What we know about Qatar’s key F1 racing guidelines meeting

F1 drivers feel progress has been made following a meeting about racing guidelines at the Qatar Grand Prix.

It emerged at the Mexico City Grand Prix that F1’s governing body the FIA would revise the wording of the sport’s racing guidelines following Max Verstappen and Lando Norris’s controversial clash at the United States Grand Prix.

The FIA was targeting implementation of new guidelines as early as this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix and a meeting took place in the Lusail paddock on Thursday evening to present the suggestions to the drivers.

Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA) director George Russell told media including Crash.net the discussion was “mainly about overtaking” and insisted “everyone was in agreement”.

The 'inside v outside' debate

Racing guidelines have been at the centre of contentious debate, leading to drivers calling for clarity that the driver on the inside should not be required to leave space on the corner exit - as long as they keep their car on track. 

This is something many drivers feel Verstappen had been taking advantage of with so-called 'divebomb' defending, where he relies on being ahead of his rivals at the apex of corners to deny having to leave space for them at the exit of the corner. 

Russell revealed that guideline was set to be “binned off”, potentially as early as this weekend.

“It was pretty productive,” Russell said. “I don't want to go into detail what was spoken about. But I think a lot of drivers are aligned that if you are the overtaking car on the inside, rule number one is you have to be able to stay on the circuit.

“If you're able to stay on the circuit, you are in your right to run the driver wide. As it has been for all of us since go-karts. If you're overtaking somebody on the inside, you've got the right to run them wide.

“Right now, there is a line of regulation that says the inside driver needs to leave room to the guy on the outside from the apex to the exit. I think that's going to be getting binned off. I hope it's going to be from this weekend onwards.”

The ‘best meeting’ F1 drivers have had

Russell’s Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton added changes are “in the works” and believes things are “moving in the right direction” as he praised the stewards for being transparent and open with the drivers.

“What's great is just acknowledging the FIA and the stewards taking the time to sit down with us and let you go through it. That's the first time we've actually probably had that meeting in a while at least,” he said.

“That's the best meeting I would say we have had. It's very complex because there's so many different, all these different corners, so many different scenarios. They don't have an easy job at all.

“I think it helps us all sitting with them, having a discussion of what, because in their minds, this year it's been, or it has been better in terms of consistency, but obviously everyone wants it to be perfect.

“But until you have those discussions for them to fully understand what, from our race, from where we're sitting, from where we're fighting, what we're fighting for and what we think is right or wrong in certain scenarios, it's good for them to hear and for us to work on real clear guidelines.”

Hamilton revealed the idea of introducing a ‘yellow card’ warning system for drivers was quickly rejected.

“There was talk of like a warning, but that's basically like yellow card,” he explained.

“You know you're going to have that one warning, and if you waited for the last race of the year to utilise your one warning, that doesn't work. So we're just working away at it together.”

Circuits the "root cause"

Russell said all the drivers were in agreement that circuit design is the “root cause” of most of F1’s racing controversies.

“We also concluded that most of these issues are down to the circuits,” he added. “We spoke about a number of issues in Austin. I think a lot of the overtakes wouldn't have even been attempted had there been gravel there.

“The circuits are the root cause and the guidelines are kind of like an interim fix that we need to agree on until we can get all of the circuits in a proper manner.”

Newly crowned four-time world champion Verstappen said: “You know, in some places you just have a lot of run off, and that creates already a lot of issues, so that's something that we have to work on for the future anyway.

“The main problem is the track that allows these kind of things. So if you have gravel, that naturally stops you from doing things that, you know, taking a bit more risk than normal.”

While Verstappen reiterated his stance that F1’s rulebook should be simpler, he feels circuit alterations are ultimately the best solution.

“Sometimes it's not that easy to just throw all the rules overboard,” he said.

“I think the biggest issue that we have is just, in some places, the tracks that have way too much run-off.

“Of course, some tracks are a bit more difficult than others, but how much do you want F1 to drive on your track then? It's as simple as that.”