Magnussen first suspended, Alonso-Verstappen poor performers

Penalty points on the Super License were implemented during the 2014 season, according to the principle of the British points license. Thus, when a driver accumulates 12 points over a rolling 12-month period, he is automatically suspended for the race weekend following his last infraction.

This had never happened in Formula 1 until this season, where Kevin Magnussen became the first ever driver to collect these 12 points and be suspended for the Azerbaijan GP. It should be noted that the Dane had finished the previous season without any penalty points, which means that he accumulated 12 points in the 2024 campaign alone, including ten during the first six GPs of the year.

As the regulations do not set a precise scale, the points imposed are at the discretion of the commissioners, even if the accumulation of data makes it possible to identify the existence of “standard” sanctions for most offenses.

From 2023, after the situation encountered by Pierre Gasly at the end of 2022, the authorities have decided to sanction certain offenses less automatically and to concentrate the points on the violations considered to be the most dangerous or those linked to clean piloting.

Magnussen is therefore by far the driver who has collected the most points over the season, even if the advantage of having already received his suspension is that he no longer has any on his Super License at the time of writing. write these lines. This does not change much immediately since he will not start in F1 next year.

Two multiple world champions, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen, are among the poor performers with eight points accumulated each, the Dutchman having collected them almost exclusively during the second half of the season, when the fight became more intense during the GPs . It is interesting to note that, apart from the case of Qatar, all of these penalties occurred in battles with McLarens. Finally, we note that Valtteri Bottas, after having completed 23 Grands Prix without being sanctioned, received five points during his very last event.

In total, 18 of the 24 drivers who competed in the season took at least one penalty point on their Super License. The only ones to have escaped are Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, Pierre Gasly, Yuki Tsunoda, Zhou Guanyu and Jack Doohan (even if the latter only competed in one GP). Last year, 12 out of 22 drivers received at least one penalty point.

Penalty points handed out in F1 in 2024