Lando Norris admitted he went outside track limits during the United States Grand Prix because he noticed Max Verstappen got away with a similar infringement at the previous race.
The McLaren driver, who had both his lap times deleted for track limits infringements in Qatar, said Verstappen had also committed a violation when he took pole position in the same session, but avoided a penalty. The FIA was accused of overlooking other track limits violations during the following round in Austin last week.
Norris said “apparently it’s not clear enough” and those violations were “the same as Verstappen going off in Q3 in Qatar in turn seven or eight, I think it was.”
He said the FIA did not penalise Verstappen as they did not consider the footage from his onboard camera to be sufficient evidence that he had put all four of his car’s wheels beyond the edge of the track.
“For anyone who has any decent idea it’s so clearly off the track,” said Norris. “But the ruling is it has to be clear enough for the FIA and it needs to be basically clear from an actual view that both tyres are off, and an onboard camera doesn’t prove anything…
“If the rear wheel might potentially be in, then you can’t classify it as being out. Which is their point.”
Closer monitoring of corners is needed to prevent similar violations in the future, said Norris. “They have to put in basically more cameras that are on the outside so you can see the white line, you can see where the car is, kind of thing.
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“Or you have a camera which looks down the line so you’re able to see when all the tyres go over. That’s pretty difficult to have on every corner and every angle and all of these things.”
Aware the FIA couldn’t monitor track limits at every corner, Norris used that information to his advantage at the Circuit of the Americas, where drivers often went unpunished for cutting the inside of turn six.
“I still think in general they should be stricter on penalties,” he said. “That includes track limits. It might bite me one day when I do it.
“But I think in general, turn six, I did it as well, to be honest. It’s a corner I knew they couldn’t penalise me because they set the precedent in previous tracks of if you can’t reasonably see it, you’re going to get away with it.
“I think you have to know the grey areas and things that you can get away with and that was one of them. So to everyone that did do it, fair play.”
The FIA took some action to discourage track limits abuses in Austin. The white line at turn 19 was widened on Saturday to help drivers judge the position of their cars more accurately.
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However Norris believes it will always be difficult to stamp out track limits abuses at tracks such as the Circuit of the Americas which F1 shares with Moto GP and other bike racing series which prefer asphalt run-offs.
“I don’t know what the answers are, to be honest with you,” he said. “The obvious one is gravel. When you ask us why was it not a problem 20 years ago, it was because they had grass and gravel. We’re not allowed that nowadays because Moto GP have to race there and bikes have to race there and safety has to come into it.
“It shouldn’t be up to us to suddenly create ideas when they’re almost being forced to come into play. We want gravel and certain things, but that’s not allowed because of safety which, kind of, you get. But it’s not up to us to suddenly come up with things.”
Changes to F1 cars have also made it harder to ensure they remain within the track limits, said Norris.
“In my opinion the thicker white line they put in helps because you can just judge things better,” he said. “Visibility is so poor now in a Formula 1 car because of the sidepods being so high and the chassis being so high, all of these things are very different to what they were 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
“So judging something in a car like that is extremely difficult. A lot harder than it probably ever was, I would say, in the past. The thicker white line, in my opinion, has helped because it just gives you that slight bit of reference that you know once you’re on it, you don’t really have anything to play with.
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“When it’s a single white line, judging that to where it might be on the tyre, which is one-and-a-half metres away, judging that when you’re looking at the exit kerb and looking at cars ahead, it’s extremely difficult. You’re asking us to do a lot of different things at the same time. So to me, when they made it wider, it improved a lot.
“I think there was a lot less violations of track limits because it’s just easier to judge rather than the track being that much wider. So I think maximising that a bit more, and having gravel where you can have gravel [would help].”
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