Race 19 - United States GP 2024 - Circuit of the Americas

[Nitrodaze]

Got to disagree here buddy. Norris was the lead car before they entered the corner. The responsibility is then on Max to overtake without pushing another car off. You can’t run a car wide to gain position.

That was my initial thought if you read my earlier post. It turns out that the stewards only look at who was ahead at the apex. Norris braked early which allowed Verstappen to be ahead at the apex. Thus, Verstappen had right of way per se. While the penalty on Norris was right from this perspective, the stewarding was still poor as they did not take every factor into consideration l felt.

For instance, they did not take into consideration that Verstappen ran Norris off track which was punished when Piastri did it in the sprint and when Russell ran Bottas off track in the main race. So there were still inconsistencies. I felt a fairer outcome would have penalized both of them. Verstappen for running Norris off track and Norris for overtaking while off track. The amount of time penalty would have been at the steward's discretion. Hence, if they had given both drivers a 5 seconds penalty, the race outcome would turned out the same as it did in the end. And nobody would have criticized the stewarding. This incident only served to re-enforce the suspicion that the stewards are biased towards Redbull and Verstappen

After l reviewed the entire thing with hindsight of-course, it is clear to see McLaren was partly to blame. They should have asked Norris to give the place back, seeing how clear the infraction was. Norris himself has himself to blame for a very poor defence off the line at the start. He spent the whole race watching how defending is done by Verstappen. He was schooled big time.