George Russell is worried about the situation at the FIA, where Mohammed Ben Sulayem is literally purging executives. Two more were fired this week for frivolous reasons, and the president of the F1 drivers’ association is worried.
The Briton is, however, satisfied to see that the discussion initiated with Formula 1 and the FIA regarding the rewriting of certain directives concerning on-track maneuvers is progressing in the right direction.
“It was productive, because I don’t think we need to change a lot of things. We had to get rid of some weird phrases, like leaving room width when passing on the inside, for which I was penalized in Austin” Russell said.
“A lot of drivers agree that if you’re the overtaking car on the inside, the number one rule is you have to be able to stay on the track. If you’re able to stay on the track, you have the right to push the driver off the track, as is the case for all of us from karting.”
“You want to see fierce battles. You want to see drivers fighting wheel to wheel. It’s impressive when people go through the gravel and sparks fly. I think the stewards recognize that.”
“If you’re on the outside and you get overtaken, it’s up to you to give way. Right now there’s a line in the regulations that says the driver on the inside has to give room to the outside pilot from the apex to the exit This line is going to be removed, and I hope that will be the case from this weekend.
“There was nothing in the instructions about Max’s maneuvers [Verstappen]if you do a dive bomb and go off the track, it’s out of control. So everyone agrees, we don’t have to go back and rewrite the rule book. It’s definitely positive.”
Despite the positive discussions on this subject, Russell is worried about the vagueness surrounding the FIA and the numerous layoffs imposed by its president: “But at the same time, someone else was fired, and we are asking for transparency and consistency. But there is neither transparency nor consistency. And we will have to see who will be next!”
As for the problem of track limits, the Mercedes F1 resident explains that the drivers especially deplore the design of the tracks: “We also concluded that most of these problems are due to the circuitry.”
“We talked about a number of problems in Austin, and I think a lot of overtaking wouldn’t even have been attempted if there had been gravel, like in Turn 4 in Austria.
“The circuits are the root cause and the guidelines are like an interim solution that we need to agree on until we can get all the circuits in place appropriately.”
