F1 penalty points in 2026: why nobody is near a race ban

How penalty points work

Penalty points go on a driver's FIA Super Licence when the stewards punish a driving offence - usually one to three points, on top of a time or grid penalty. Reach 12 points within 12 months and the driver is suspended from the next event. Every point drops off exactly 12 months after it was given, so a driver's total goes down as well as up.

Points are a separate tally from reprimands, which have their own limit - see what a reprimand is.

Only one driver has ever reached 12: Kevin Magnussen, at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix. He was suspended for the next race in Azerbaijan, where Oliver Bearman took his Haas (suspension notice). Two drivers came within touching distance in 2025: Max Verstappen reached 11 after three points for his collision with George Russell in Spain (decision), and Bearman himself reached 10 at Monza (decision).

2026: the points nearly disappeared

From 2019 to 2025 the stewards handed out between 40 and 80 points every season. In 2026, with nineteen of the twenty-three rounds run, the total is fifteen.

The difference is one offence. The same mistake, a year apart:

• 2025 Bahrain GP - Liam Lawson causes a collision at Turn 1: a 10-second time penalty and 2 penalty points (decision).
• 2026 Bahrain GP in Malaysia - Gabriel Bortoleto causes a collision at Turn 2, judged “wholly to blame”: a 10-second time penalty, and nothing else (decision).

That is the pattern across the whole season. Of the sixteen collision penalties on record for 2026, none came with penalty points. In 2025 collisions produced more than half of all points - 27 of the 49 given in the first nineteen rounds.

The reason is the FIA's revised Driving Standards Guidelines for 2026. The guidelines - a reference for the stewards rather than part of the regulations - keep penalty points for collisions that are dangerous, reckless or apparently deliberate, and for unsportsmanlike driving. An ordinary avoidable collision, which used to cost two points, now costs only the time penalty. Points for collisions were not abolished; this year, none has met the bar. (Reported by PlanetF1, GPFans and The Race.)

What still costs points

Nine of the eleven awards of 2026 - 13 of the 15 points - were for yellow-flag offences: not slowing enough under yellow, or overtaking where overtaking is forbidden. The Dutch Grand Prix alone produced four of them. The other two went to Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson, one point each, for an incident at Turn 14 in Mexico City practice (decision).

• Franco Colapinto - 5 points from four awards: Barcelona-Catalunya, twice at Zandvoort, and Mexico City.
• Carlos Sainz - 2 points, Azerbaijan.
• Pierre Gasly - 2 points, Mexico City.
• Arvid Lindblad - 2 points, Zandvoort.
• Liam Lawson - 2 points: Zandvoort and Mexico City practice.
• Kimi Antonelli - 1 point, Hungary.
• Max Verstappen - 1 point, Mexico City practice.

Who is closest to a ban

After Mexico City, Colapinto leads on 5, with Liam Lawson on 4 and Yuki Tsunoda on 3. Everything left from 2025 - points from the São Paulo, Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi races - expires by 7 December. Unless somebody collects more, Colapinto stays at the top well into 2027: his first point only expires on 14 June, and he keeps four after that.

Our penalty points table updates after every decision, with each point's expiry date and the ruling behind it.

How we counted

• Every figure comes from the award line in the FIA decision documents - “2 penalty points (total of 4 for the 12-month period)” - for every decision on record since 2019. Totals are as the FIA states them.
• 2026 covers rounds 1-19 of 23, up to the Mexico City Grand Prix; the 2025 comparison uses the same first nineteen rounds, without Carlos Sainz's two Zandvoort points, which were withdrawn on review.
• A re-issued or corrected document counts once. A suspension notice, which recounts the points that triggered a ban, is not counted as an award.

More from the stewards' record: how often the stewards change a race result.