There has been widespread support across the F1 paddock for the introduction of certain penalties to drivers that trigger yellow or red flags during qualifying, in a bid to clamp down on suspicious incidents towards the end of qualifying sessions that jeopardise other drivers’ flying laps.  

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This conversation has been triggered by controversial scenes in Baku last weekend, at the end of Q1. Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll suffered a heavy crash going into turn 1. This drew out the red flags- and all the cars on the track were forced to return to the pits, thus leaving a situation where cars were queueing up in the pit lane for the restart, hoping to quickly get back to action and mark a competitive time in the short window of time left in Q1, in order to qualify for Q2. 

In that situation, when the session finally resumed and when the cars were sprinting to get over the line and get one last chance to score a competitive time, Fernando Alonso, who was already in the safe zone in Q1 but close to the drop at that time, went outside the track and down the escape road for no apparent reason. This brought out yellow flags and forced drivers behind him who were trying to usurp his position to slow down, thus sabotaging their flying laps, and ensuring Alonso dragged his Alpine into Q2 in highly controversial circumstances. 

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In qualifying, cars 16-20 are eliminated at the end of Q1, and 11-15 at the end of Q2, before the fastest 10 cars shoot out to determine the final grid for the race in Q3.

Alex Albon, vying for a spot in Q2 and behind Alonso when this happened, failed to make it to Q2, and made it clear on team radio that he felt Alonso had done this deliberately. 

Drivers have now come out in support of any potential penalties that might be awarded for similar incidents in the future. However, they were also quick to address the grey area in which these situations often play out.

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When asked about the FIA potentially punishing such errant situations in qualifying, Alonso, perhaps ironically, said that he would support the idea.

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “There’s going to be always difficulties, like now in the Baku race, if you crash in one corner or if you park – there was one Haas parked in Turn 15.

“If you park there or you park 10 metres after that, maybe you have a safety car deployment, depending on if you take a good position or not. And then we will penalise the Haas driver because he chose the wrong thing?

“So we need to be careful on how we enter and how we do those things. But yeah, I agree. Especially qualifying, it should be different.

“We are dealing with problems of slow laps, minimum time to respect, traffic in the last corner, tows, no tows. So I think we should be clever and think in another format in qualifying.”

McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo also agreed that this would be worth looking into further. “It’s tough because every incident will probably be a little bit different,” said the Australian. “But unless you’ve fricking totaled your car, if it’s just like a little lock-up or an escape road or something, then I feel like if you’ve caused something, then maybe we should look into being penalised or something for it. Maybe a deleted time could be a good way of looking at it.”

Asked about Alonso’s claim of innocence after the Q1 incident in Baku, Ricciardo laughed: “His conviction is impressive! I mean that’s the experience. That’s why I love him. But I mean, obviously Alex spoke about it yesterday.

“We all know, we’re all kind of playing tricks, and I know Lewis tried to not give us the DRS I think, with Lando. I mean, that’s a bit of just tactics and strategy. But then there’s kind of the other way of obviously what Fernando did. Maybe deleted laps could be the way forward, we’ll see.”

Lando Norris is largely in sync with his McLaren teammate, as is Alpine’s Esteban Ocon- who backs this idea wholeheartedly. “I think so, because in Monaco and Baku I’ve been suffering for that in qualifying,” he said. “And, yeah, probably people would take more care if they get penalised, and it would be less easy to take a risk and just go down the escape road. I would definitely be in favour of changing that for the street circuits.”