The FIA has dished out a host of post-race penalties for track limit offences following the Austrian Grand Prix, shuffling up the order and, most notably, promoting Lando Norris to fourth over Carlos Sainz.
The podium results stay the same, with Verstappen keeping his victory over Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez.
Aston Martin launched a protest regarding handling incidents during the race, deeming all violations were not correctly identified and penalised.
The FIA responded it was forced to review more than 1,200 reports of violations during the race of 71 laps, meaning the numbers averaged out to nearly one report per driver per lap, with a total of 1420 racing laps overall.
A list of deleted lap times was presented to stewards post-race, highlighting a number of deleted laps that were not previously brought to their attention. The result of this sees three further black and white flags awarded, four 5-second penalties and five 10-second penalties.
Sainz was the biggest hit of the front runners, awarded another 10-second penalty after serving 5 seconds earlier in the race. That drops him to sixth in the standings, behind Norris and Fernando Alonso.
Lewis Hamilton, who was vocal during the race in his belief the violations weren’t being judged fairly, receives a 10-second penalty that drops him to eighth, behind teammate George Russell.
Esteban Ocon was hit hardest by the rulings, with four penalties accumulating to 30 seconds of time added on, which drops him from 12th to 14th.
Lance Stroll moved up to ninth following a penalty for Pierre Gasly, who dropped to tenth. The other drivers impacted were Alex Albon, Logan Sargeant, Nyck De Vries, and Yuki Tsnoda.
It’s understood there are frustrations in the Formula 1 paddock due to the timeliness of warnings occurring during the race, meaning teams could not warn their drivers promptly each time they offended.
The stewards added that they “very strongly recommend that a solution be found to the track limits”.
Red Bull Ring is a circuit renowned for such penalties; however, motorcycle racing on the circuit limits the options as to what measures can be undertaken, including adding a gravel trap at Turns 9 and 10, as recommended by the FIA.
