The Italian GP grid puzzle which left drivers wondering where they’d start · RaceFans

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With no fewer than nine drivers awarded a variety of different penalties for the Italian Grand Prix grid, working out who was going to start where was always going to present some complications.Even the drivers themselves were confused. While Fernando Alonso was telling one group of journalists in the media pen he expected to start “P7”, Max Verstappen was in FIA press conference insisting that was the same position where he would line up.

Meanwhile Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly took to social media to ask their followers what position they would be starting from. “I have no idea,” the Alpine driver admitted.

The process by which F1’s grids are decided when multiple penalties are involved has changed many times in recent years. This is often been because the penalties themselves have changed.

In today’s case, five drivers were given penalties of varying degrees. These included combinations of both regular ‘grid drops’ as well as the ‘start at the back of the grid’ penalty which was introduced in 2018 in order to simplify the system. The drivers’ penalties were as follows:

When it comes to applying their penalties, the first thing to understand is that a ‘start at the back of the grid’ penalty takes precedence. Even a driver with a 100-place grid penalty will line up in front of a driver who has been ordered to start at the back. Furthermore, any additional penalties on top of that count for nothing, so it makes no difference that Sainz incurred the ‘start at the back of the grid’ penalty twice, nor that Tsunoda had additional grid drops on top of it.

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Under the F1 sporting regulations, grid drops are applied before any ‘start at the back of the grid penalties’. Given their qualifying positions, the six drivers who only had grid drops were to be relegated to the following places:

• Verstappen: Qualified second, relegated to seventh
• Perez: Qualified fourth, relegated to 14th
• Ocon: Qualified 11th, relegated to 16th
• Bottas: Qualified 12th, relegated to 27th
• Magnussen: Qualified 19th, relegated to 34th
• Schumacher: Qualified 20th, relegated to 35th

Of course, this left the last three drivers with impossible starting positions on a 20-car grid. They would initially move up to the last places.

However there were three drivers with ‘start at the back of the grid’ penalties. These were always going to occupy the bottom three places in the…