Pierre Gasly Drags His Grandmother Into Lewis Hamilton-FIA Drama

The 2023 Austrian GP was one of the most action-packed races of the season. However, the biggest highlight of the race weekend turned out to be the saga surrounding track limits – something that affected Lewis Hamilton both in the Sprint as well as the feature race. Amidst all the controversy regarding the same, Pierre Gasly has used his grandmother’s example to take a dig at the FIA.

The track limit fiasco started with qualifying itself on Friday. More than 47 laps were deleted during the session, due to drivers going off at turn 9 and 10. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez suffered immensely due to this as all three of his Q2 laps were invalidated. The Mexican driver failed to reach Q3 for the fourth race in a row.

On Saturday, it was Lewis Hamilton who suffered, as he was demoted to P18 during Sprint Qualifying due to track limit violations. He could not recover and had to start the Sprint race from the back end of the grid. The track limit issue became even more prominent during the main race on Sunday with several drivers being on the receiving end of time penalties.

Hamilton was one of the drivers who received a five-second time penalty for leaving the track in Spielberg. However, Hamilton kept complaining on his radio that many other drivers were also going over the track limits but were not being penalized. Finally, it was Aston Martin’s post-race complaint, that revealed that track limits were crossed over 1200 times. The FIA decided to award post-race time penalties to a plethora of drivers, completely shaking up the finishing order.

Pierre Gasly wants FIA to review the track limit rules

Alpine’s Pierre Gasly was a victim of the FIA’s time penalty fiesta. A 10-second time penalty saw the Frenchman get demoted to P10 from P9. Following the race, he claimed that the FIA needs to review its rules about track limits.

Gasly pointed out how difficult it is for a common fan to follow what is going on due to the constant deletion of laps. He said as per Race Fans, “I had my grandma in front of the TV. She didn’t understand a thing. She was like, ‘What the hell is actually going on? Lewis is once P1. Then two seconds later he’s P18.”

Gasly explained that drivers want consistency from the FIA in most situations. But in certain cases, they need to be have a more case-specific and track-specific approach towards handling things.

Lewis Hamilton frustrated with the FIA’s track limits rulings

Hamilton was given 5-second time penalty with not even a third of the race completed. He was quite disgruntled about the same and kept on complaining over the team radio, about how Perez, and even Norris, ahead of him, were also going off the track but weren’t being given the same penalties.

While talking about the issue after the race, Hamilton said, “I think they need to probably find a new solution for this track. Years ago when we didn’t have track limits thing the track was much more enjoyable to drive.” He then explained how Lando Norris and Sergio Perez were constantly going off at turn 10 and turn 9. He had to keep notifying about the same to his team, something that Hamilton feels is not part of racing.

The seven-time world champion was given another time penalty, a 10-second one this time, after the race, following Aston Martin’s protest. This caused Hamilton to get demoted to P8, behind his teammate George Russel, as Mercedes wrapped up a disappointing weekend in Austria.