How Hamilton's undeserved ban peril highlights F1's rule dilemmas

He sees the puff of dust rising from the gravel trap. He sees the car away in the distance to his left. He is on a critical final run in qualifying. He needs to hit back against a resurgent team-mate. He doesn't see the waved double yellow flags. He's in trouble. He gets the inevitable penalty. He misses the next race.

In another universe in two weeks' time, this could be Lewis Hamilton. Right now, that parallel person is staring down the barrel of a race ban. Lewis Hamilton - still in this parallel place as a six-time world champion - with none of the driving controversies that dogged the careers of his hero Ayrton Senna, and the driver he is surely soon set to equal as statistically the greatest of all time: Michael Schumacher.

This figurative portrait is not too far off a travesty. And yet, this was very nearly reality.

When the 2020 Russian Grand Prix stewards handed Hamilton his pair of penalties for his pre-race practice start violations, they added a penalty point to his superlicence for each infraction. This took him to 10 points as he had come into the weekend with eight.

Two came from his collision with Alex Albon in Brazil last year, two more for the scenario outlined above in the season opener's qualifying session, two more for colliding with Albon again the next day at the Red Bull Ring, and two more for entering the closed pitlane during the Italian GP. Two more would have brought him onto 12 and the race ban rule introduced in 2014 (where points are scratched off after 12 months, which won't happen for Hamilton until after the Turkish GP).

Thankfully, three hours after Valtteri Bottas had led home Max Verstappen and a furious Hamilton, these two additional points were rescinded.

"The stewards have just now rescinded the penalty points on both those decisions, because they thought it was inappropriate - and as a result, have fined the team €25,000 for that instruction," said Formula 1 race director Michael Masi, who explained that Hamilton and his Mercedes squad had spoken to the stewards after the race in Sochi.

"Effectively, yes, it was him driving the car. However, a contributing factor was that his team instructed him to do so at that point, and therefore, they saw fit to revise their decision accordingly."

PLUS: Was Hamilton's Sochi defeat inevitable even without penalty saga?

Sense prevailed. What is nonsense are any suggestions that this only came to pass because it was a six-time world champion and his all-conquering squad making noise about the harshness of the additional sanction. This is totally unfounded, as is Hamilton's insinuation that "they're trying to stop me" - even if this was a completely understandable reaction, which followed his penalty at Monza. In that case, a red flag visit to the stewards led to the world champion accepting the decision. As ever, open and honest communication can be so helpful.

"In the stewards' view, performing that practice start in that area, in their view, was a sporting advantage. Therefore, they thought an appropriate penalty was a sporting penalty" Michael Masi

But last Sunday's saga has again highlighted the difficulties of policing and adjudicating modern F1. This is a problem that is exacerbated by the cesspool of social media, where pointless pontificating and anonymous cowardice combine with endless tribalism (here's looking at you, Twitter) - exhausting.

Because here's the thing, F1 has evolved into a high-tech world where teams and drivers will push to the limit in every area to gain an advantage. This has always been the case throughout the championship's history, but as teams can no longer find seconds worth of performance with single innovations, they will push the boundaries elsewhere. They, and the drivers, are doing precisely their jobs.

Returning to the case of Hamilton's practice start violations - by his own reasoning, he wanted to complete these in a different place to the rest of the pack because "it's not representative of what it's like on the grid". Excellent thinking. But nevertheless, an attempt to gain an advantage, which is why he was given a sporting penalty.

"In the stewards' view, performing that practice start in that area, in their view, was a sporting advantage, having spoken to them quickly," said Masi. "And therefore, they thought an appropriate penalty was a sporting penalty."

That's a fair cop, as the place for practice starts was defined in Masi's event notes. Mercedes naturally questioned the penalty post-race - with Toto Wolff calling it "far-fetched" - but the sporting damage was already done.

The team itself said "we hadn't realised quite how far he was going to go", per the team's trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, and the squad clearly wasn't setting out to gain an advantage because Bottas was not told to copy his team-mate. But it is right to query the nuance of Masi's notes to avoid a repeat situation.

So, Hamilton must take his share of the blame on the sporting side, given the race director's notes are distributed to all competitors, as must the team for telling him it was OK. But the sporting penalties were enough. The additional penalty points felt heavy handed - and this is a problem.

At this point, let's consider the juxtaposition of the Sochi track's second corner complex and the controversial runoff area that was again in the headlines last weekend.

Asphalt runoffs have been introduced to increase safety standards across categories and motorsport disciplines - but they go hand in hand with tiresome track limits issues (tiresome that drivers transgress, tiresome that observers get so angry about it).

At that corner, the FIA has been forced to add a tricky channel drivers must traverse before rejoining or get a penalty. But it runs close to the wall, which at the start of last weekend's race resulted in Verstappen's committed near-miss and Carlos Sainz Jr's heavy crash.

Bring back a gravel trap. No, only place that gravel trap away from the straight and keep an asphalt area to ensure additional safety. This is modern F1's evolution issue in microcosm - solutions beget additional problems.

And so, we come back to the penalty points problem.

Clear examples of dangerous driving should be punished. But situations where it's not just a drivers' action involved are less clear-cut. For example, Esteban Ocon being given a three-place grid drop and a penalty point for impeding George Russell in qualifying for the second Silverstone race, when the team had not warned him about Russell's on-coming presence until very late. Ocon was involved in the car, but the team factor cannot be ignored.

So, should the bar for penalty points be raised to create wiggle room for more situations? Should the penalty points be split into smaller decimal sanctions? Where does it end?

Asphalt runoffs have been introduced to increase safety standards across categories and motorsport disciplines - but they go hand in hand with tiresome track limits issues

Far ranging, complex and binding F1 rules have caused uproar before - notably at the 2019 Canadian GP, where Sebastian Vettel squeezed Hamilton towards a wall after running off the track. As Autosport's former grand prix editor Edd Straw noted at the time: "Ideally, this should have gone down as spectacular racing and been allowed to slide. But sadly, once you have the hard and fast rules people keep clamouring for, the hands of the stewards are tied and they don't have the freedom simply to let it go."

The frustration on the Canada situation concerned the letter of the law, whereas the Sochi scenario is contentious for the extent of the punishment that was initially handed out.

Thankfully, sense prevailed in this most-recent case.

Of course, a driver's existing penalty points total shouldn't be taken into account of an individual decision, but to have one of F1's cleanest racers on the verge of a ban because of points accrued on occasions not containing an outwardly dirty move (the Albon clashes are contentious too, while of course sanctions are needed concerning safety matters such as yellow flags and closed pitlane infractions)?

It just wouldn't have felt right.