Inconsistent stewarding is still an issue

Status
Not open for further replies.

Brogan

Legend
Staff Member
One of the stewards on the panel at the Monaco GP has admitted that Rubens Barrichello should have been investigated for throwing his steering wheel onto the track.

The reason it wasn't? They forgot as they were so busy dealing with the Schumacher pass on Alonso.

"Actually, I had Barrichello on my list," Paul Gutjahr told Blick. "But it was so hectic following the Schumacher case the incident got overlooked."

This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion.
What Barrichello did was extremely dangerous and far more deserving of a penalty than Schumacher's apparent breach of the over-complicated last lap safety car scenario rules.

After Barrichello threw his wheel onto the track, it was run over by Karun Chandhok, who dragged it all the way to the tunnel before it came loose and was run over again by Bruno Senna.
After what happened with Massa last year and an errant spring, this was an extremely foolish and reckless thing to do.

In addition to Barrichello not being penalised, we also saw Massa escape any form of penalty for a blatant block in Q3 on Jenson Button.
Alonso overtook Chandhok in the tunnel under yellow flags immediately after Nico Hülkenberg's crash but this was also overlooked or ignored.
Finally, Jenson Button threw a TV remote control out of his car at Rascasse on Saturday. Again dangerous and foolish as it could easily have been flicked up by a wheel into the path of a following car.

If all of these incidents can be picked up by viewers watching normal TV footage then there is absolutely no excuse for the stewards not to notice them.
They were all worthy of being investigated at the very least, with most, it not all sufficiently obvious to be awarded penalties.

It would seem the FIA, the stewards and race control still have some way to go with regards to fair and consistent race management.
 
I have to admit that I didn't notice Button's misdeed. However, I did see all of the others, and found Barrichello's expecially egregious and deserving of a sizeable penalty, as it could have easily resulted in severe injury or death.

The FIA overlooking all of the other transgressions to concentrate on the MS pass (which came about through the vagueness of the regulations) seems a bit like focusing on the damage the iceburg did to the paint of the Titanic and ignoring the other results of the encounter.
 
I think the stewarding is pretty egregious itself. I hoped that we'd seen the end to despotic stewardship and I was right. Hail to the new era of extremely lenient stewarding except when one really half-baked rule is broken and a punishment is applied to the benefit of no-one in particular [Sebastien Buemi, OK].

At least we're not seeing the rule being retrospectively applied after its invention á la Belgium 2008*.

*No, every post about stewards doesn't have to go down that road, but I'll be damned if it doesn't.
 
Barrichellos car failed,

At that point he proberly did know know what happened

His car hit the wall at 150mph and ricqoched off another.

His Car suffered huge damage, It is not unknown for parts of a car to ignite after a big crash.

His Car was in the middle road and he had to make his way quickly to safety.


I think his last thoughts was about complying with FIA procedure and he was more focused on making sure he got out the car has fast a possible before anything else might of happened. For anybody to suggest he should of been penalized is ridiculously harsh.

I don't know how much experience you guys have of racing a 200mph car. but i suspect after crashing at 150 odd mph for no fault of your own, your last thought would be about FIA procedure too, infact i bet most of you would of been trembling in fear, I know I would be.

So give the poor man a break.
 
Andrea_Moda_Rules said:
your last thought would be about FIA procedure
It's not about FIA procedure, it's about recklessly endangering other drivers' lives.
Two other drivers drove over the wheel, it's pure luck that another accident wasn't caused by it.
 
Can someone please tell me what article of the "FIA sporting code" did Schumacher breach in Monaco 2006.?

There is a point to this, I promise. :D
 
I'm not sure.

Wasn't it just classed as an "infringement of the sporting regulations" for deliberately stopping his car on the circuit?
 
Brogan said:
Andrea_Moda_Rules said:
your last thought would be about FIA procedure
It's not about FIA procedure, it's about recklessly endangering other drivers' lives.
Two other drivers drove over the wheel, it's pure luck that another accident wasn't caused by it.

recklessly endangering other drivers' lives? Or perhaps trying to save his own ass.

The point wasn't exactly about FIA procedure but more about Bariichello going because of something he proberly did not know about at the time.

For all he knew oil could of been the reason why he went off and another car could of done the exact same thing behind. Remember also where he went off, You only need to of played good old Grad Prix 2 to realize its blind through there, let alone actually driven around there for real. Who knows what could of been coming behind. Also Barrichello finished on the racing line has you tend to take a wide line on entry, theres no runoff for a driver to go into the kitty litter if somebody behind got caught out and could take the inside line.

Yes he broke the rules there but personally i think this is one situation where a little bit of leniency has to be given.
 
Andrea_Moda_Rules said:
Brogan said:
Andrea_Moda_Rules said:
your last thought would be about FIA procedure
It's not about FIA procedure, it's about recklessly endangering other drivers' lives.
Two other drivers drove over the wheel, it's pure luck that another accident wasn't caused by it.

recklessly endangering other drivers' lives? Or perhaps trying to save his own ass.

The point wasn't exactly about FIA procedure but more about Bariichello going because of something he proberly did not know about at the time.

For all he knew oil could of been the reason why he went off and another car could of done the exact same thing behind. Remember also where he went off, You only need to of played good old Grad Prix 2 to realize its blind through there, let alone actually driven around there for real. Who knows what could of been coming behind. Also Barrichello finished on the racing line has you tend to take a wide line on entry, theres no runoff for a driver to go into the kitty litter if somebody behind got caught out and could take the inside line.

