Ah track limits, very much a 21st Century debate in Formula One but just as contested as most grey areas in the rulebook.
After the close confines of Monaco, Montreal and Baku, drivers are enjoying a little more room to breathe around the Red Bull Ring in Austria.
But the return of wide patriotic run-off areas, with most decorated as large Austrian flags, also means drivers are pushing the limits of what Charlie Whiting deems acceptable in terms of keeping it within the white lines.
It didn’t use to be such a big deal in the ‘good old days’ of 20 years ago. Dip a wheel or two just beyond the kerb and you would usually leave a plume of dust either of the grassy or gravelly variety in your wake, maybe even introduced to the odd barrier if you really got it wrong.
But as tarmac run-off areas became the norm, to improve safety, the perils that lay beyond the white lines were gone.
That’s not to say there were not circuits where the phrase ‘use every inch of the track’ was used.
Hockenheim’s old chicanes often saw drivers cut as much angle out of them as possible and run as wide as you dare on the exits. The then-named A1 Ring was another where drivers often went all four wheels off the track on the exit of Turn 1 and Turn 8.
The reason why more leniency was shown back then was the cost of going a bit too far wide.
You could put four wheels off the track, but push it too much and you were in the gravel going nowhere. It was a risk and if you got it right then you probably deserved the extra half a tenth it gained.
Nowadays with so little deterrent to stop drivers going wide the FIA have had to take action otherwise, they would drive a completely different racetrack.
Astroturf has been the number one solution in the past ten years or so. You had the standard kerbs and then a strip of carpet which was supposed to be less grippy and had a tendency to force drivers out into the run-off area.
It has worked in giving the drivers something to think about but the confidence drivers have in their cars and their level of grip means they know when they can run over it without a problem.
Then there are the more old-school grass-lined circuits that have stuck by ‘grasscrete’ which is a light green painted strip beyond the exit kerb.
This has very little effect in slowing the cars down and is where the majority of track limit debates take place.
Silverstone uses this, as does Hockenheim, but for this weekend in Spielberg, a different idea is being used.
In recent years speed bumps have become as commonplace on a racetrack as they have on the roads.
Most circuits use them to try and slow drivers down who speed across the run-off areas, however, this weekend, small bumps have been lined up on where historically grass or gravel would begin offering drivers a challenge.
Do they ease off a little to avoid them thus keeping within track limits? Or do they just push it knowing only clipping the edge of them would likely be OK but being too aggressive over them would end in tears?
The bumps solution has been seen before at places like Le Mans and American street circuits, where traditional red and white kerbs aren’t used, but race organisers still attempt to limit how much a driver can cut or run wide at a corner.
For the most part, the new speed bumps didn’t play a role as drivers bailed onto the run-off if they were going too fast, however, Max Verstappen hit them not once but twice in the first session damaging his car on both occasions.
The perfect solution, in my opinion, has been the Interlagos-style kerbs which are very wide but raise up gradually.
This means drivers can run as far wide as they wish at the risk of destabilising the cars but go too far and you end up, more often than not, beached because of the low ride height.
Every solution has its pros and cons and, in the case of Verstappen, it’s true they shouldn’t break a front suspension as easily as they did.
And the increasingly common ‘sausage’ kerb used on the apex of slow-speed corners have also been responsible for several scary accidents where cars are launched into the air, yet they are still used.
WEC driver and Sky F1 commentator Anthony Davidson suggested the Austrian solution was perhaps too aggressive for Formula 1 cars. But it could finally end the track limits issue if used sensibly as the speed bumps are both an ideal deterrent while bringing back the skill factor of drivers finding that boundary without going beyond it.
