Stella: It makes no sense to revisit F1 US GP track limits

McLaren Formula 1 team principal Andrea Stella said it makes no sense for rival Haas to be pursuing track limits offences allegedly committed at the United States Grand Prix last month.

On Saturday in Brazil it was revealed Haas submitted a request to review to the FIA after the team had studied onboard videos of the lines taken at Turn 6 by various cars in the Austin race.

Several teams had questioned drivers cutting across the kerbs, but no times were deleted and no penalties resulted, with the FIA saying that it didn’t have a good CCTV view of the corner in question and thus no evidence.

A right of review hinges on new evidence, and Haas believes that the onboard footage qualifies as such, and indicates that Sergio Perez, Lance Stroll, Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant committed multiple offences that should have earned them time penalties.

McLaren is not impacted by the Haas request, with nothing to gain or lose. However, Stella said that such penalties can’t be applied retrospectively because there needs to be what is in effect a “three strikes” warning system to which that drivers can respond by modifying their lines.

“During the race, you are busy with many things,” said Stella when asked byMotorsport.com if the team was aware of offences at COTA’s Turn 6.

“The only thing we were paying attention to is the information coming from the race direction about lap time deletion, because that's the official feedback you receive and that's what counts.

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren

“You then adapt your driving, you then adapt how match you push, you adapt your racing with the information you have.

“I think it makes no sense to revisit in hindsight, because had you had information all competitors could have adapted what they did. So this is certainly not something that you can act upon in hindsight, because it does affect what you do live.

“So, just in my view, Haas they have the right to request that. But I think what we need to work is just a more robust way of determining the track limits and policing it. But then once an event is gone, is finished, then we move on to the next.”

Sargeant, one of the four drivers named by Haas, shared Stella’s view.

“It's a bit ridiculous to be honest,” said the Williams driver. “If they're not monitoring in-race and capable of telling us that we're going off there, then to be honest, that's not on us, in my opinion.”