Penalties coming for Danny Ric!

[Calman]

Poor Danny Boy is now facing inevitable penalties at the race in Montreal this coming weekend.  Are we all a bit sick and tired of Grid Penalties by this point? ... are we moving to a future where penalties can be exercised without affecting the driver in relevant scenarios??

https://www.planetf1.com/news/ricciardo-faces-grid-penalties-in-canada/

Real shame for Danny Ric, one week high ... one week dry!!

Best Regards,
Cal

[Robem64]

On one hand this seems fairly simple to solve. If it's an engine/technical penalty then just penalise the team by deducting points. Driver grid penalties should be for driving issues.

My wife and I are both Dan Ric fans - we're travelling to Montreal and now we expect him to be close to the back of the grid. Not very motivational from a fans perspective!

This also doesn't help with DR considering he has a car or reliability of components that could push him to a world championship.

We've all said it for ages and this adds fuel to the fire...this grid penalty system does no favours for the sports credibility.

[John S]

Well at least it appears to solve the shall we shan't we question of taking the upgraded Renault ICE on Danny's car.
If your being penalised severely anyway might as well take everything you can in one hit.   

[Jericoke]

The rules are in place so that a team can't buy the championship by just running fresh engines every weekend.  Could you imagine if McLaren kept putting a new Renault power unit in Alonso's car every race and watched him cruise to victory?  The penalties stop teams from just taking the hit in order to collect the wins.

If 'cost cutting' is the goal, perhaps there is another way.  Major League Baseball doesn't use cost caps, but a 'luxury tax'.  If you want to to pay a player $40 million a year to play, then you have to also give $40 million to a 'poor' team in order to give them a chance to hire decent players too.

So, divide the grid into 'have' and 'have not' teams.  Each time a 'have' team uses a new engine part (past the initial allotment), they have to buy the same part for a 'have not' team.  The rich teams can run new parts, the 'poor' teams aren't left in the dust. 

Obviously this system can be gamed, but shady deals are part of F1 far more than having qualifying be meaningless.

[lkjohnson1950]

You know in the Turbo days of the '80s, they not only had new engines for every race, they used special engines just for qualifying and changed them overnight, Saturday night.

[Jericoke]

You know in the Turbo days of the '80s, they not only had new engines for every race, they used special engines just for qualifying and changed them overnight, Saturday night.

I miss that element of the sport.  Qualifying was war, and race day was a whole new ball of wax.  Today, the car that qualifies is the car that races... the fastest car is at the front and, surprise surprise, quickly builds an insurmountable lead.

I appreciate that vast cost of basically building 2 F1 cars per driver per weekend was unsustainable, but damn was it entertaining.

[Calman]

Maybe it's not so bad after all!?!?

https://www.news.com.au/sport/motorsport/formula-one/f1-daniel-ricciardo-currently-expecting-to-avoid-grid-penalty-for-canadian-gp/news-story/517c30d40911401110199d41ef7e8ae5

Let's face it, most neutrals would like to see him mix it up with the Mercs and Ferrari's this season!!

Best Regards,
Cal