ROUND 20: 🇲🇽 Mexico
FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO DE LA CIUDAD DE MÉXICO 2024
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
- First Grand Prix: 1963
- Number of laps: 71
- Circuit Length: 4.304 km
- Race Distance: 305.354 km
- Lap record: 1:17.774 Valtteri Bottas (2021)
- 2023 winner: Max Verstappen
A penalty was justified but 20 seconds was insanely excessive, and completely out of contrast to similar incidents and penalties in previous races, completely took the most interesting battle out of the race.
Rest of the race was pretty boring. Very few overtakes that actually mattered. The one battle that could’ve been interesting ended up not happening due to Leclerc almost going into the wall.
He got a serious warning last week, but he did not learn from it. This will cost him badly, next year Norris will drive nr 1. Maybe that will be a lesson for him.
The minimum penalty for that type of incident is 10 seconds. The T8 incident is unquestionably a penalty. The T4 incident was separate and if the FIA also penalizes that, it has to be 20 seconds total.
The FIA says the outcome of the incident doesn’t influence the penalty, so by similar logic you’d think subsequent incidents would also not affect the penalty.
Agree with you, in my opinion Verstappen deserved that 20 seconds penalty (10+10). Anyway the regulation should be reviewed, the rule of the apex a bit absurd nowadays.