Before you can become a Formula 1 driver there are a few essential things you need. First up, you’ll want to track down a ton of cash and sponsors, then you need a pretty impressive junior racing record and, finally, you’ll have to get your hands on an FIA super license. This document is a record of a driver’s race wins, entries and any other on-track antics, including penalties they might pick up over their racing career.
Drivers need to keep hold of their FIA super licenses for as long as they hope to race in F1, and the paperwork serves as a record for any bad behavior they might exhibit on track. That’s because the document contains a tally of the penalty points each driver picks up for any breaches of Formula 1’s rules and regulations, or any un-sportsperson-like behavior.
Actions that can earn drivers a penalty point on their license include things like causing a collision, cutting corners on track or failing to follow the race director’s instructions. If a driver picks up 12 of these penalty points over a 12-month period, they face a one-race ban.
Since the system was first introduced by the FIA back in the 1990s, no F1 driver has been handed a race ban, but some racers on the current grid are getting worryingly close. To keep track of who’s at risk and which other drivers have points on their license, we rounded up all the penalty points sitting on all the FIA super licenses in F1.
After three races in 2023, 14 drivers of the current crop of 20 racers have penalties recorded on their license, while six racers are yet to be handed a single one. The well-mannered drivers that have yet to pick up a penalties include Lewis Hamilton, Oscar Piastri, Valtteri Bottas, Nico Hülkenberg, Nyck de Vries and Logan Sargeant.
But of the 14 drivers that have got at least one point on their super licenses, what were these penalties handed out for? Click on through the following pages to find out.
