"It's just frustrating when you're in the car"- McLaren's Lando Norris finds FIA stewards' penalty calls at 2022 Austrian GP 'a bit stupid' 

Lando Norris believes some of the penalties by the FIA stewards at the 2022 F1 Austrian GP were annoying and frustrating. The Briton felt the penalties were consistent but they were unfair due to the nature of the circuit.

Speaking to Racing News 365 after the Spielberg race, Norris said:

“It’s the same for everyone, if I think of it that way. The annoying one is, the last two corners I completely understand. If you run wide there, it’s obviously so difficult to judge at the speeds we are doing, but if you run wide there, you pretty much gain an advantage. Whereas I got my penalty in Turn 1, [where I] just locked up the front tyre, hit the sausage [kerb] and lost a second going up the hill. I got track limits for that. I [had] been punished enough because I lost one second. It’s a bit stupid for some of them, but it’s life and it’s the same for everyone. We wanted consistency and so on, [but] it’s just frustrating when you’re in the car.”

While Lando Norris felt there was consistency in the way the penalties were handed out, he was left annoyed by the one he received. The McLaren driver felt that the last two corners of the circuit were punishing on their own if the track limits were exceeded and there was no need for a penalty for the same.

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Lando Norris feels some track limits imposed at 2022 F1 Austrian GP were ‘silly'

Lando Norris felt there were areas at the Red Bull Ring circuit in Austria where track limits were not required. The McLaren driver claimed that it is a difficult track to judge the track limits and drivers were getting punished for exceeding them if they went off into the gravel. The Briton revealed the drivers had argued the issue but there needed to be logic behind imposing track limits at various tracks.

Explaining the track limits saga at the 2022 F1 Austrian GP, Lando Norris said:

“The car is two metres wide. From the white line to the gravel, you’ve got two metres and five centimetres, so if you use all the track you get punished if you go to the gravel. That should be a limit. But if you go those five centimetres to the gravel, it’s track limits. That’s just a silly one. I think we’ve argued it. We’ve also said that we want it to be strict, since last year, and we want it to be the same every time and so on. Us drivers always want something different, something better and so on, so we’ll see. It’s just a difficult track [on which] to always judge the limits so finely.”

The issue of track limits has plagued the sport since 2021 and is still a topic discussed. At the 2022 F1 Austrian GP, several drivers were a casualty of the track limits imposed on the circuit, where their lap times were deleted in both the qualifying and the practice sessions. Heavy policing of the track limits throughout the race had several drivers complaining, including Norris.