30/07/2022
NEWS STORY
Max Verstappen has accused FIA officials of treating he and his fellow F1 drivers like "amateurs" in terms of track limits.
The Dutchman's attack on officials - which isn't his first - followed a curious incident in qualifying when, having had his time deleted for exceeding the track limits at Turn 5 in Q2, teammate Sergio Perez had the time reinstated after officials were pressed into looking at the incident again.
"Last night, they started talking about Turn 13, the exit, the dotted line was the track edge," said the world champion. "There was a kerb and a white line next to it, which for me personally is the track edge.
"We have so many silly little things which make it also more difficult for them to police," he continued. "I don't know, as drivers, we always want to help and give our advice, but nothing was heard and for me, that's extremely frustrating.
"I don't want to fight with them," he insisted, "I want to just advise them, but it seems like they don't really care. They actually, for my feeling, look at us a bit like we are amateurs. I don't think that's correct.
"I think we can do ourselves a favour and make it a lot easier by adding a bit of gravel on the exits or whatever," he added. "Austria for example, why do we need track limits in Turn 4 and Turn 6? There's naturally gravel, and even if you go out by this much, you will penalise yourself if you go wide, or even if you go wide, you will damage your floor anyway. Your car is going slower.
"They make it super hard for themselves. Of course people say yeah, just stay within the white line, but that's easier said than done. But then again, what I said about this dotted line as well, it's just so confusing everything."
"I had to use a second set of tyres in Q2 because my first lap got deleted for track limits," added teammate, Perez, "then I got my time back but this already impacted our session.
"It was a bit of a strange situation," he admitted. "When I got going again Kevin (Magnussen) got in my way at turn 2, so I lost a few tenths as I had to go very big through the corner and couldn’t recover for the rest of the lap.
"We have to review it and see how we can move better forward, to have some more consistency," added the Mexican.
"It's very frustrating," agreed Magnussen, "and I don't know why they're doing it like this. I don't see who's benefitting."
Meanwhile, Valtteri Bottas was impressed that officials admitted their mistake in the case of Perez.
I'm sure they are pretty busy during the session, policing the track limits," said the Alfa Romeo's driver. "It's not ideal, but at least they double checked, which is good.
"I think that should be definitely the case, that if you can prove that you've been within the limits, you can keep the lap."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.