All the different penalties

[Sulland]

The juries in F1, (not sure if the members change from race to race, or if it is the same group in every race), they are very active, and push out penalties left, right and centre.

Many of the incidents are in my book race incidents, and should not be penalized.

we have a current discussion regarding VAR in football, Video Assisted Referee. Many says that it takes away some of the sport, that has controversial referee decicions as a part of the game.

some of the same feelings are voiced amongst many F1 fans.
many also say that the race control push out sentences without hearing the drivers point of view. They should be heard, before sentenced to penalties are pushed out,

What do you feel on this issue?

[airshifter]

Well, AFAIK, the stewards always have the replays to go to during the race, and after as well.

I personally don't think controversial decisions should be part of the sport, but at times they already are. The biggest problem as I see it in F1 is the lack of consistency in the decisions, based on who is making the calls at differing races. If there is consistency, the drivers will take it up to the line that is drawn, and know that when they cross that line they will probably get a penalty of some form. But as it is now, race to race the rules are enforced to a differing level.

It seems the Austria race was enforced with a fairly heavy hand as compared to many, but they were at least consistent overall.

As for hearing from the drivers, I think that should only come into the picture when needed, which would be very rare. They already have all the telemetry and such that should help with a decision being made in a fair way. The drivers would rarely if ever have anything to add other than admitting to mistakes, or denying mistakes. In either case if the mistake was made an a rule broken, it needs to be punished in some form.

[F1nKS]

My theory is the stewards got tire of being criticized for Friday and Saturday when they did nothing and said enough is enough - we will show you. They then started looking for anything and everything to penalize.

[Nitrodaze]

The juries in F1, (not sure if the members change from race to race, or if it is the same group in every race), they are very active, and push out penalties left, right and centre.

Many of the incidents are in my book race incidents, and should not be penalized.

we have a current discussion regarding VAR in football, Video Assisted Referee. Many says that it takes away some of the sport, that has controversial referee decicions as a part of the game.

some of the same feelings are voiced amongst many F1 fans.
many also say that the race control push out sentences without hearing the drivers point of view. They should be heard, before sentenced to penalties are pushed out,

What do you feel on this issue?


The stewards are mostly the same team of people but with one external member who is rotated regularly. The external member is usually an ex-F1 driver who has been out of the sport for at least five years or more it appears. This external member is supposed to bring in a level of objectivity to the process of investigating an incident or infraction. Hence, you can picture the scene in the steward's office; four or more salaried stewards to one consultant ex-driver.

The stewarding operation has been fraught with inconsistencies and many occasions of decisions that have bordered on sheer prejudice against some drivers. 2019 for instance had several decisions that seemed the stewards were gunning for Racing Point drivers and team. And there was that infamous decision of Mika Salo against Hamilton for practising starts in the pit lane.

That aside, their job is like the referee of a highly tense and competitive football match. If the referee whips out the yellow card every time a player causes another player to fall to the ground, the fans would not enjoy the game. Hence, a careful level of discretion is required to balance between fairness and fans enjoyment of the race to that of the strict letters of the regulations.

The problem why fans perceive some of the decisions of the steward's office to be unfair is partly because fans lack the information that was available to stewards which informed their decision. But also, some of the infractions were so minor to warrant a warning rather than a punishment. Like Bottas accidentally spinning in the pit lane. It was unintentional but could potentially be dangerous. Nonetheless, the punishment was very harsh. A fine would have been better and would have not interfered with the interesting scenario of the race with Bottas in 2nd place.

This is one area of the sport that they should be putting lots of efforts improving rather than altering pitstop procedures l think.

[airshifter]

This is one area of the sport that they should be putting lots of efforts improving rather than altering pitstop procedures l think.

Agreed. Consistency in decisions would be huge for the sport, and give the drivers a chance to push right up to the legal limits on any given day. The way it is now, the line of that limit seems to move.

As for the Bottas thing, I wonder if the grid penalty was due to the fact that they had recently released the new pit stop rules as a safety thing, and felt obligated to take grid spots? I thought it was stupid myself as it was obviously not intentional, and overall kind of a freak thing.

[Nitrodaze]

Agreed. Consistency in decisions would be huge for the sport, and give the drivers a chance to push right up to the legal limits on any given day. The way it is now, the line of that limit seems to move.

As for the Bottas thing, I wonder if the grid penalty was due to the fact that they had recently released the new pit stop rules as a safety thing, and felt obligated to take grid spots? I thought it was stupid myself as it was obviously not intentional, and overall kind of a freak thing.

Consistency is the keyword here. If you take the penalties for Norris and Perez at the second race at Austria for instance, you have to wonder where the consistency is. Verstappen has been doing that for as long as he has been raced in f1 without penalties. That sort of move became known as the "Masi Elbow move". Originating from Michael Masi's 2018/19 philosophy of letting drivers run their overtaking competitors off the track in defence of their position through a corner. It has become a thing that is allowed when defending at corners.

Hence, fail to see why Norris or Perez was punished for doing just that. In Perez case, twice. With one of them occurring as a result of catching a momentary instability of the car during the duel for positions. The message seems to be changing. It would seem the "Masi Elbow" is now being withdrawn. Even so, can they do it consistently, l wonder.