The FIA stewards agreed with the drivers that any future repetition of the incident of Charles Leclerc displacing Oscar Piastri at the Belgian Formula One Grand Prix would likely result in a fine.
The controversial incident was the main talking point during a long-planned meeting of drivers and FIA stewards at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Thursday evening.
The meeting at the Hungaroring was the first of two annual meetings the FIA holds with drivers to discuss how incidents are managed and whether changes need to be made to Formula One driving rules for greater consistency.
Leclerc pinned Piastri at the entrance to Les Combes and the two made contact, causing the McLaren to suffer floor damage.
The stewards then considered it to be nothing more than a racing incident.
They suggested that Piastri had no real hope of success and that Leclerc was simply following his usual racing trajectory.
The call has caused some concern among drivers about setting a precedent for better protection in braking zones, which can be dangerous places for cars.
As Piastri said ahead of the weekend: “If we think it’s OK, then it’s one thing to have those details, but even just the incentive of knowing that you can give everyone the absolute minimum amount of space and get away with it, it’s not a nice place to be.”
After lengthy debate at the meeting over Leclerc’s challenge, it was understood that the FIA stewards had taken the drivers’ feedback into account and agreed that a similar incident in the future would almost certainly result in sanctions.
The general consensus is that if any driver were to act in such a way, squeezing his opponent on corner entry, he would likely earn a five-second penalty.
Although Leclerc is understood to have insisted the situation in Belgium was not entirely black and white, he admitted earlier in the day that he may have gone a little over the limit.
“At the end of the day, I think in the car I try to push everything to the limit,” he said.
“I think with Oscar it was a little bit different – so I probably don’t want to race all the time. At the end of the day, it’s also risky for me.
“You always try to leave as little space as possible. Maybe it was too sketchy.”
Resume mitigation of sentence
It is believed that some minor changes to driving rules for 2027 were discussed at the meeting in Hungary.
They will most likely be finalized at a follow-up meeting, which is usually held towards the end of the season.
One of the solutions that was agreed to be implemented immediately was for stewards to be more lenient towards incidents that occur during safety car restarts – just as they do on the first lap of racing.
Drivers have long argued that low tire pressure and complications caused by the power distribution make it difficult to assess the situation after the restart, and the stewards have taken this into account.
Hamilton missed the meeting
Lewis Hamilton was one of five drivers to miss the meeting despite being controversially sanctioned in Belgium over the weekend.
Hamilton received what many believed to be a harsh punishment for his first-lap collision with George Russell, with neither he nor his Mercedes rival thinking it was anything more than a racing incident.
But while the FIA meeting was a good opportunity to clarify the decision, Hamilton joined several of his rivals in not attending the FIA meeting.
It is unclear whether Hamilton’s absence from the meeting was a deliberate choice or whether he had conflicting commitments that prevented him from attending.
Others who missed the meeting were Fernando Alonso, Lance Stroll, Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas.