Under F1’s penalty points system – introduced in 2014 – some of his rivals have approached the threshold of 12 points and automatic suspension for one event. Daniil Kvyat in 2017, Lewis Hamilton in 2020, and Pierre Gasly last year. But their time close the limit lasted just a few months in each case.
Rewind 27 years and Jacques Villeneuve faced having to go nine races with a suspended race ban sentence from the 1997 Italian Grand Prix – where he’d driven too quickly under yellow flags in pre-race warm-up.
