Well, the budget cap doesn’t really let them. Although I was thinking more about general F1 sponsors and not the team’s sponsors. It would be a bad look for the sport if some cars were excluded from running due to the 107% rule, so I assume they would just handwave it were it ever to come up.
I guess f1 has changed hands since the last time we saw the 107% rule in action, but I think it would be a worse look if some of the cars were so laughably slow that they couldn’t even qualify but were let in anyway
The last time a car was excluded due to failing to comply with the 107% rule was in 2012. They’ve already waived it tons of times since then, most recently for Sargent and De Vries (2023) and Stroll (2021).
I know it’s waived when you crash in qualifying, because you’ve usually demonstrated in practice that the car is fast enough. The original purpose was to keep out cars (not necessarily drivers) that didn’t have the pace, right?
Well, yes, but the original purpose came from a very different era in the 90s, where you had really poor pay drivers and also teams that pretty much were only interested in showing up to the race to be seen for sponsorship purposes and were never even intending to actually race. It was intended to keep unserious cars out, and I would be highly surprised if they barred Aston from racing in Australia even were they 5 seconds off the pace.
Well, the budget cap doesn’t really let them. Although I was thinking more about general F1 sponsors and not the team’s sponsors. It would be a bad look for the sport if some cars were excluded from running due to the 107% rule, so I assume they would just handwave it were it ever to come up.
I guess f1 has changed hands since the last time we saw the 107% rule in action, but I think it would be a worse look if some of the cars were so laughably slow that they couldn’t even qualify but were let in anyway
The last time a car was excluded due to failing to comply with the 107% rule was in 2012. They’ve already waived it tons of times since then, most recently for Sargent and De Vries (2023) and Stroll (2021).
I know it’s waived when you crash in qualifying, because you’ve usually demonstrated in practice that the car is fast enough. The original purpose was to keep out cars (not necessarily drivers) that didn’t have the pace, right?
Well, yes, but the original purpose came from a very different era in the 90s, where you had really poor pay drivers and also teams that pretty much were only interested in showing up to the race to be seen for sponsorship purposes and were never even intending to actually race. It was intended to keep unserious cars out, and I would be highly surprised if they barred Aston from racing in Australia even were they 5 seconds off the pace.
It’ll be interesting to find out! Personally I can’t imagine they’ll be that bad on race day, but stranger things have happened.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s to never underestimate the incompetence of this Aston team.