Max Verstappen’s Saudi Arabian GP penalty described as ‘not enough’

Sky Sports analyst Bernie Collins has questioned the “leniency” of Max Verstappen’s penalty in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Red Bull driver Verstappen was battling with McLaren rival Oscar Piastri at the start of the Jeddah F1 race when he went straight at the first chicane and rejoined the track with his lead intact.

The stewards concluded that the polesitter had gained an advantage by going off track and handed him a five-second time penalty, which effectively decided the race.

Verstappen served the penalty during his pitstop and dropped to second place, allowing Piastri to cruise to a comfortable win and with it take the lead in the drivers’ championship.

The incident between the two title protagonists has caused a lot of debate in the last few days, with opinion split on whether the Dutchman had been appropriately sanctioned by the stewards.

Former Aston Martin strategy engineer Collins reckons the five-time penalty was not “enough”, saying the stewards should not have been lenient just because the incident took place on the opening lap.

“I think the penalty was right - as in it was given to the right driver,” she said on the Sky F1 podcast.

“I question the five seconds. I know it was reduced because it is lap one, but it is the second weekend in a row where a driver has got a five-second penalty, after [Lando] Norris from the week before for starting too forward in the start box. But was five seconds enough to mitigate the advantage of where he started from?

“Equally here if Verstappen's car had been fast enough to drive off into the distance, the five seconds wasn't equivalent to giving the place back.

“In this case, it worked out because Max wasn't able to drive off into the distance, but in other situations, there have been many situations over the years where overtaking off track and gaining an advantage was more beneficial than the penalty because the track was really, really difficult to overtake.

“Think of Monaco or Singapore, for example. If you are able to be the car ahead, and we know free air is so, so beneficial, then five seconds isn't enough. I question the leniency just because it is lap 1 and I don't think the five seconds was enough.”

Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok said the stewards should have asked Verstappen to hand the place back to Piastri instead of issuing a time penalty.

“I actually thought the most straightforward thing should have been for stewards to tell him to give a place back. Instead of getting involved in whether it should be five or 10 seconds, just ask him to give the place back. Then he's got a race in the dirty air, it's just a normal race, then.

“So I am a bit surprised that a) they didn't ask them [Red Bull] to do that and b): it took two hours and 39 minutes for us to receive the email explaining why they've been penalised, which is an extraordinarily long time.

"It's a lap one, turn one incident. Obviously, we knew what the penalty was, but it took a very long time to get an explanation."