Welcome Change Made to Australian Grand Prix Ahead Of Race Weekend
In a move to fix the issues of the first two races this F1 season, the FIA has taken steps to widen the grid boxes at Albert Park by 20 centimetres. The decision comes in the wake of two incidents that occurred during the opening two F1 races, where drivers failed to place their cars within the grid box at the start of the race.
Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso both received five-second time penalties in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, leading to confusion from fans to journalists. The penalties were due to the drivers not lining up their cars correctly within the grid box, and according to AMuS, this is the reason for the changes this weekend.
Drivers had expressed concerns about visibility when attempting to line up on the grid following the formation lap due to the large wheels and winglets of the new regulation cars. If Alonso, an experienced driver with two championships to his name, can make this mistake, anyone on the grid could too, so it makes sense to make such changes.
Esteban Ocon commented on this, expecting the issue he encountered to happen again throughout the season:
“It seems like a stupid penalty that we get there,” Ocon told Channel 4. “But it’s not as easy as it looks to park the car in the right place, especially with these big cars, how low we are sitting.
“I honestly didn’t know if I was in the box or not in that race either, so I was a bit shaking, but honestly it’s very, very hard, and all the margins are nothing basically.
"That’s the rule now and we need to be more cautious with everything we do. It’s the same in the pit lane, it’s the same when you box and when you serve the penalty and we’ve paid the price in Bahrain, somebody else paid the price today, I don’t think that’s the end of the story.”