Formula 1: Should Pierre Gasly purposely get suspended?

It seems like a bizarre question to ask, but given what could be at stake in the 2023 Formula 1 season, should Pierre Gasly get suspended for the 2022 season finale?

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly leads all Formula 1 drivers with 10 penalty points, meaning that he is two penalty points away from being suspended for a race.

Penalty points remain on a driver’s license until 12 months after they were handed to said driver by the FIA, and the 26-year-old Frenchman has been given all 10 of his penalty points this season. Specifically, he has racked up all 10 since the Spanish Grand Prix at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in May.

To put that in perspective, teammate Yuki Tsunoda ranks second among all drivers in current penalty points with eight, but four of his are due to expire within the next month.

Gasly has more than six months to go before any of his expire, meaning that he will effectively need to be squeaky clean to end the 2022 season (two more races) and then to start the 2023 season (seven races until his first two penalty points expire).

That begs the question: should he intentionally get to 12 this weekend?

Doing so during this weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos Circuit would result in him being suspended for the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit next Sunday, but it would prevent him from going into the 2023 season effectively looking over his shoulder for the first seven races.

Gasly is set to join Alpine next season, replacing the Aston Martin-bound Fernando Alonso, and he has admitted that he cannot afford to miss a race, noting that he could technically be in the mix for the world championship.

Missing the 2022 season finale would take care of that issue.

On paper, it seems like a smart idea, but given how long he has been with AlphaTauri and the Red Bull family, it’s entirely unlikely that he will want to miss his final race with the organization before his move to the Enstone outfit.

It’s also highly unlikely that the FIA would take too kindly to a driver purposely doing something dangerous just to effectively avoid a suspension when it hurts most, though that in itself may cause them to rethink their rules on penalty points.

That being said, it’s a Catch-22 (in Gasly’s case, literally) scenario, in that if they were to reset penalty points after each season, drivers could become more and more reckless down the stretch, knowing that there is no point in holding back since they’d start the following season without any penalty points anyway.

The Sao Paulo Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on Sunday, November 13, and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on Sunday, November 20 to conclude the 22-race 2022 Formula 1 season.