The Univers has a way of maintaining the balance and so does the realm of Formula 1. A rule introduced in 2014 states that drivers can be banned from a race if there are 12 penalty points in their tally over the course of a single year. And while the race ban seems like a farfetched claim, Pierre Gasly stands at the brink of this punitive future with 10 points in his tally. And Alpine Boss, Otmar Szafnauer, tried to inject logic into the whole situation but lacked support from other teams due to “opportunistic reasons.”

The penalty points were originally aimed at taming wild antics on the tracks. But as the situation stands, drivers have been gathering points for instances of track limit violations or being too far away from the safety car. Szafnauer, whose driver stands closest to a race ban took the initiative to make the FIA ease up on the interpretation. However, a disheartening lack of support from other teams is all that the Alpine TP could gather.

As quoted by Motorsport-total, Szafnauer said, “Firstly, what should you be penalized for in the future? And I think it’s right that you shouldn’t be penalized for things like course limitations, but for dangerous driving, which was always the intention. I don’t know how things like track limits or too far from the safety car were ever included in this rule because that’s not dangerous driving. However, that’s one thing and I agree with the [new] interpretation the FIA.”

He further added about the lack of backing the rivals subjected him to. He stated, “I was in the minority. There were probably 3 or 4 out of the 10 teams that supported him. Some of those who didn’t support him admitted that they didn’t support him for opportunistic reasons because they hope something happens to us.”

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The one-year cycle of points is what the driver from Normandy needs to wait out. This can roughly translate to being a good boy for the next couple of races.

The looming race ban irks Pierre Gasly

While no single incident for which the Frenchman was penalized stood as gross misbehavior, the man has been racking up points. And all for the minor incidents he has been involved in. The Alpine driver understandably is not very pleased with the situation.

In Jeddah, when Gasly was asked how he felt about the whole scoring situation culminating into penalties, he said, “I’m not even going to answer that question. You can take [my answer] any way you want. But I won’t commit to it to express.”

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Do you think Gasly can be subjected to a race ban in the 2023 campaign? Or will he be able to wait for the points to cycle out?