Max Verstappen believes F1's stringent track limit rules made the drivers "look like amateurs" in Austrian Grand Prix qualifying. The Dutchman clinched pole position by just 0.048secs over Ferrari's Charles Leclerc in a session marred by track limit infringements at the Red Bull Ring. Teammate Sergio Perez missed out on a top-10 spot having had all three of his Q2 attempts deleted for abusing the boundaries at the entry to Turn 10, whilst Verstappen himself recovered from a deletion in the same session. A total of 47 laps were deleted by FIA Race Control across the qualifying hour, with Verstappen left bemoaning the strict enforcement of the limits. "It is one of the worst tracks with the track limits," Verstappen told media, including RacingNews365.com . "Towards the end, the tyres get really hot so they are not as agile anymore, compared to the beginning of the lap. "It is super-hard to judge around here: You have all the compressions as well, where if you hit it slightly wrong, the car nearly drops away from you or understeers and then it is super-easy to go over the white line. "It looked very silly, it looked like we were amateurs, the number of lap times that were getting deleted. Some of them were so marginal, we spoke about it in the briefing before that when it's so marginal, it is impossible to judge if it is out or in and they were still getting deleted. "I don't think it was a good look. Of course, people will say 'just stay within the white lines', well if it is that easy, you can take my car and try it, but probably you won't get up to speed in time."
The conundrum
For some events, F1 has its hands tied with regards to what it can and can't implement on the track edged due to the venues' other uses. "It is super-tricky and it showed it is still not easy to have a clear rule about it," added Verstappen. "On most tracks, it works really well but on some tracks, you might need something different because a lot of the tracks we share with MotoGP and bike championships in general, and of course, they want something else outside the kerbs to what we would like. "For us, putting gravel there is fine, but for a bike, it's a bit different. So we need to think about different solutions, maybe."
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