Gasly's race ban risk subsides after Imola call-off

Pierre Gasly will most likely personally take little comfort from the cancellation of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix given Northern Italy's state of devastation in the wake of the floods that hit the region.

But for the Alpine charger, there was a silver lining of sorts in calling off the race at Imola.

Last year, during his final campaign with AlphaTauri, Gasly accumulated ten penalty points on his superlicence, which put him just two points away from incurring an automatic one-race ban at the start of F1's 2023 season.

Gasly kept himself out of the Stewards' office in the first five races of this year, but still had one more event to clear – the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – before he became eligible for a points deduction based on F1's twelve-month rolling schedule rule.

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On May 22, the Frenchman's 12-month penalty points tally on his Superlicence will fall to 8 points, significantly reducing his risk of a race ban from next week's Monaco Grand Prix.

Last year, Gasly's transgressions out on the track included such benign offenses as exceeding track limits and falling too far behind the Safety Car on a restart, while more serious violations included speeding under red flag conditions and causing a collision.

Earlier this year, Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer argued that certain punishments or penalty points handed to his driver simply didn't fit the crime.

The American brought forward at an F1 Commission meeting a plan to scrap from any driver's slate the corresponding minor offenses and their points, a move supported by F1's drivers.

However, save for a handful of Alpine's competitors, the proposition was not accepted by a majority of the sport's teams, even despite the FIA taking a more relaxed approach this season to benign transgressions.

"I was in the minority," Szafnauer said back in March. "There were probably three or four out of the 10 teams that supported it."

"Some of those who did not admit the reason [why] they are not supporting it was for opportunistic reasons, hoping that something happens to us."

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