Norris Qatar Grand Prix Throttle Trace Analysis

At the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday, an errant side mirror from the Williams ended up on the front straight, causing some brief yellow flags that Norris did not heed to, resulting in a 10-second stop-and-go penalty and effectively ending his day.

Let’s take a look at the data and see what actually happened.

First, lets look at the normal braking points for reference. This was the lap before the yellow, lap 29:

Between 600-650 meters is the normal braking point.

Now lets look at the next lap, focusing on the top drivers who actually saw the yellow flag—remember, the yellow flag only came out for a moment, and then was removed for several laps until the mirror was run over by Bottas.

Here we see that the flag actually came out late into the straight for Max, who throttled down almost 200 meters before normal. Norris was further back down the straight and did not lift, and Leclerc (who was behind Piastri, not shown) lifted a quite early, throttled back up, then down again.

Piastri was right behind Norris and lifted very early, while Sainz was behind Leclerc and throttled down about 100 meters early. And by the time Perez came around, the flags were gone.

By these traces, it’s clear that Norris was the heaviest infringer here. So I’d say a penalty was warranted. However, a few questions remain.

First, what’s considered sufficient slowing for a yellow flag? Verstappen lifted completely, while Leclerc lifted slightly and seemed unsure of where to continue on, and Sainz went through the majority of the flag area at full throttle and lifted near the actual debris.

And second, why was the yellow flag rescinded with no change in the situation? If the mirror was deemed hazardous, then every driver should have been made to lift in that section (or more reasonably, a VSC should have been deployed to keep the field even until the piece was removed).

This issue was clear as day and folks at home could have reacted in an instant, but it took the race director six laps to decide what to do, and it was only prompted by Bottas hitting the debris and two punctures coming at the same time.

Just to emphasize the differences, here’s the speed differences of the Top 6 going into turn 1 on Lap 30, and as you can see Norris is just well ahead of the rest of the field (although I should note that the rest of the field, with maybe Max as the exception, were all going almost 300 kph through the majority of the straight until the actual debris point.)