If you watched the Mexico F1 race this weekend, you'll have seen how the FIA and the race stewards totally destroyed the race. On the opening lap, Hamilton went off-track in the first corner and gained an advantage in doing so. Rosberg did the same on the second corner. The stewards investigated Hamilton, and decided no further action was needed, and didn't even look at Rosberg.
Skip to the closing laps of the race where Verstappen was defending against an attacking Vettel, and he went wide on the same corner, performing the exact same maneuver and even driving pretty much the same line as Hamilton, and as soon as the race was over, the stewards handed him a 5 second penalty.
This dropped Verstappen from third place to fifth.
Then we come to Vettel who was so infuriated by the fact that no action was taken during the race, that he got on the pit radio, cursed out his pit crew and Ferrari management and culminated in telling Charlie Whiting (the race director) to "F*ck Off". Once again, the stewards could have put a stop to that right then and there, but instead they waited until after the podium ceremony to hand down a 10 second penalty to Vettel (actually for changing line during braking). This pushed him down to fifth and pushed Verstappen back up to fourth in the final results.
This was a total farce. The whole point of race stewards and their guest drivers at the weekends, is to make a decision there and then. By dragging it out to the end of the race, and by being inconsistent with their penalties and choices, entire races are destroyed.
Think about it - if they let Rosberg and Hamilton go and let Verstappen go, the race would have ended exactly the way it did.
But if they handed down 5 second penalties to all three, and a ten second penalty to Vettel - doing it right there during the race whilst the teams could do something about it with strategy changes - the end result would have been very different.
The FIA need to exercise some consistency in their decisions. Verstappen was robbed of a third place yesterday because of corporate idiocy and procrastinating race stewards.
4 comments:
Yes, very inconsistent decisions.
You either give penalties to both Hamilton and Verstappen or you let then both get away with it. Their mistakes were almost identical.
Hamilton would not have been so affected by a penalty though, because it would have been at the beginning of the race, and it could have been manageable.
My view is that they shouldn't have gotten a penalty, because they did not win a position, nor did they really gain time against the following car.
Anyway, these late decisions saved Montoya from drinking from Ricciardo's shoe :D
You seem to be very confused about what have happened:
1. It was Hamilton who went off in the first corner, he was a few car-lengths in front of everyone so probably didn't gain any more advantage and there was no investigation about the accident
2. Rosberg went off in the second corner because a red bull pushed him off track, so i guess they canceled each others infringements
3. Vettel was punished for changing the line in the breaking zone (the rule he was so keen of), not for talking shit to stewards
4. the stewards were busy investigating Verstappens behavior so it's only reasonable it took a bit more time to investigate Vettel
Oleg - post has been adjusted.
Chris, it still doesn't make much sense to me.
Hamilton, Rosberg and Verstappen incidents were very different in nature and i think stewards made the correct decisions.
For example Verstappen was defending his position and had enough of runoff to get back on track, but chose not to; while Hamilton was well in front of the pack but made a mistake and in fact might have ruined his tyres instead of gaining advantage.
As for giving the penalties to Verstappen and Vettel during the race - i'm pretty sure that wouldn't have affected the positions, simply because there were just a couple of laps left.
The only person who might be disappointed is Ricciardo, and only because he didn't get to drink champagne.
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