What McLaren Needs to Prove in Appeal to Overturn Lando Norris’ 5-Second Penalty at US GP

McLaren has officially launched an appeal to review and possibly overturn the five-second penalty that was given to Lando Norris in Austin. The Briton overtook his championship rival Max Verstappen by going outside the track limits at turn 12 and did not give the place back, per the rules.

Starting from pole position, Norris dropped to P4 at the start of the race as Verstappen and two Ferraris took the podium spots. However, he closed the gap to Verstappen in the final stages of the race and the pair engaged in a heated battle before the incident happened.

McLaren has been unhappy with the penalty given to their driver and if the appeal ends up being successful, the Briton would be reinstated to P3 and Verstappen will slip down to P4. The FIA has confirmed that they have received a petition for Right to Review from McLaren as they outlined what would be required to move forward with the review process.

“It should be noted that this Hearing will be in two parts. The first part will be to hear evidence as to whether or not there is a ‘significant and relevant new element which was unavailable to the party seeking the Review at the time of the Decision concerned’,” the FIA statement read.

“Should the Stewards determine, in accordance with Article 14.3, (in their sole discretion) that such element exists, a second part of the Hearing will be convened at a time to be advised.”

All the evidence available at the moment has shown Norris to be at a disadvantage as per the rules. So, the Woking outfit needs to give the FIA an explicit reason to prove otherwise that their driver had no choice but to go off the track.

However, Norris retaining the place by overtaking outside the track is a straightforward violation unless he would have given the place back. Still, the entire incident has left several experts divided as to whether the penalty was justified or not.

The debate about Norris being right or wrong

When the incident occurred on track, Norris initially thought that he was ahead of Verstappen at the apex of the corner, and McLaren assumed the same to be true as well. However, in his analysis, former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer received the race footage and showed that it was not the case and it was indeed the Dutchman who was ahead when they reached the apex.

Guenther Steiner was recently asked about the rules of engagement between drivers — whether it should be allowed for one driver to push the driver on the outside off the track. The Italian explained that instead of having ‘rules of engagement’ there should be a fixed rule which can be applied to a similar situation every single time irrespective of who does what on the track.

Another mystery has risen since the US Grand Prix after Ted Kravitz of Sky Sports F1 read the race director’s notes during a podcast, which mentioned something called ‘Driving Standards Guidelines’ that had been violated by Norris in COTA.

What’s interesting is that despite his extensive experience and expertise in F1 for over two decades, Kravitz had never heard of this term, which makes this a little bit controversial. He even mentioned that if these guidelines had been followed, the Briton should have received a 10-second penalty rather than the standard five-second penalty.