Track limits

Track limits define where the racetrack ends, normally the outside edge of the white lines. Run all four wheels beyond them and the lap can be deleted in qualifying or accumulate toward a penalty in the race, with sensors and cameras doing most of the policing at modern circuits.

For the record book the qualifying side is the one that bites: a deleted lap disappears from the official results but can survive in raw timing feeds. It is exactly why our lap records only ever quote officially published best laps, with the raw lap data used solely to identify who was driving.