Lando Norris paid a heavy price in Qatar.

The McLaren driver’s telemetry data reveals that he was correctly and severely penalised for failing to reduce his speed when the double yellow flags were displayed… but those flags should never have existed in the first place.

Qatar GP: The wing mirror that sparked all the drama

Alexander Albon’s right rear-view mirror became Norris and McLaren’s worst enemy in Qatar in their final fight for the Constructors’ Championship against Ferrari. The mirror on the Williams car came loose on lap 29 on the main straight as the Thai driver tried to approach Yuki Tsunoda with his DRS open and the slipstream effect.

This is something that has happened in the background, but it is unacceptable that a car loses a part so easily in the middle of the straight without any contact and barely reaching 322 km/h, as was the case for Albon in this fight against Tsunoda. The FIA should rigorously investigate this failure on the Grove team’s car.

Albon’s right rear-view mirror was left lying in the middle of the track outside the drivers’ racing line, but still posing a risk to drivers who, for example, needed to leave the racing line to overtake or to unlap themselves.

It seemed obvious that at any moment a car would leave the racing line and therefore race control had to act to remove the part from the tarmac immediately.

Obvious to everyone except Rui Marques, the new FIA F1 race director who took over in Las Vegas after the dismissal of Niels Wittich.

Race control created a chaotic situation within a few metres for all the drivers. In the middle of the main straight, first a static luminous panel appeared showing the yellow flag with red stripes indicating slippery track. It was not a yellow flag as this must by regulation have a flashing frequency of 2 Hz and it was clearly a static panel.

Afterwards, the marshals’ stand before the area where Albon’s mirror was located showed the double yellow flags which was the priority warning and finally a few metres before the braking for turn 1 new luminous flashing panels indicated green flag and track clear.

On lap 30, just as Max Verstappen passed next to Albon’s rear-view mirror with Lando Norris at +1.605s behind the Dutch driver, the double yellow flags were displayed by the track marshals. Verstappen was quick and reacted by lifting off the throttle and even braking to this event at 17:48 local time.

Norris was the first to see the slippery track light panel but with hardly any reaction time, but more importantly: he was not attentive to this and did not lift his foot off the throttle at any time when he subsequently saw the yellow flags from the marshals.

This situation allowed Norris to reduce his gap to the race leader by more than half a second. He actually made his personal best sector at that time with a time of 31.432 while Verstappen made a 32.006.

Something that Verstappen did not ignore and warned Gianpiero Lambiase, his race engineer: “Check if he [Norris] lifted for the yellow. There was a yellow in the middle of the straight”. Lambiase confirmed Norris didn’t lift off as the telemetry data confirms.

There has also been much speculation on social media as to whether the Ferrari drivers should also have been penalised for the same reason as Norris. Accessing also the telemetry data of the Italian team’s cars on lap 30, we can see that Norris is the only one who does not lift his foot off the throttle at any point.

Charles Leclerc clearly does and Carlos Sainz, despite doing so slightly, also slows down. Norris is the only one who does not comply with the regulations.

Therefore, in this context, Norris was correctly penalised for breach of Appendix H, Article 2.5.5 b) of the International Sporting Code as indicated by the stewards in the document issued to explain the severe 10 second stop and go penalty for the McLaren driver:

“The telemetry and on-board audio clearly showed that the driver of Car 4 did not make any reduction in speed in the yellow sector. The double waved yellow flags and yellow lights were clearly visible to him”.

“Compliance with the yellow flag rules is paramount for the safety of all parties and this requirement is clearly noted in the first item of the Race Director’s Event Notes at every event”.

And as the specific event notes of Rui Marques, FIA F1 race director, also explain:

“Double waved yellow flags: Any driver passing through a double waved yellow marshalling sector must reduce speed significantly and be prepared to change direction or stop. In order for the stewards to be satisfied that any such driver has complied with these requirements it must be clear that he has not attempted to set a meaningful lap time”.

