This rule is stated under sporting regulation 20.4 20.4 Any driver defending his position on a straight, and before any braking area, may use the full width of the track during his first move, provided no significant portion of the car attempting to pass is alongside his.

This move can be of any size, within the track limits, and the move can be made as slowly or as quickly as the driver likes - they can jink suddenly to one side or they can spend an entire straight gradually shifting across the track. When one driver is completely ahead of another on a straight, they are permitted to make a move in one direction. Let’s begin with the simplest possible case: two drivers battling it out on a straight. “All the time you have to leave a space!” Once you have developed a basic foundation for assessing corner ownership, it becomes easy to compare and discuss the details of different incidents. This analysis is unlike my previous mathematical analyses, but I think it’s an important topic to cover.įor this post, I will be drawing on a variety of sources that I have read or been exposed to over the years, including the sporting regulations for Formula 1 and various other forms of motor racing, the consensus judgments of experienced Formula 1 pundits, as well as many guides for professional racing driving. I will therefore cover how the rules apply to the most common on-track scenarios, before considering Rosberg and Hamilton’s interactions this year as a case study. To even begin to discuss the Rosberg/Hamilton accident, we need to have a solid understanding of the rules of racing. There is little effort on the part of the sport’s regulators to communicate and clarify these rules for fans and I could find no comprehensive guides online. This is not particularly surprising, since the rules of racing are complex, notoriously filled with gray areas, and covered in only a very limited and inexact form by the FIA Sporting Regulations. From these discussions it has emerged that many fans are not well acquainted with the rules of racing, or are confused regarding which rules apply to which scenarios. The Formula 1 message boards have recently been abuzz with discussion of the Rosberg/Hamilton collision at Spa 2014.

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