Formula 2 CEO Bruno Michel has been critical of the way penalties are handed out in Formula 2. Speaking to FormulaScout.com Michel said that violating track limits in particular is punished far too harshly.
AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly has complained a lot this season about the amount of penalty points he has received for what he sees as relatively minor offences. While it has never come to the point in Formula 1 where someone received enough penalty points to be excluded from a race, it is different in Formula 2: this year alone, two drivers were suspended from a race partly due to the large amount of penalty points they received from exceeding track limits.
Olli Caldwell of Campos Racing received seven penalty points for exceeding track limits during the first race of the year. Amaury Cordeel of Van Amersfoort Racing received five penalty points for the same offence during the Imola Grand Prix. As a result, both drivers quickly reached the limit of 12 penalty points and were excluded for one race. A total of 33 penalty points were handed out in Formula 2 this year for track limits alone. This makes it the most penalised category this season, above causing a collision.
Illogical according to the boss
According to the Formula 2 boss, this is too much. "Track limits are very important, but on the other hand having a race ban because of track limits is a little bit too harsh," Michel explains. "Track limits of course is something that needs to be looked at, and there’s no doubt about that. But we had some situations where I think out of track limits a driver got six penalty points over the same race or something like this. And obviously there’s something wrong with that. That’s something that we need to address with the FIA, because they are the regulators, to see that this can be applied with common sense."