F1 News: Oscar Piastri Calls For Huge Qualifying Rule Change

McLaren driver Oscar Piastri has called for a rule change to be made to the qualifying format.

The Australian driver believes that if someone causes a red flag during qualifying, their lap time should be deleted. Currently, if a driver crashes and causes a red flag, they keep the previous lap time they have put on the board, sometimes resulting in others being eliminated but the crashed driver getting through to the next round.

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During a recent appearance on the P1 podcast, Piastri commented:

“A lot of other series have the ‘if you cause a red flag in qualifying, you get your lap deleted’ rule. I think that would be good.

“I’ve been in series where that’s been the case and I think it just gets rid of a lot of ambiguity on was it accidentally on purpose.

“It also just punishes you a bit for making a mistake. So I think that could be a good rule.”

Mercedes CEO Toto Wolff has also called for this change to be made previously, after Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc crashed during the 2021 Monaco GP qualifying which ended with him taking pole position. Wolf said to the media at the time:

“Certainly it’s a good story that Charles is in pole in Monaco.

“It’s even better that Charles in on pole than Max. I don’t want to go that far.

“I didn’t know that that was the rule in the US but I think it’s an intelligent rule that would avoid confusion.

“By any means I don’t think that Charles put it in the wall [deliberately] today, because there’s just too much at stake.

“But it would be a nice little incentive to make sure that the polemic that such a situation provokes is out of question, is not happening because nobody would doubt it.”

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