Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur points out contradictory rules in F1 regulation booklet

The return of Formula 1 at Shanghai has been one of the most controversial weekends of the ongoing season. From Daniel Ricciardo and Lance Stroll’s crash to Carlos Sainz’s controversial spin during qualifications, there have been a lot of points to discuss.

Sainz who spun his Ferrari and stopped on track during the qualification round called on a red flag. The incident halted the session for a brief time. However, FIA allowed Sainz to continue his qualification round which was challenged by Aston Martin making it a controversial event.

Now days after the incident Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said he thinks that F1's rules are getting more complicated, which is making the document have conflicting parts. Speaking about the incident he questioned the complexities in regulation documents making things contradictory.

He said, "I don't know if it's clear, but for sure we need to have some understanding of what has happened, as yesterday, we asked if we can restart, he [the race director] said yes, and it was the end of the story. We have to define exactly the situation."

‘It’s 75 pagers now’, says Frederic Vasseur

Further speaking about the rule book Vasseur said that when he started the job there was a 20-page booklet for regulations which is now 75 pages. He said, "But for sure, what is true is that the regulation is more and more complicated. When I started the job, the sporting regulation was 20 pages, today, it’s 75.”

"You will always find loopholes because you have cross-articles. I remember a couple of years ago when Kimi [Raikkonen] spun on the out-lap at Imola, we had two different articles reporting to the same case: one saying black and the other one saying white."

Aston Martin wanted to change the results of the qualifying round for the Chinese Grand Prix, but they didn't succeed. However, they've been successful with protests before. For example, they got Fernando Alonso's third-place finish at the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix back after a protest. They also made sure that rule-breaking on the track was looked at closely during the 2023 Austrian Grand Prix. This helped them get more points because their rivals got penalties.