F1 to delete laps for double-waved yellow flag offences in Austin

Outlined in Michael Masi’s pre-race notes for the weekend, it states that “any driver in a double yellow sector will have that lap time deleted”.

Before this weekend, drivers were instructed to simply back off significantly but their lap time would still count on the leaderboard, leaving it up to the stewards to decide whether a driver slowed down enough to avoid a penalty.

The double-waved yellow flag ruling came under scrutiny after Fernando Alonso’s incident during qualifying at the Turkish Grand Prix last time out.

The Alpine driver was summoned to the stewards for allegedly failing to slow for yellow flags in Q1.

Alonso escaped a grid penalty after arguing that he slowed sufficiently through Turn 1 on his lap.

The race notes confirmed that the track surface has been altered since F1’s last visit to the Circuit of the Americas in 2019.

It was heavily criticised by a number of the MotoGP riders for its bumpy track surface.

As a result, the end of the pit straight, the exit of Turn 1, the exit of turn 9 through to the exit of Turn 10, the exit of Turn 11 through to the exit of Turn 12 and midway through Turn 15 to the middle of Turn 19 have all been resurfaced to help eradicate some of the bumps.

The FIA also confirmed that a “milling” would take place to address the “depression in the track between Turn 2 and Turn 3” and other “depressions in the track in the vicinity of Turn 4, Turn 6, Turn 10 and Turn 14”.