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Max Verstappen feels some of the best drivers in the world were made to look like amateurs following the latest track limits furore to strike the Austrian Grand Prix.
Throughout the years of racing at the Red Bull Ring, the issue of drivers having their lap times deleted for going beyond the limit of the white lines has been a thorny issue, with Turns 9 and 10, in particular, the primary concerns.
In Friday evening’s qualifying for Sunday’s race, the FIA deleted a total of 47 laps during the hour-long session, with Verstappen punished on four occasions, although that did still not stop the Red Bull driver from claiming the 26th pole position of his F1 career, sixth this year, and fourth in a row.
Team-mate Sergio Perez, however, was not so lucky as the Mexican had all three of his fast laps in Q2 deleted, missing out on a place in the top-10 shoot-out for a fourth consecutive race.
Addressing the track limits problem at the circuit, Verstappen said: “It is one of the worst tracks for it.
“Especially towards the end, the tyres are getting really hot, so they’re not as agile anymore compared to the beginning of the lap.
“But it’s super hard to judge around here. You have all the compressions as well, where if you hit it slightly wrong, the car immediately drops away from you or understeers, and then it’s super easy to go over the white line.
“I think today looked very silly. It almost looked like we were amateurs out there, the number of lap times getting deleted, and also some of them were so marginal.
“We even spoke about it in the (drivers’) briefing before that when it’s very marginal, it’s impossible to judge if it’s out or in, and they were still getting deleted.
“So I don’t think it was a good look today.”
Verstappen dismissed the obvious criticism that drivers of the calibre of the 20 in Formula 1 should be experienced and talented enough to stay within the white lines.
“If it was that easy, then you can take my car and drive, but probably you wouldn’t even get up to speed in time,” he said.
“But it is super tricky, and today showed it’s still not easy to have a clear rule about it.
“On most tracks, it works really well. But on some tracks, you might need something different.
“Of course, a lot of the tracks we share it with MotoGP, or whatever bike championships in general, and they want something else outside of the curves than what we would like.
“For us, putting gravel there, it’s fine, but for a bike, it’s a bit different. So we need to think about maybe different solutions.”
One possibility, suggested by Charles Leclerc who qualified second in his Ferrari behind Verstappen by just 0.048s, would be to widen the white lines so at least they are more visible to the drivers given how low they sit in the cockpit of an F1 car.
The Monégasque, however, added that his preference would be “to use the red-and-white kerb”.
He added: “I think that’s what we did some years here, and this is working well, because at least we can feel where the limit of the track is. Whenever you are on that red-and-white kerb, you can feel that you’re on it.
“This was a good reference, the white line is only visual, and as said earlier, we cannot see it, so it’s very easy to be five centimetres out of the white line.
“Whereas the kerb you can actually feel where you are, and it’s a bit easier to judge.”
Post-qualifying Verstappen was investigated for a potential impeding of Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, but the stewards determined that no further action was required.
