How Russell and Hamilton offered a blueprint to start solving F1's racing guideline furore

Imagine this if you will, among all of the conjecture and complaints about Formula 1's current driving standards formula: there are two drivers embroiled in a race-long duel for position, rattling sabres with barely the scarcest hint of transcending the limit of what is deemed acceptable.

Of course, one driver will claim victory and the other consigned to defeat: that's natural. There are no draws in F1. And yet, it's a satisfying battle for both combatants and for the championship itself. Good, clean fun. Hard racing, but fair. The way the current discourse is, this sounds like a mere flight of fancy.

Not so, as it perfectly describes the battle that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton shared in the Mexico City Grand Prix. Russell qualified ahead, but Hamilton passed in the opening array of corners to reclaim the advantage.

PLUS: The data that shows Norris could've won in Mexico without Verstappen's meddling

Russell mounted a pass around the outside into Turn 1 of lap 15 to move back ahead. Hamilton, after serving his stop, tries to get the undercut. Russell pits at the right time to stay ahead. Hamilton catches and ends up on Russell's gearbox. Russell defends for 15 laps, absorbing pressure at the right times. Hamilton, eventually, gets ahead of his team-mate. Battle won. Nobody was hurt. The stewards did not need to get involved.

In every iota of their duel, the two drivers didn't take any liberties. Admittedly, there was more on the table for them as team-mates - had one stepped out of line even once, they'd subject themselves to the Toto Wolff hairdryer treatment and have to explain to 1000-plus people why they left Mexico with no points in the bag. Regardless, this was a battle that was judged to the smallest micron and one where neither driver felt crowded into the run-off or that they'd been disposed of unfairly. Imagine that, in the context of F1's current affairs stories...

Russell rather made that point in the aftermath. "It was nice to have the battle, and it's always good when you fight with Lewis because it's hard and fair," he crooned. "At the moment you're seeing a number of manoeuvres that are getting beyond entertaining or beyond sort of sporting, it's just almost unfair to a point now."

"It's pretty straightforward," Hamilton suggested, pointedly. "I don't think either of us is silly. George is smart, and he's also fair and he's just really good at where he places his car. I think [that's the same] for me too. When the team come on the radio and say 'keep it clean', it's like, of course - there's no real difference to when you're fighting anyone else, except it's your team-mate and you have to be double careful because you both want to finish."

Russell and Hamilton put on an exciting but clean show in Mexico

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

You could suggest that the 'oh, they're team-mates' angle adds pressure to dilute the battle slightly, and Mercedes' current concerns over recent repair bills' effect on the cost cap might do so further. Instead, team principal Toto Wolff explained that he had faith in his drivers not to act with impertinence throughout, even with the risk that further crash damage might shove the team beyond the cost-cap line.

"They're so good and so experienced that we allow the racing," Wolff said. "There wasn't a feeling where I thought it's getting a bit hairy. I think we made the call to George at the end, where it was clear that Lewis was the faster car to maybe [tell him] that one defence on the straight was a bit of a late move. But I don't have any doubts in the two."

In the context of the current disagreements over racing guidelines, that discourse suggests that the squeaky-clean, Mr. Rogers approach to racing between the two Mercedes drivers is an isolated incident of common sense prevailing. Surprisingly, that's not quite the case - it's just that the vast majority of unproblematic overtakes don't contribute to the narrative. But you can't have a dispassionate list of all the events that have occurred, simply because it would take forever.

"They're so good and so experienced that we allow the racing" Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal

And the vast majority of other passes during the Mexico race managed to avoid contact, or bundling another driver into some run-off. It wasn't something that Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson could quite manage, and nor was it prevalent in, you know, 'that' other one. But the Russell/Hamilton battle stood out, partly because it commanded the most TV time given its duration, and partly because it went against the grain of a current narrative.

If the stewards, the FIA, and the drivers are to get serious about finding a framework to race within, then the Mercedes duo's on-track fight for fourth should be the blueprint. It might get more tricky to apply that when you consider the implications of a championship battle, particularly when a driver knows they probably have one shot at defending a pass, but common sense must prevail in such situations. Some would call for the racing guidelines to be disavowed immediately, but in most circumstances they appear to work.

The drivers are on board with the one-move-per-defence, with provision for getting back onto the racing line - so the application of a racing guideline for a given situation is not entirely folly. Giving a car's width room during the corner to a car sufficiently alongside you is another tenet of which most drivers have an appreciation, although others do appear to forget this in certain situations. Deleting the "be ahead at the apex" guideline would go some way to reinforcing this, and would limit drivers attempting divebombs simply to occupy the apex space.

It's always worse when there's no grass or gravel to pen the cars in; if the FIA is to get serious about making sure that extreme situations don't occur, then mandating some degree of modularity to the circuits with more obscene areas of run-off would help. The gravel beds applied for this year's Austrian GP seemed to do a solid job in limiting track limits offences, and a more liberal use of them might have been helpful in limiting any untoward clashes at the uphill Turn 3 - for instance, if any did indeed occur.

Verstappen and Norris again clashed at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez

Photo by: Andy Hone

"I want to have good battles; I want to have those tough battles. But fair ones," Lando Norris stated in the post-script of the Mexico race. We've got myriad examples where those tough-but-fair battles exist, and the racing guidelines don't need to be ripped up just because a small minority of drivers feel they're entitled to exploit them.

Making sure they're not exploitable must be the next step in the work between the stewards and the drivers, and the FIA must be involved in safeguarding them with circuit design. Having something that immediately punishes a move beyond the bounds of the acceptable should be the main wall of defence against over-regulating F1, and the stewards then become involved if there's any subsequent grey area beyond that.

Granted, there is an elephant in the room here. But we'll save that in the event the mooted changes to the code of conduct in Qatar don't quite work out...

What can the FIA and race stewards do to find the correct balance?

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images