McLaren fume but Norris’s 10-second stop-go penalty was in line with precedent · RaceFans

McLaren complained about the severity of Lando Norris’s for failing to slow for double waved yellow flags during the Qatar Grand Prix.

Norris was given a 10-second stop-go penalty, one of the harshest sanctions available to the stewards, for the incident on lap 30 of yesterday’s race. When imposed, the penalty requires a driver to enter this pits within three laps and sit in their pit box for 10 seconds.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella claimed Norris’s punishment was disproportionate to the offence. “In the application of the penalty, I think we have lost any sense of proportion and any sense of specificity,” he told Sky after yesterday’s race.

Stella was particularly infuriated that Norris was penalised for failing to slow for yellow flags which were subsequently withdrawn despite the fact the hazard they were displayed for – a piece of debris on the start/finish straight – had not been cleared.

“Can we look specifically, at the infringement, the level of danger associated to the situation – and, in fact, the yellow flag was removed – and then judge, using these kind of elements, proportion and specificity. Rather than taking a look at any kind of rule book, probably full of dust on top of it, and then apply it without any sense of critical approach.

“So from this point of view, I think there’s an opportunity to do better from the FIA.”

However Norris’s penalty is consistent with the small number of past cases of drivers failing to slow for double waved yellow flags during races. Only three cases have occured in the past 14 seasons.

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Kimi Raikkonen was given a 10-second stop-go penalty for failing to slow for double waved yellow flags during the 2017 Belgian Grand Prix. Four years later two drivers received the same sanction for the same offence during the Austrian Grand Prix: Nikita Mazepin and Nicholas Latifi. In all three cases the drivers were also given three penalty points on their licence, as Norris was today.

There have been many other instances of drivers failing to slow for double waved yellow flags, which is usually punished with a five-place grid drop, as Verstappen received at this race in 2021.

Norris did not take issue with his penalty, describing it as “fair”.

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