Stewarding Fiasco Made for Bitter End to Exciting F1 US GP

After a season-long battle between Red Bull Racing and McLaren, it’s safe to say only the diehard tifosi were expecting a Ferrari 1-2 at the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. However, the Scuderia’s American triumph was lost in the wake of a controversial five-second penalty levied against Lando Norris.

Let’s set the scene. As the Ferrari duo of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. drove home for a comfortable 1-2 at Circuit of The Americas, title rivals Max Verstappen and Lando Norris duked it out for the final podium position in the final laps of the race.

Norris attempted an overtake around the outside of Verstappen at Turn 12 in the closing stages, but the Red Bull driver defended hard. As a result, both drivers went off the track, but while Verstappen seemed to let off the throttle ever so slightly, Norris kept his foot down and powered out of the run-off area into the third-place position he snatched from Verstappen.

On the last lap, stewards ruled that Norris unfairly gained that position and slapped the Briton with a five-second penalty. Unfortunately for the McLaren driver, he only managed to pull out a 4.1-second gap over Verstappen, meaning he lost that podium position after the checkered flag.

The media pen was ablaze with controversy after the event, with drivers questioning the consistency of FIA stewarding. Norris claimed, “[Verstappen] defends by going off the track, he overtakes by going off the track, but I’m not going to complain about it.”

His teammate Oscar Piastri added, “I think if you look at my penalty from the sprint, it was basically a carbon copy of Max and Lando, but I stayed on the track and I got a penalty. So, it’s not very clear.

“I feel like, as drivers, we also all kind of have different interpretations of what we think is fair and what’s not.”

For their own part, the stewards ruled that “Car 4 [Norris] was overtaking Car 1 [Verstappen] on the outside, but was not level with Car 1 at the apex.

“Therefore, under the Driving Standards Guidelines, Car 4 had lost the ‘right’ to the corner.  Accordingly, as Car 4 left the track and returned in front of Car 1, it is deemed to be a case of leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage.”

The stewards also clarified that Norris would have earned a 10-second penalty had it not been for Verstappen pushing him off the track—but that ultimately, Norris should have conceded that he had lost the corner long before he ran off the track.

The FIA also distributed a document to teams in the aftermath of the race, detailing what exactly constitutes a driver having earned the right to the corner, including: having the front axle at least alongside the front axle of the other car at the apex of the corner and to the exit; being driven in a safe and controlled manner throughout the maneuver; and being able to make the corner within track limits.

Per the FIA, Norris had not “earned” room from Verstappen.

However, the FIA also issued a list of requirements for the defending driver, including: having its front axle at least alongside the mirror of the other car no later than the apex of the corner; being driven in a safe and controlled manner; being driven without deliberately forcing the other car off the track; being able to make the corner within the track limits.

While Verstappen had certainly fulfilled that first dictum, he certainly failed to comply with the final two. He defended hard against Norris and seemed to intentionally run the other driver off the road.

All that being said, the stewards leave ample room for interpretation within the guidelines. Racing incidents don’t occur in a vacuum, and the FIA looks at the entirety of the race up to the point of an incident when making a ruling, asking how the drivers got into that incident, what they could actually see from the cockpit, and so much more.

Many fans immediately tried to find the logic in the penalty, with one primary argument being that Norris had exceeded track limits three times previously during the race, and that exceeding track limits for that fourth time while overtaking Verstappen triggered the penalty. But in its ruling, the FIA explicitly stated that “we determine that this will not count as a track limit ‘strike’  for Car 4.”

But did those previous track limits violations influence the decision? Did the FIA see other scenarios where the conflict between the two drivers played out differently? Did the FIA feel Norris had pushed too hard? Did the FIA hope McLaren would instruct Norris to give the place back to Verstappen, then try a cleaner overtake at a different point? We don’t know.

What we do know, however, is that in the aftermath, multiple drivers called for more consistency in stewarding. Johnny Herbert, who serves as an occasional steward, pointed out that stewards make a measly $300 per race weekend, meaning that the role is primarily a volunteer position that results in ample fluctuation in the actual people in the stewarding office at any one weekend.

However, Herbert did argue that the ever-changing role enables for more effective rulings, as a diverse slate of stewards affords “different ways of dealing with certain situations” depending on where that steward is from.

Still, drivers and team principals were keen to point out other similar events that they felt were judged differently.

“We need to try and understand whether there’s certain patterns in stewarding decisions and whether that correlates to some of the decisions,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said after the race, pointing out that his driver George Russell was one of two drivers penalized for similar “situations in Turn 12.” The second driver was Norris.

For his own part, Russell said, “By the letter of the law, my penalty was correct, but anybody who knows, anybody watching it, knows it was not correct. So I don’t really know how we move forward.”

Norris and McLaren team boss Andrea Stella both posited that the FIA should have waited to make a ruling on the Turn 12 maneuver until the stewards had spoken to the drivers involved—but that’s been a controversial move in racing series like Formula E, where fans have routinely roasted the series for penalizing or disqualifying drivers well after the podium ceremony had been completed.

The U.S. Grand Prix drama isn’t the only stewarding controversy of 2024, and with five races remaining in the season, it’s not likely to be the last. That means conversations about consistency, bias, and fairness will continue until a solution is put in place.

COTA already added gravel traps in some areas, but maybe it’s time to add even more. As Oscar Piastri told F1TV after the race, “Put gravel there, and no one is going to go off.” Not without consequences, at least.

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