because of this. There were so many drivers at the back of the grid with penalties that he overturned many of their penalties. The next five positions on the grid were therefore: PositionDriver13Sergio Perez14Esteban Ocon15Valtteri Bottas16Kevin Magnussen17Mick Schumacher Alonso will start one position higher than expected. The drivers’ penalties were therefore reduced: Perez dropped back nine places instead of 10, Ocon three instead of five until the Haas pair who, instead of dropping 15 places each, gained three. The only driver to service his complete drop on the grid was Verstappen, dropping from second to seventh. According to recent practice, he does not gain back places from drivers moving further back on the grid because there are enough unpenalized drivers to move in front of him. So when Sainz and Hamilton moved to the back of the grid, Verstappen stayed where he was. Pierre Gasly benefited and so did Alonso – upsetting his expectation that he would start seventh: PositionDriver1Charles Leclerc2George Russell3Lando Norris4Daniel Ricciardo5Pierre Gasly6Fernando Alonso7Max Verstappen8Nyck de Vries9Zhou Guanyu10Nicholas Latifi11Sebastian Vettel12Lance Stroll Several years ago, the FIA implemented different penalties like these. Each penalty was applied in turn and the grid was rearranged each time. This meant that in cases where multiple drivers received penalties they were more likely to cancel each other out. However, current practice is to ensure that drivers serve their full sentences where possible. A clear precedent can be seen at last year’s Qatar Grand Prix, where Verstappen’s situation was the same: he qualified second, had a five-place penalty and started seventh, despite a penalty dropping another driver from third to sixth, no penalty it did not affect the others. This may explain why Verstappen felt so confident about claiming what would have been his starting position. “It’s P7, unless I’m an idiot, I think it’s P7. You have to read the rules.” He was certainly right – at least assuming no more penalties are announced before tomorrow’s game. Advertisement | Become a RaceFans supporter and click ad-free
Italian Grand Prix 2022
Browse all articles on the 2022 Italian Grand Prix
