Deleted laps: The weekends track limits took over F1
207 lap times were deleted on the Friday of the 2026 United States Grand Prix. By Sunday, the white line at the Circuit of the Americas had shaped practice, qualifying and the race.
Austin was loud, but it was not the benchmark. That belongs to the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix, which took one hour and 25 minutes to run and almost five hours to classify. Race Control was sitting on around 1,200 possible track limit breaches when the chequered flag fell on 2nd July.
The stewards worked through them, deleted 83 lap times and re-wrote the classification.
Track limits have a habit of swallowing race weekends, and the pattern says as much about how the sport polices the white line as it does about the drivers crossing it.
Austin 2026: A loud Friday and a quiet race
On Friday 23 October 2026, the FIA deleted 79 laps in FP1 and 128 in FP2 at the Circuit of the Americas. That is 207 lap times from 23 drivers.
After three hours of practice, no driver had escaped a deletion. Max Verstappen’s quickest FP1 lap went at Turn 19. Saturday morning’s FP3 added another 41, with Alex Albon losing seven and Charles Leclerc six.
Qualifying added eight more, taking Saturday's total to 49. Norris's Q3 lap was deleted, dropping him from sixth to eighth behind Oscar Piastri. Oliver Bearman went out in Q2 after his time was deleted. Hadjar called it a disaster of a weekend, even after qualifying third.
Antonelli took pole and said staying inside the lines was one of his best achievements of the day. He blamed the circuit: elevation changes, awkward wind and wide tarmac exits where the grippy green paint pulls drivers wider. Most breaches, he said, come from small mistakes while drivers search for the limit.
The race was far quieter. The stewards' final list held 28 deleted laps from 15 drivers, and Turn 12 accounted for 17 of them. George Russell lost four laps, the most of anyone.
Practice deletions cost nothing, but in a race three breaches earn a black and white flag and a fourth brings five seconds, which is one likely reason drivers behave better on Sunday.
Add it up and the weekend came to 284 deleted lap times: 207 on Friday, 49 on Saturday and 28 on Sunday. Austria in 2023 still edges it on the figures, at 295 across practice, qualifying and the race, before the sprint sessions.
Enforcement kept pace this time. The FIA’s geofencing system responds to breaches almost instantly, which is the opposite of Austria’s backlog.
Austria 2023: A weekend that outran its own paperwork
The trouble began on Friday. Practice reportedly produced 165 deleted laps. Qualifying added 47 more: 25 in Q1, 19 in Q2 and three in Q3. The previous year’s qualifying had produced 16.
Verstappen lost four laps of his own and still took pole. He said it almost looked like “we were amateurs out there.”
The race was worse. Drivers were warned after two breaches, shown a black and white flag on the third and given five seconds on the fourth. Turns 9 and 10, the final two corners, did most of the damage.
Both are fast right-handers where running wide onto the tarmac beyond the kerb carried speed onto the following straight. Drivers did it lap after lap, and the system flagged breaches faster than Race Control could process them.
Aston Martin protested the provisional result. The stewards upheld the protest because a number of deleted laps had never been referred to them for a penalty.
Eight drivers received post-race penalties, 12 in total. Carlos Sainz, Lewis Hamilton, Pierre Gasly and Albon took 10 seconds each. Esteban Ocon went off ten times in the race and collected four separate penalties worth 30 seconds. Only Russell and Zhou Guanyu finished the race with a clean sheet.
Sainz found out about his penalty by email as his plane took off. It dropped him out of fourth place and promoted Lando Norris.
The stewards “very strongly” recommended a solution for the circuit, and the FIA renewed its call for gravel at the exit of Turns 9 and 10.
Spielberg’s habit: 2014 and 2022
In qualifying for the 2014 Austrian Grand Prix, 11 of the 22 drivers had at least one lap deleted for running too wide at Turn 8.
The 2022 race was a closer preview. Race Control deleted 43 lap times, and 16 of the 20 drivers fell foul at least once. Sebastian Vettel, Gasly, Norris and Zhou were each handed five seconds. Only Russell, Valtteri Bottas, Ocon and Fernando Alonso stayed clean. Ocon would collect ten breaches a year later.
Verstappen called the policing a joke in 2022. He used the same word on the radio during qualifying a year later.
Portimão: 125 laps in a day
The Algarve Circuit arrived on the calendar in 2020 with a track limits policy that did not survive its first Friday.
Drivers were told that running across the white line at Turns 1 and 4 would cost them the lap. Race Control deleted 125 lap times across the two practice sessions, 43 at Turn 1 and 82 at Turn 4. Every driver on the grid lost at least one lap.
The FIA moved quickly. For the rest of the weekend, times would only be deleted if a car went beyond the red and white kerb at those corners.
That was the sensible answer, and it took one day. At the Red Bull Ring, it took a post-race protest and a five-hour review.
Portimão returned in 2021 with the same corners and a different cost. Verstappen’s quickest Q3 lap was deleted for a breach at Turn 4, which handed Bottas pole position.
In the race, 18 lap times were deleted. One of them was Verstappen’s fastest lap, deleted for a breach at Turn 14, and it cost him the bonus point. Christian Horner called the track limits rulings “quite expensive” for Red Bull, and race director Michael Masi rejected the complaint.
What gravel changed
Verstappen had offered the simplest fix in 2023. Put gravel next to the kerbs, he said, and the problem goes away. The obstacle was the circuit’s other tenants, because the track is shared with motorcycle racing and riders do not want gravel there.
The Red Bull Ring answered the 2023 weekend with physical deterrents. Temporary 2.5-meter gravel strips went behind the kerbs at Turns 9 and 10 for 2024.
The problem did not disappear. It simply moved.
In 2024 qualifying, Piastri’s Q3 lap was deleted for a breach at Turn 6. It dropped him from third to seventh and promoted Russell. Piastri called the decision embarrassing. He said drivers pushing so close to the limit that one more centimeter would already put them in the gravel.
The gravel returned for 2026, and commentators noted it being kicked up during practice. The smaller 2026 cars were supposed to make it easier for drivers to judge where their wheels are. Austin, four months later, showed it was not that simple.
The pace was never really the story on any of these weekends. The story was where the edge of the track actually was, and how quickly anyone could police it.
A white line asks drivers to behave. Gravel gives them a reason to.
Edited by Benjamin Crundwell
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