The way grid penalties are applied are changing very slightly for 2018 so I thought I’d
go over it here – mostly because the way the final grid order is determined is actually
not very transparent at all, for some reason!
But I’m here to show you what’s actually going on when the qualifying order is changed
to become the grid order once penalties have been applied.
For 2018 we’re getting a NEW method for applying grid penalties because the previous
system was deemed “too confusing” and way making the sport look ludicrous.
Not my words.
I’m going to have a look at recent systems for applying grid penalties before giving
you the definitive 2018 method.
If you want to just straight to that, go to this time in the video
To start at the most basic point: grid penalties are penalties applied to a driver’s starting
grid position.
A one-place grid penalty applied to a driver starting in 4th on the grid means they will
have to start from 5th.
That sounds simple enough but the complications arise when there is more than one penalty
that needs to be applied.
In today’s world of F1, grid penalties are the go-to easy forfeit for rule infringements
or technical transgressions.
As a consequences, most races (especially in the second half of the season when parts
start to fail) will have multiple grid penalties applied to the starting order.
What if several drivers have different grid penalties?
AND What if one of the drivers has multiple penalties applied to themselves?
In this simplified ten car grid, let’s say over the course of the weekend
I’ve reduced the penalties compared to real life just for this example.
- White has a 5 place penalty for crashing into Purple in the previous race
- White also has a 25 place penalty for changing loads of engine parts
- then Black has a 5-place engine penalty - then Green has a 3-place gearbox penalty
- then Black has another 3-place penalty for changing their gearbox
- then Purple has a 5 place penalty for changing an engine part
Then they all qualify like this How do we sort the grid out for the race?
The process isn’t particularly transparent and has changed a bit over the years.
Let’s go back to 2014.
In 2014, this is how the penalties would have been applied.
You have to apply the penalties in the order they were received and shuffle everyone forward
to fill the gaps after each penalty: - White’s first 5-place penalty means White
moves to 13th position and everyone else shuffles to fill the gap.
There are only 10 places on the grid White shuffles up back to 10th.
- White then takes a 25 place penalty and drops to 35th but shuffles back forward to
10th.
- Black drops 5 places to 12th and everyone shuffles forward, including black
- Green drops 3 places to 9th.
- Black now takes their second penalty.
They drop to 13th but of course shuffle forward to 10th again.
- And then Purple takes a penalty and drops to 12 th but shuffles up to the last place
on the grid.
Looking at the final order we see White’s combined thirty penalty places has translated
into a one place BENEFIT Green also only drops 2 places instead of
3
At the end of 2014 the FIA decided they weren’t happy with this as people like White were
getting away with strategically taking massive penalties as early as possible and having
their effects massively reduced.
The FIA quietly changed things up for 2015.
The system from 2015 to 2017 was a little different.
This time they decided NOT to reshuffle everyone until ALL the penalties had been applied.
This time…
- White gets bumped from 8th to 13th and stays there for the time being
- White then gets bumped further, to 38th.
- Black moves from 7rd to 12th.
- Green drops from 6th to 9th.
Now, Grey is already in 9th spot and gets priority so Green has to sit behind Grey for
the moment, but ahead of 10th placed Purple.
- Black gets another penalty and drops to 15th
- Purple now gets their penalty and drops to 15th but behind black as Black has priority.
Now we shuffle everyone forward to fill the space and…
White is at the back, where they should be.
Black, with the second highest penalty count managed to sneak ahead of Purple this time
but did qualify higher so you could call it fair.
The system actually makes a lot of sense this way as it’s far closer to giving everyone
the forfeit they deserve compared to the previous system.
Some people will still get a much more relaxed penalty due to the way you have to ultimately
shuffle everyone forward onto the actual grid (you can’t paint grid positions back to
slot 250 or whatever it was the McLarens managed to get this year!)
Unfortunately, it just looked a bit stu pid saying “Grosjean had a 43 place penalty”,
“Kvyat had a 28 place penalty” and “Alonso has a 67,000 place penalty”.
People were wondering what the hell was going on and it was really showing up the extremely
tight engine-limit regs.
The Italian GP 2017 had 9 drivers taking a total of 150 place penalties and no one knew
who was starting where.
Mostly, in my opinion, because the FIA keep the whole system so secret.
The new, “simplified” system for 2018 probably won’t solve the problems but let’s
run through it.
So, the system is basically the same.
EXCEPT, if your grid penalty places sum to more than 15 you automatically go to the back.
So, working it through, - White goes to 13th, then instead of going
to 38th they go to the ‘back of the grid’.
- Black goes to 12th - Green goes to behind 9th placed Grey
- Black drops further to 15th (but Black has only got a total of 8 places dropped so stays
where they are) - Purple drops to behind 15th, as before.
And if we shuffle it up, it looks like this.
So that seems simple, white went to the back because they had the most penalties.
BUT, let’s just rewind to before we shuffle forward.
Let’s say on Sunday morning, Black gets a further 10 place penalty due to some engine
changes.
Now their penalty places total 18.
And 18 is more than 15 so they drop to the back.
But White is ‘at the back of the grid’.
So Black has to slot in behind them.
In fact, you kind of have to think of ‘the back of the grid’ as a second-tier grid
where all the super-penalised people line up, in the order they were penalised.
So, in a sense, this system kind of includes some of the bad points from each of the previous
systems but should hopefully be easier to follow if you don’t like things like “adding
up”, which I do 😊 So there we have it.
That’s how the system works.
It’ll still be confusing as all hell once penalties start stacking up as they surely
will in 2018 when they have LESS engine parts for the whole year but if you want to use
this video when the time comes to try and work out what a grid will look like before
the journos do, go for it!