🇦🇹 F1'22 R11: The limit does (not) exist

 “The longer you stay, the more you pay. My white lines go a long way”

Never thought that the prophet Grandmaster Flash would be the intro to a Formula 1 blog, but it’s a bit awkward to randomly shout FREEBASE in public, so I’m putting it here, with the track limits having all the main character energy in the picturesque Austrian mountains.

After Silverstone, the halo was the centre of attention, shutting up any lingering arguments against its use. And before Zhou Guanyu had his trip to the upside down, Roy Nissany had his life saved by the external protection. Formula 2 is not just an interesting racing series by its own merit, but also as a preview of what to watch for during the Grand Prix.

READ: The long road to the top

In the junior series, Richard Verschoor took a brilliant tactical gamble, starting on slicks on a rapidly-drying track and eventually taking the win… or so he thought. He lost the win because he was unable to provide a fuel sample, so it fell to second-placed Jehan Daruvala… or so he thought.

Another infraction - this time allegedly by Prema for drying his grid spot - meant that the third car was juuuuust right and Logan Sargeant took the 25 points.

Those two penalties aside, it was a mess to work out the top 10 after the race, with a variety of track limit penalties being given for going outside the white lines during the race. And by a variety, I mean 37 different times an F2 driver was pinged with a laptime deletion for going off the track. It was a similar story in the sprint race where this video is from. You can see that they’re pretty subtle, but still over.

And that carried through to the Grand Prix, with over 40 deleted lap times in Sunday’s race. Here they are in full:

There isn’t a huge amount that can be done here either. The FIA can’t stick up a giant wall for safety reasons at Turns 1, 9 or 10, and some of the drivers did not believe they had violated the rules either, disagreeing vocally with the stewards’ decisions.

The short track in Austria also has oceans of run-off, the marked opposite to tracks like Monaco, where if you go over the track limits, that’s probably the end of your afternoon. 

As for the championship, the front-runners didn’t lose time from white line infractions, with Pierre Gasly, Sebastian Vettel, Zhou Guanyu and Lando Norris all losing five seconds. This cost Norris sixth place and dropped him a place, with Mick Schumacher benefitting, getting a second consecutive points finish, and being rewarded after his stellar, but ultimately fruitless efforts in the sprint. He seems to have hit his stride, and there’s a newfound confidence in his driving. He looked like he belonged against Hamilton, and yes, he was being towed along by his teammate in the three DRS zones, but he was placing his car beautifully. 

Charles Leclerc took a much-needed win and moved into second in the Drivers’ Championship. Sergio Perez dropped to third and ultimately, Max Verstappen is now 38 points clear. The battles to watch are in the Constructors’ Championship. Schumacher and Magnussen are chasing down the Alfa Romeos. They endured a second scoreless weekend, but the battle for fourth is really worth your attention.

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Alpine are McLaren are tied on 81 points, with a quarter of those points for McLaren coming from Imola, masking an inconsistent season so far - the track limits penalty would keep McLaren in fourth for now, but there’s a more worrying trend.

 Alpine have been more consistent, and arguably unlucky on a couple of occasions this season so far, whereas Daniel Ricciardo has had a couple of good races when he needed them, but his ninth place was only his third points finish this season (plus the Imola sprint). Lando Norris has scored 75%+ of the team's points to Ocon's 64%.  That doesn’t seem so bad, except…

It’s a rare week off for the drivers in July, before the eye test at Paul Ricard being the third race of the month. A fiery failure for Carlos Sainz meant that he was unable to build on the momentum his first F1 win bought him at Silverstone. It also provided the backdrop for one of the images of the season, if not one that sums up his season so far, taking us from white lines to smoke.

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