believes the punishment should have gone much further<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI think the FIA should be stricter and start handing out bans for this kind of stuff,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s careless from people. It costs a lot of money; all my parts are in the bin now. People should just get banned, because that\u2019s not driving that deserves to be in Formula 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not seen it, but if you cause a crash in a restart like this, you should have at least a one-race ban.\u201d<\/p>\n
That view was not shared by several of his rivals.<\/p>\n
Race winner George Russell argued a suspension would be excessive, saying a small mistake on cold tyres after a Safety Car can produce much bigger consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, personally, race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless. So, I think it was unfortunate,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen took a similar position, while Isack Hadjar pointed to the low grip off the racing line in Baku as another factor behind the crash.<\/p>\n
The debate is significant because race bans are exceptionally rare in modern Formula 1.<\/p>\n
Only two drivers have served one this century.<\/p>\n
Romain Grosjean was suspended for the 2012 Italian Grand Prix after causing a major opening-lap crash at Spa, while Kevin Magnussen missed Azerbaijan in 2024 after reaching the automatic threshold under F1\u2019s penalty-points system.<\/p>\n
Grosjean\u2019s ban is particularly relevant because his Spa crash helped drive the introduction of that system in 2014.<\/p>\n
Rather than relying only on standalone suspensions, drivers now accumulate penalty points for serious offences across a rolling 12-month period, with 12 points resulting in an automatic one-race ban.<\/p>\n
The FIA has since made those points harder to earn, with the 2026 approach focusing more heavily on dangerous, reckless or apparently deliberate actions.<\/p>\n
Colapinto entered the Azerbaijan weekend on four penalty points, the joint-highest tally on the grid at the time, but still well below the threshold for an automatic suspension.<\/p>\n
That creates the key question.<\/p>\n
Norris\u2019 argument is that some individual incidents are serious enough to justify a ban on their own, regardless of a driver\u2019s existing points total.<\/p>\n
The alternative view is that the current system already exists to deal with repeat offenders and that using a race ban for one mistake risks bypassing the structure introduced specifically for that purpose.<\/p>\n
Colapinto\u2019s error had major consequences, but it was also immediately acknowledged as a mistake rather than an intentional act.<\/p>\n
So in this week\u2019s poll we\u2019re asking \u2014 should Franco Colapinto receive a race ban for his Baku crash?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franco Colapinto has come under scrutiny for his first corner incident with Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris. Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,98125,817,813,816,1802,12357,85],"class_list":["post-908167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-azerbaijan-gp","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-franco-colapinto","tag-slot1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"POLL:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/XPB_1439413_HiRes.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFranco Colapinto has come under scrutiny for his first corner incident with Pierre Gasly and Lando Norris. Image: XPB Images<\/p>\n