Who Was at Fault for the Lap 1 Crash Between Ricciardo and Albon

On Lap 1 of the 2024 Japanese Grand Prix, a collision between Daniel Ricciardo and Alexander Albon brought out the red flag. Both teams and drivers had to report to the stewards after the session for an alleged breach of Appendix L Chapter IV Article 2d of the FIA International Sporting Code, for: “Causing a collision” Now let’s watch the incident. From Albon’s onboard, he had an alright start, and looked up the inside of Tsunoda into turn 1 but backed out of it. Then he tucked behind Ricciardo into Turn 2. On the exit, a gap opened up, which he goes into to see if he can overtake round the outside. Albon then realises Ricciardo hadn’t seen him, so he brakes, but he couldn’t avoid the contact, which caused both cars to retire. From Ricciardo’s onboard, he had a slow getaway on the medium tyres compared to loads of his competitors on the softs, dropping back to 15th place from 11th going into Turn 1, on the exit he looks in his left mirror and sees the Aston martin of lance stroll, and looks to give him sufficient room for the corner. As he’s looking towards the apex of Turn 3, he doesn’t see Albon on his right and crashes into him. After the session, the stewards determined that no further action should be taken for the collision, due to it being on the first lap, so extra leniency got taken into account. Lance Stroll presence during the incident also helped Ricciardo escape from the incident penalty free, even though Stroll wasn’t even along side, so Ricciardo should count himself lucky. The next incident brought up to the stewards was on the Lap 23 pit stops, where we saw Sargeant, Stroll, Magnussen, Tsunoda and Bottas all come in for their pit stops. The car to focus on is Lance Stroll, who left the pit lane in an unorthodox way, where an issue got brought up to the stewards about an alleged breach of Appendix L Chapter IV Article 5b of the FIA International Sporting Code, which states “Cars in the fast lane have priority over those rejoining from the working lane. Once a car has left its pit stop position, it should blend into the fast lane as soon as it is safe to do so, and without unnecessarily impeding cars which are already in the fast lane.” When Stroll exited his pit box, he was slightly behind Magnussen, and so by the regulations, he’s expected to blend into the fast lane behind him, however, Magnussen was being closely followed by Bottas, so Stroll was unable to blend into the fast lane, so his exit was permitted by the stewards. On the pit exit road, Stroll overtook Magnussen, which feels like there should be something wrong with that, but there’s nothing in the rules prohibiting it, so Stroll rightfully got away penalty free. The final incident was on Lap 49 between George Russell and Oscar Piastri, where we saw another alleged breach of Appendix L Chapter IV Article 2b of the FIA International Sporting Code, which reads: “A driver may not leave the track without a justifiable reason” In this incident, we see George Russell attempting an overtake on Oscar Piastri into Turn 16. Russell didn’t dive into the overtake and was in control on the entry to Turn 16, with his front axle in front of Piastri’s mirror, so he was entitled to racing room. Russell ran over the kerb at Turn 16, and his car bounced into the side of Piastri’s McLaren. Piastri felt the contact and took avoiding action, by driving off track rather than risking the chance of another collision with the potential for much more serious consequences. After being forced off the track, Piastri safely rejoins ahead of Russell, and on Lap 52, Russell does eventually get past Piastri to take home a 7th place finish for Mercedes. No further action was determined for the incident, which i think was the right call.