McLaren’s Zak Brown says Austrian GP track limits ‘mishap’ must never happen again

Austrian GP was blighted by track limit infringements and saw final race order not confirmed for five hours as multiple post-race penalties applied; Zak Brown says FIA must ensure similar incident doesn’t happen again; Watch British GP live on Sky Sports F1 this weekend

McLaren boss Zak Brown has called on the FIA to ensure the track-limits issues which overshadowed the Austrian GP never happen again.

Drivers were penalised throughout the weekend at the Red Bull Ring for crossing the white lines – with the final classification for Sunday’s race only settled five hours after the chequered flag.

Eight of the 20-strong grid were dealt post-race sanctions by the FIA, including Carlos Sainz being demoted from fourth to sixth and Lewis Hamilton dropping from seventh to eighth.

Carlos Sainz was demoted from fourth to sixth after being penalised post-race for Austrian GP track limit infringements

Meanwhile, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon was handed an extraordinary 30 seconds worth of combined penalties for track limit infringements.

Earlier in the weekend, world champion Max Verstappen said the frequency of lap times being deleted made the drivers look like “amateurs”. In all, more than 100 laps were deleted during Sunday’s race.

“There was definitely a better solution than what happened,” Brown told Sky Sports News as McLaren launched a special livery for this weekend’s British GP.

“That being said, it’s a track that’s unique and I’ve never seen track limits like that before.

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McLaren’s Oscar Piastri reflects on the team’s improved performance in Austria, the debate over track limits and the big moment of controversy in the second Ashes Test!

“I think we as a sport can do a better job of, when the race results come out, those are the race results. I can see how it happened, I just think we need to anticipate a little bit better as we already knew on Friday it was going to be a challenge.

“I think there are a variety of ways to address it moving forward. What is most important is that when we have a mishap, we learn from it and we don’t let it happen again.”

He added: “We need to make sure it never happens again, and that we do a proper debrief and understand how we could have prevented it in the first place or handled it differently.”

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Highlights of the Austrian Grand Prix, the ninth race of the season

McLaren driver Lando Norris benefited from Sainz’s post-race penalty to be promoted to fourth to take his best result of a difficult season for the British team.

Brown, continued: “I’ll take my hat off to the FIA for addressing the issue and I think it would have been easy to say, ‘this is going to cause a lot of noise, let’s just kind of get it right next time’.

“For them to put their hands up and say there were some penalties that needed to be addressed, I thought that was a brave decision.

“But we can’t have it again. We can’t have a race and then five hours later you have that degree of change in the result.”

Sky Sports F1’s live British GP schedule

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Look back at some of the most dramatic moments throughout the years at the British Grand Prix

Thursday July 6
6pm: The F1 Show

Friday July 7
8:40am: F3 Practice
10am: F2 Practice
12pm: British GP Practice One (session starts 12:30pm)
2.05pm: F3 Qualifying
3pm: F2 Qualifying
3:40pm: British GP Practice Two (session starts 4pm)

Saturday July 8
9:15am: F3 Sprint
11:15am: British GP Practice Three (session starts 11:30am)
1:10pm: F2 Sprint
2:15pm: British GP Qualifying build-up
3pm: BRITISH GP QUALIFYING
5pm: Ted’s Qualifying Notebook

Sunday July 9
8:10am: F3 Feature Race
9:50am: F2 Feature Race
11:50am: Porsche Supercup
1:30pm: Grand Prix Sunday – British GP build-up
3pm: The BRITISH GRAND PRIX
5pm: Chequered Flag: British GP reaction
6pm: Ted’s Notebook

Next on the F1 calendar is the big one, Silverstone. Don’t miss the British GP live on Sky Sports from July 7-9