While such an incident normally results in a reprimand in qualifying, in the race it always results in a much heavier penalty. The most similar precedent are the penalties to Nicholas Latifi and Nikita Mazepin for the same incident at the 2021 Austrian GP.

However, this penalty for Norris and this race situation should not have occurred in the first instance.

The sensible and safest option for the drivers was to press the button to immediately deploy the Safety Car so that the marshals could remove the rear-view mirror on track because it was obvious that at some point someone would run off the racing line on the straight.

Even more so when the double yellow flag, which prevents overtaking, disappeared leaving only the static luminous panel as the only warning of a hazard on track which also disappeared on lap 33.

Something that ended up happening five laps later or quantified in time which makes it even more flagrant: eight minutes later between the double yellow flag being displayed and the Safety Car finally being deployed at 17:56 local time. In between these eight minutes, the inevitable happened.

Valtteri Bottas was blue flagged to leave Charles Leclerc through at 17:54 local time at the end of the main straight and in doing so his car ran over Albon’s rear-view mirror, smashing it and causing the track including the racing line to be littered with debris and shards of glass. At this point there weren’t any flags or light panels active on the main straight.

Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton drove over the debris and the Spaniard and the Briton both suffered punctures to their left front tyre. As we can see from the telemetry data, their punctures were indeed caused by this debris and not by excessive tyre wear on the old medium tyre as had also been speculated at first.

And it was then that after endangering the safety of the drivers, for which according to the stewards Norris was punished with the most severe penalty possible in the race excluding disqualification, race control finally decided to deploy the Safety Car on track. Five laps, two punctures and eight minutes after Albon’s rear-view mirror was left stranded on the main straight of the Losail circuit.

Going even further, Norris was given a 10 second stop and go penalty on lap 44. This is 14 laps after he made his mistake by ignoring the double yellow flag. After the entire grid had regrouped after the first Safety Car caused by Albon’s rear-view mirror debris and the next after the re-start incidents of Sergio Pérez and Nico Hülkenberg, which deployed the third Safety Car of the race, Norris was given his ‘deserved’ penalty.

Had Norris been given the penalty in the first five laps after his mistake for not slowing down under the yellow flags he would have come out the pit lane P7 behind Perez.

However, having to serve his penalty after the Safety Car with the whole grid grouped together and in one of the most time wasting pit lanes of the calendar -26 seconds approximately plus the 10 seconds penalty- Norris returned to the track P15 on the soft tyre, 17 seconds behind Liam Lawson, his closest rival in P14, with 9 laps to go.

On a soft tyre, Norris took the final laps as it was a qualifying session and was eventually able to climb back to P10 also thanks to Lewis Hamilton’s penalties. Adding an extra point for setting the fastest lap time with a time of 1:22.384, Norris scored two points in total for McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship.

In conclusion, there are three important points and three key readings to be drawn from what happened at Qatar GP with the severe penalty that should have never been given to Lando Norris:

1. The stewards once again demonstrate their incompetence by penalising a driver for breaking the safety rules on track when they themselves have endangered other drivers by not acting in time and in the right way.

In other words, what was seen in Qatar was a total inconsistency between what is said and what is done. Even more so when this penalty is derived from the race control malpractice and this one has to be served under the conditions that should have happened in the first place.

More reaction from the Qatar Grand Prix

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Qatar GP driver ratings: Hamilton’s horror show, Zhou’s massive surprise

2. Lando Norris, in this context, has made a huge mistake, as he himself has acknowledged. The telemetry does not lie and this shows once again the difference in race awareness between him and Max Verstappen who, even with the World Championship already secured, did not lose focus at any time despite the short reaction time he had to reduce speed due to the yellow flags.

3. And not least: the Williams car should be investigated for what happened in Qatar. A part such as the rear-view mirror of a Formula 1 car cannot be detached so easily by the force of the air on a straight line at 322 km/h. This is completely unacceptable and should be carefully investigated by the FIA so that it does not happen again.

Read next: FIA explain controversial safety car delay and why Lando Norris penalty was so severe