FIA race director notes on pit exit line updated after Monaco controversy | 2022 Azerbaijan GP. FIA notes on pit exit line updated.

The FIA race director’s notes regarding the pitlane exit line have been updated for the next round of the 2022 Formula One season, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, after the controversial events that took place two weeks ago in Monte Carlo, when Scuderia Ferrari protested Red Bull, but was unsuccessful due to a text error.

The Maranello team initially submitted a protest for both Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, pointing out that the Red Bull drivers crossed the pitlane exit line in Monaco. However, Ferrari later withdrew the challenge against race winner Sergio Perez but did continue with the protest against Charles Leclerc’s title rival Max Verstappen, as images clearly showed the Dutchman crossed the line when exiting the pits, which goes against the race director’s instructions.

The Italian side explained that part of Max Verstappen’s front and rear left tyres were on the left of the yellow line and that this breached the race director’s event notes, which informed ahead of the Monaco weekend that drivers “must keep to the right of the solid yellow line at the pit exit when leaving the pits and stay to the right of this line until it finishes after Turn 1”.

The argument was that after a clarification which was made two years ago at the Turkish Grand Prix, the instruction meant no part of the car could touch the pit exit line. Ferrari’s protest was soon rejected because the FIA stewards explained the race director’s event notes were erroneously outdated and in fact did not reflect the revised-for-2022 International Sporting Code.

The relevant part of the ISC has been changed ahead of the 2022 Formula 1 championship and instead of specifying that the pit exit line “must not be crossed by any part of a car leaving the pits”, it states that “any tyre of a car exiting the pit lane must not cross” the pit exit line.

Race director Eduardo Freitas’s event notes did not reflect this in Monaco due to the fact that the instructions were published with a “cut and paste text from the 2021 version of the event notes”.

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Niels Wittich is back in the race director role for the 2022 Baku Grand Prix this weekend and his initial set of instructions has been published earlier today, including a much-simplified text regarding the relevant procedures.

It now states: “In accordance with Chapter 4, Article 4 and 5 of Appendix L to the ISC drivers must follow the procedures at pit entry and pit exit.”

Switching from an interpretation of the ISC to an explicit reference to the ISC’s own wording will therefore prevent any confusion for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend at the Baku International Circuit.