The controversial ‘Verstappen rule’ has been removed from the sporting regulations in a move by race director Charlie Whiting to help simplify wheel-to-wheel racing.
The Dutchman’s tactics created a lot of buzz with fans, but also scepticism among the other drivers claiming that his driving was unacceptable and dangerous.
During the winter break, the FIA has been making efforts to give more freedom to the drivers when they come to battle on circuit, especially when it comes to manoeuvres made under braking.
A much clearer rule has been put in its place by stating that a penalty will on be applied if someone is ‘wholly or predominantly to blame for an incident’.
As quoted by ESPN, Whiting said: “I think there would be a small change in some of the incidents that we’ve seen last year — they’d be handled quite differently simply because the so-called ‘Verstappen rule’ is gone to the effect that before we said any move under braking will be investigated.
“Now, we have a simple rule that says effectively that if a driver moves erratically or goes unnecessarily slow or behaves in a manner that could endanger another driver, then he will be investigated. So there’s a very broad rule now.”
With the simplified regulations aimed at giving the stewards more freedom to review incidents on track and decide which incidents are worth reviewing, fewer penalties are likely to be given to on track misdemeanours.
The stewards have also been giving more facilities to make decisions more quickly and consistently during a race, this in an effort to avoid repeat incidents like the 2016 Mexican Grand Prix where it took hours for the stewards to make their final decisions.
Whiting added: “What we were requested to do, which we think is a more general way of approaching things, is to give the stewards one rule to work with.
“It’s an all-encompassing rule. You can do more or less anything with that. That was the request from the teams, they wanted less investigations and only in cases where it was clearly dangerous would they take action.
“We have told all stewards that we want to try and speed things up a little bit. We’ve taken some measures to make sure that post-race checks are done more quickly in order to try and get the result out much faster than it has been in the past, so we’ll see if that works. But it’s a little difficult.”
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