Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Slater: Stewards’ decision a French farce By Steve Slater Special Contributor
THE FIA Stewards must be thanking heaven for the dramas involving Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, and the spirited battle for third place between Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen that brought the French Grand Prix to life. Without them, all the attention would have gone on what I think was one of the poorest penalty decisions in F1 history.
In terms of the letter of the law, there might have been a case for the drive-through penalty that ruined any chance of Lewis Hamilton making his expected progress through the field. Except that looking again at the video footage, Hamilton had already overtaken Sebastien Vettel’s Toro Rosso before he arrived at the chicane, where he then slid off the track.
The penalty should only be invoked if a driver gains advantage by going off the track while overtaking. Well if Hamilton was already ahead, why was he penalized?
It was also suggested that maybe Hamilton might not have been penalized if he’d backed off to let Vettel back past him. That might work when the field’s a bit more spread out, but on the opening lap—don’t be so daft!
Hamilton, already dropped back to 13th on the grid after his misdemeanor in Canada, was up to 10th place mid way through the opening lap, slap-bang in the middle of the closely massed pack of cars, on a short 250 meter run to a hairpin bend. Can you imagine what would have happened if he’d backed off or braked suddenly? It would certainly have been a spectacular pile-up.
Sadly, not for the first time, the FIA Stewards have ruined a driver’s race based on at best, a dubious decision. I actually don’t blame them, they’re simply not racers.
Amazingly, none of the three volunteer stewards who are delegated to oversee each Grand Prix, have, to my knowledge, ever driven a Grand Prix car or anything remotely like it. In fact I’m pretty sure that none of them have even driven in a motor race, certainly not in the last decade or two.
Until the end of last year, the FIA seemed to recognize that the volunteers which include lawyers, former government administrators and a cinema owner, needed at least one permanent official among them. Until his retirement, permanent race steward Tony-Scott Andrews operated alongside two designated race stewards—one international and one from the national sporting authority hosting the Grand Prix.
This year the FIA decided to use three nominated stewards at each event, chosen from nationalities that are totally neutral—so they are not the same as any of F1’s competitors. This seems laudable enough, ensuring impartiality of decisions on national grounds, but at a stroke it means that British, French, Italian and German stewards, the ones who arguably know the most about the sport, can’t be used.
The FIA also appointed a fourth, non-voting ‘official representative’ of FIA president Max Mosley to assist in the stewards’ decision-making. The problem is again, that Alan Donnelly, while an experienced sports administrator, knows little about motor racing. His previous job was with the International Olympic Committee!
There are some retired Formula One drivers, including World Champions, who would be perfect recruits from the Stewards room. How about Niki Lauda, or Alain Prost?
Both, I’m sure, could be trusted to be impartial and would certainly have the drivers respect. I also believe that no real racer would have sanctioned Hamilton’s penalty.
Meanwhile, all credit to Ferrari. They had the best car for the job in Magny Cours and even when Kimi Raikkonen’s broken exhaust meant he had to give up the lead, he
had sufficient in hand to limp home in second place.
But the drive of the day has to go to Jarno Trulli in the Toyota. We’d all assumed he’d run light on fuel to qualify fourth and he’d stop early. Well that was the case, but having swiftly forged his way past Fernando Alonso into third, he grittily held onto the place through both of his pit stops until challenged by Kovalainen in the closing stages.
The McLaren driver had started tenth (after also being penalized!) and probably passed more cars than any other driver as he worked his way through the field. It was the classic case of the unstoppable meeting the immovable.
This time the immovable, Trulli, came out ahead after a brilliant twelve laps of wheel-to-wheel action. One bonus for Trulli was it happened at Magny Cours. A wine connoisseur and vineyard owner when not racing, he wouldn’t have far to go to find a quality vin rouge to celebrate with from the burgundy vineyards close to the track!
(Steve Slater is the expert half of the popular F1 commentary duo on Star Sports. Slater is a veritable encyclopedia of motor racing and has been involved in the sport at many levels including as journalist, race-organizer, radio broadcaster, and now commentator).
