In 2023, a single Austrian Grand Prix produced 83 deleted lap times and left race control reviewing more than 1,200 potential offences. It was, briefly, the biggest embarrassment in the sport.
Every lap in Formula 1 carries a flag saying whether the time was deleted, and a reason. We pulled that flag for every qualifying session and every race of the 2025 season, then read the reason text on each one to find which corner caused it.
The reasons look like this:
TRACK LIMITS AT TURN 10 LAP 21
That is corner-level detail on every deletion of the season, which is what makes the rest of this possible.
We cross-checked it. The same information appears in the race control feed, in a longer form that names the car and the deleted time:
CAR 43 (COL) TIME 1:07.042 DELETED - TRACK LIMITS AT TURN 6 LAP 3
The lap flags gave 408 deletions. The race control feed gave 534 deletion-related messages, which is 24% higher and expected, because that feed also carries reinstatements and follow-up notes rather than only deletions. Two independent sources landing that close is the reason we trust the number.
403 of the 408 explicitly cite track limits. The remaining five are other causes.
The worst corner in Formula 1
Abu Dhabi, turn 1. Thirty-six deleted lap times in one season.
That single corner accounts for more deletions than eight entire Grands Prix managed between them.
Deleted lap times by corner, 2025 qualifying and races
The full top of the list:
Abu Dhabi turn 1: 36
Monaco turn 10: 25
Bahrain turn 13: 24
Qatar turn 10: 18
Singapore turn 2: 14
Canada turn 14: 12
Monaco turn 1: 11
Monza turn 5: 11
Austin turn 12: 11
What these have in common is not that they are difficult. It is that they are corners where running wide is quicker and the punishment for getting it wrong is a bit of run-off rather than a wall. Drivers are not making mistakes at these corners. They are testing a line and occasionally being told no.
Monaco is third, and that should be impossible
The circuit list is where it gets strange.
Abu Dhabi: 45
Austin: 39
Monaco: 38
Bahrain: 36
Qatar: 27
Las Vegas: 25
Monza: 24
Deleted lap times by circuit, 2025 qualifying and races
Monaco is third. A circuit lined with barriers, where the standard complaint is that there is nowhere to put a car, produced more deleted lap times than Monza, Silverstone, Spa or Zandvoort.
Turn 10, the Nouvelle Chicane, accounts for most of it with 25. A chicane is a corner you can straighten if you are willing to bounce over a kerb, and the reward for straightening it is immediate. So drivers try, and the timing loop catches them.
It is a useful correction to the intuition that track limits are a problem of modern circuits with wide asphalt run-off. The single most old-school circuit on the calendar is third on this list.
Races produce three times more deletions than qualifying
Qualifying: 109. Races: 299.
That is the opposite of what most people assume, because deletions in qualifying are the ones that get talked about. A deleted qualifying lap is dramatic and visible: a driver's time vanishes, a grid position is lost, and the broadcast covers it.
A deleted race lap is usually invisible. It matters for the fastest lap point, and it matters because repeated offences accumulate towards a black-and-white flag and then a penalty, but it does not change a position on its own. So it barely gets mentioned.
Races also simply contain far more laps, which explains much of the gap. But the point stands: most of this happens where nobody is looking.
Why the crisis ended
Compare the numbers honestly and the change is enormous.
2023, Austrian Grand Prix, one race: 83 deletions, with more than 1,200 potential offences requiring review. The FIA was reported to be considering the future of circuits where this kept happening.
2025, Austrian Grand Prix, qualifying and race combined: 13.
2025, the entire season, every qualifying session and every race: 408.
One race in 2023 produced 83 deletions; the entire 2025 season produced 408
The whole of 2025 produced roughly five times what one race produced in 2023.
Two things changed. The FIA substantially expanded its track limits policing operation, moving from a system that could be overwhelmed to one that reviews offences in real time. And circuits changed their geometry, with gravel and kerbing returned at the corners that generated the most offences.
The second is the part worth noticing, because it is the permanent fix. Policing catches offences. Gravel stops them being worth attempting. A driver who runs wide onto grass or gravel loses more time than they gained, so the incentive disappears and the deletion never needs to happen.
What this means for watching a race
A deletion is usually a driver probing a limit, not making an error. At the corners on that list, going slightly wide is faster, and the question is only whether the timing loop agrees.
Watch the corners, not the circuits. Deletions cluster hard. One or two corners at a venue produce almost all of them, and if you know which, you know where the drama will come from.
Most of it happens in the race, quietly. If you only follow qualifying deletions, you are seeing about a quarter of what is going on.
Data: FastF1, every qualifying session and race of the 2025 season.
Deletions identified from the per-lap `Deleted` flag, with the corner parsed from the accompanying reason text.
Cross-checked against the race control message feed, independently, which returned 534 deletion-related messages against 408 lap flags. The 24% difference is expected because the feed includes reinstatements and notes.
403 of 408 deletions explicitly cite track limits.
An earlier version of this analysis returned zero deletions across the entire season. The cause was ours: the data loader was called without race control messages enabled, and the deletion fields are populated from that feed, so they came back silently empty. It was caught because we require every analysis to state in advance what a plausible result looks like. Zero was not plausible.
2023 Austrian Grand Prix figures are from contemporaneous reporting, not from our own measurement, and are labelled as such on the chart.
Deleted lap times appear as published decisions during the session.
The Formula Dream app collects every FIA document of the weekend as it is released, which is where the decision behind a penalty actually appears, usually before the commentary catches up. It also runs a live Dashboard through every session with all the cars on the circuit map, a timing tower carrying lap times, gaps, intervals, tyre compound and age, flag and safety car alerts the moment race control calls them, and live driver radio as it is broadcast.
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