Is the FIA right to make ten seconds the new standard for penalties? · RaceFans

Penalties in Formula 1 have been a contentious area ever since stewards began to become much more active in grands prix around the infamous 2008 season.

Thirty years ago, penalties were a rarity. When a driver was penalised for an infraction, it was often with a full ten-second stop-and-go penalty.

In recent times, time penalties have become the standard punishment for infractions. During races, stewards will issue a time penalty that a driver must serve at their next pit stop before any work can be performed on the car, or it will be added to their finishing time at the end of the race if they do not make another pit stop.

The most popular penalty for racing related infractions – such as causing a collision or for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage – has been five seconds. But there have been times when this punishment has not appeared to fit the crime.

When Sergio Perez shoved Alexander Albon out of tenth place late in last year’s Singapore Grand Prix, he was handed a five second penalty for being “predominantly to blame” for the move. Despite that, he finished the race in eighth, just over ten seconds ahead of Liam Lawson, while Albon missed the points in 11th. That meant that Perez gained more from his move on Albon than he lost from his eventual penalty.

The FIA seems to have taken heed of incidents like this. Last weekend, Kevin Magnussen was penalised twice in the race in Jeddah – first for causing a collision with Albon into turn four, the second for leaving the track and gaining an advantage when passing Yuki Tsunoda at the same corner.

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But what was most interesting was that Magnussen received a ten second time penalty for both – not five. That left him with a total of 20 seconds of penalties, which effectively ended his race and made Haas sacrifice his race to benefit team mate Kevin Magnussen.

This may have seemed extraordinary, but across Formula 2 and F3’s opening rounds in recent weeks, there have been several ten second penalties for drivers such as Amaury Cordeel, Gabriel Bortoleto and Joshua Duerksen for either causing collisions or making off-track passes, with Cian Shields also getting ten seconds for clasing with Josh Dufek at turn one in Bahrain.

In their decision document for Magnussen’s penalty for clashing with Albon, the stewards stated that their ten second penalty was “in keeping with the revisions made…