Yes he broke the rules there but personally i think this is one situation where a little bit of leniency has to be given.

I agree with AMR on this one. Yes, Barrichello broke the rules by tossing his steering wheel onto the racing line, but this is one of those "letter of the law vs. spirit of the law" questions..................

--Did he break the sporting regs(the letter of the law)? Yes.
--Should the stewards have punished him for it(the spirit of the law)? Unfortunately, we'll never know what the stewards were thinking. If they felt his actions, by tossing the steering wheel onto the racing line, were a threat, why didn't they punish him post-race with a penalty for the next race?

That having been said, I agree with Brogan's opening post..............Barrichello should've been investigated for his actions by the stewards. In other words, Barrichello got a break because other drivers decided to do some other equally dumb things over the course of the weekend............. :o :o :o :o
 
Brogan said:
Yes, overall the stewarding was very poor at Monaco.

It could be worse. F1 could be stuck with Brian Barnhart and the geniuses' who run race control for the IndyCar Series............. :o :o :o :o :o
 
I initially wondered what the team thought about Barrichello trashing an expensive steering wheel by throwing it onto the track! I really think Rubens should've known better in this case.
 
rufus_mcdufus said:
I initially wondered what the team thought about Barrichello trashing an expensive steering wheel by throwing it onto the track! I really think Rubens should've known better in this case.

I agree, it looked to me like Rubens threw the steering wheel in a fit of pique rather than panic, backed up by his relatively leisurely walk to the barriers. It's not that long since drivers were being fined simply for not replacing steering wheels because of the safety aspect for marshalls moving the cars.

It does leave you in a dilemma - I agree it's good to see the back of the over officious days of stewarding, but when their process allows them to forget crash victims throwing objects onto the racing line in order to spend more time on rule interpretation you can only ask yourself how they missed a pass on yellow......

I know you can't please all of the people, all of the time, but pleasing a couple occasionally would be a good start!
 
So far no one has thrown their steering out onto a live track after Barichello so it’s hard to tell how the authorities are going to react but I expect the next offender to be given nothing more than a warning. They’ve been pretty consistent when it comes to common offences like cutting chicanes whiles more contentious issues like weaving will always be hard to police.
Looking again at Hamilton’s drive through penalty at Hungary, Sutil was given a 20k Dollar post race fine for a similar but worse offence when he crashed into Heidfield in Singapore 2009 and took him out of the race.

I think one thing worth remembering is that any punishment meted out by the stewards is dependent on how strong an argument the offending team puts to the stewards.
 
In Singapore Sutil was out of the race soon afterwards IIRC so drive through wasn't really possibility. Of course the grid penalty would have been so.
 
One of the stewards on the panel at the Monaco GP has admitted that Rubens Barrichello should have been investigated for throwing his steering wheel onto the track.

The reason it wasn't? They forgot as they were so busy dealing with the Schumacher pass on Alonso.

"Actually, I had Barrichello on my list," Paul Gutjahr told Blick. "But it was so hectic following the Schumacher case the incident got overlooked."

This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion.
What Barrichello did was extremely dangerous and far more deserving of a penalty than Schumacher's apparent breach of the over-complicated last lap safety car scenario rules.

After Barrichello threw his wheel onto the track, it was run over by Karun Chandhok, who dragged it all the way to the tunnel before it came loose and was run over again by Bruno Senna.
After what happened with Massa last year and an errant spring, this was an extremely foolish and reckless thing to do.

In addition to Barrichello not being penalised, we also saw Massa escape any form of penalty for a blatant block in Q3 on Jenson Button.
Alonso overtook Chandhok in the tunnel under yellow flags immediately after Nico Hülkenberg's crash but this was also overlooked or ignored.
Finally, Jenson Button threw his TV remote control out of his car at Rascasse on Saturday. Again dangerous and foolish as it could easily have been flicked up by a wheel into the path of a following car.

If all of these incidents can be picked up by viewers watching normal TV footage then there is absolutely no excuse for the stewards not to notice them.
They were all worthy of being investigated at the very least, with most, it not all sufficiently obvious to be awarded penalties.

It would seem the FIA, the stewards and race control still have some way to go with regards to fair and consistent race management.

And yet they penalise Hamilton (twice) for trying to overtake people. Something not quite right with this in my opinion :)
 
And yet they penalise Hamilton (twice) for trying to overtake people. Something not quite right with this in my opinion :)

Maybe it was to do with the way he ran into the cars he was trying to overtake?

This discussion started a year and a quarter ago. Much has changed since then. I feel that this season the stewarding has been more consistent.
 
Maybe it was to do with the way he ran into the cars he was trying to overtake?

This discussion started a year and a quarter ago. Much has changed since then. I feel that this season the stewarding has been more consistent.

I agree. It's not perfect, but then again I don't expect it to be perfect. Humans are never perfect. It's a lot better than it has been in previous years, though.
 
And yet they penalise Hamilton (twice) for trying to overtake people. Something not quite right with this in my opinion :)
I agree.........& Monaco can be boring, but
Schumie overtook LH........no contact
Lewis took the place back from MS......no contact.
Felipe defended his position...contact with LH
Maldanado defended his position by turning in....a car length early...contact with LH
On both occasions LH was racing, not sitting in a procession.
'Lukin after mi points'...

....... quote from Felipe, at Spa 2008. ......not trying to gain position...just hoping to hang on to third.....Kimi went into the wall...so he was gifted second. That wasn't good enough for Ferrari....Post race he was promoted to first, and the win was taken from LH.....Who showed what a master he is in changing conditions.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom