McLaren back call for red-flag qualifying punishments

Ewan Gale
Saturday 3 December 2022 10:31

McLaren CEO Zak Brown has backed Carlos Sainz's call for drivers to lose qualifying laps if they cause yellow or red flags.

The Ferrari driver suggested the punishment after claiming there has been a rise in 'deliberate crashes' in F1 across recent history.

The topic of qualifying penalties was raised at the penultimate round of the season at Interlagos when George Russell became beached in the gravel at turn four.

This essentially secured third on the grid in the process for the Mercedes driver when red flags took the session into a rain shower.

Further questioning arose when rumours of a deliberate crash by Sergio Perez during Q3 at Monaco began circulating after the Red Bull team-orders furore in Brazil.

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In various racing categories around the world, a driver who prevents rivals from improving their lap time by crashing and triggering yellow or red flags is penalised by being stripped of their fastest effort, no matter whether the incident was intentional or not.

This would have meant Russell starting 10th for the São Paulo sprint, rather than third, altering the final results that weekend.

Concurring with Sainz's evaluation, Brown explained: "It should be red flags or yellow flags, effectively impeding a driver from completing their lap [that gets penalised].

"They do that in other forms of motorsports. You just lose your fastest lap from that session, and all the drivers tend to do one-lap runs so that would penalise the driver if it was intentional or unintentional, because you've messed up someone else's laps.

"That's an easy solution. It can be implemented right away.

"You cause a driver to have to back out, you lose your lap, you got to go again and maybe you won't have a chance.

"Maybe you will or you have to use another set of tyres. That's the easiest way to solve it."