Fine for Ferrari, Massa gets off free, and the FIA gets it wrong on every count
Felipe Massa escaped punishment for his slighty-too-fast getaway
Felipe Massa has not been punished following his incident in the pits with Adrian Sutil in today’s European Grand Prix. His Ferrari team has been fined €10,000 (£7,979) for releasing him into the path of Sutil’s car following his second pit stop on lap 37.
It’s a baffling verdict by the FIA and one that will be seen by many as further evidence the sports’ governing body goes out of its way to favour Ferrari.
I’m not convinced by Ferrari’s claim Massa gained no advantage, I think the penalty is totally unsuited to the infraction, and it is inconsistent with past FIA decisions.
Ferrari’s defence
Stewards' document 41 explained Massa's penalty (click to enlarge)
The decision issued by the stewards described the incident as: “Unsafe release from pit stop, although no sporting advantage was obtained.”
The use of the phrase “no sporting advantage was obtained” is surprising. It echoes the defence of the incident given by Ferrari’s Luca Colajanni immediately afterwards, that neither Massa was advantaged nor Sutil disadvantaged by the move.
The defence that ‘no advantage was gained’ is not ordinarily one that has much currency with the FIA. As Autosport’s Thomas O’Keefe, an expert on the FIA’s regulations, wrote in 2002 (sub. req.):
The Court of Appeal tends not to take kindly to defenses of competitors that sound like “we had no performance advantage” or there were “exceptional circumstances” or “it was unintentional,” which the FIA seems to regard as equivalent to The-Dog-Ate-My-Homework.
Apparently on this occasion the stewards of the meeting were quite happy with Ferrari’s claim that no advantage was gained by them – even if it wasn’t true.
I’m not convinced there is absolute proof Massa did not gain an advantage. Afterwards he admitted that he had lost time letting Sutil go past him:
I came very close to [colliding with him], so I needed to back off, and for sure I lost a lot of time.
Despite that he still left the pit lane about as close to the Force India as he could possibly have been.
So did he gain an advantage? Let’s imagine Ferrari had kept him in his box, and waited for Sutil to pass before releasing him. Would have have been able to leave the pits as close to Sutil as he did?
I would say almost certainly not. I think it is more than likely he gained an advantage by being released alongside Sutil, and then merging in behind the Force India, than being released by the team from a standing start as the car went past.
Massa’s defence
Massa’s reaction to the incident was, bizarrely, to blame Sutil:
I think it wasn’t very clever from his side, because even if he got out in front of me he would need to let me by, so it was a little bit of a shame to fight with him in the pit lane.
I stopped behind him on the pit stop and we left together. So when he was passing me by I was leaving the garage, so we were side-by-side. But, I mean, I was the leader and he was a lapped car.
This is irrelevant and rather silly. The rules say one car should not be released until it is safe to do so. It’s not realistic to expect cars that might be a lap down to stop and wait for another car to come out.
Precedent
The precedent based on how the stewards have handled previous ‘unsafe releases’ is somewhat confusing.
On several occasions F1 cars have left the pit lane two abreast. For example, Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel had just such a run-in at Hockenheim:
One might argue that on that occasion the pit lane was wide enough for both cars, whereas at Valencia it clearly was not. Presumably that was the FIA’s opinion as on that occasion neither driver was punished.
During the GP2 feature race at Valencia Karun Chandhok received a drive-through penalty after being released into the path of another competitor. The stewards wasted no time in punishing him.
Was Chandhok’s pit violation that much more unsafe than Massa’s? It’s hard to see how.
Does the punishment fit the crime?
Given the FIA have accepted Massa’s release from the pit lane was unsafe, their choice of punishment is completely wrong.
The purpose of a punishment should be to prevent someone from breaking the rules. When a team has broken the rules and gained an advantage, as Ferrari may have done here, and their punishment is a small (by F1 standards) fine, they are not going to be dissuaded from doing it again.
If Ferrari saved as little as half a second by releasing Massa too soon, they may consider it €10,000 well spent. Extra performance does not necessarily come so cheaply in the wind tunnel.
Yes, it would have been a shame to see Massa punished for a mistake he was not responsible for (despite his pathetic attempt to balme Sutil) having driven so well. But it is the only worthwhile way of penalising safety violations.
And just to make it worse…
Whether the FIA had punished Massa or not there would have lots of people unhappy with the outcome. During the F1 Fanatic live blog a poll on whether Massa should be punished split the audience 49% to 51%.
But what the FIA unquestionably got wrong was delaying the decision until after the race. Given that they were able to render a verdict on Chandhok’s misdemeanour in the GP2 race so quickly, it appeared very dubious that they deferred a decision on Massa’s penalty.
In the same weekend many were surprised to see Timo Glock go unpunished after delaying two other cars during qualifying. Once again the FIA’s decision-making seems totally arbitrary and inconsistent.
Do you think Massa should have been penalised for the pit lane infraction?
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Steven Roy said on 27th August 2008, 12:14
That is what Donnelly is there to do. To push the stewards in reaching what Max calls the right decision.
This is a safety matter and sporting advantage is irrelevant. Perhaps the despicable Donnelly can explain to us why Ferrari chose to release their driver into the path of another driver rather than wait until he has passed. Because they were trying to seek a sporting advantage. That is what F1 teams do. They push the rules as far as they can until the stewards decide they have gone to far and penalise them. I hope they have not set a precedent here that results in someone being injured or killed.
What happened at Valencia was negligence by the stewards of the meeting. Now that Ferrari have had the advantage of this rulling I hope they clarify the rule to prevent a serious accident.
It really is quite incredible how often the FIA invent new rules to benefit Ferrari. Aerodynamic blocking(only ever happened once-Ferrari benefitted), a part being illegal on the car at the track but legal on a jig on a different continent(only ever happened once-Ferrari benefitted), someone else’s measurement being given equal weight to the FIA’s(only ever happened once-Ferrari benefitted) etc etc etc
Sri said on 29th August 2008, 22:55
No one brings this up… seems funny though… racing drivers in their war machinery have brought theirs closer to others’, sometimes even inducing contact. Most times we hail the b@##s(wouldn’t sound half as good Keith, if i didn’t use this. my apologies) of some guys(Montoya in recent past), for being brave(and somewhat ludicrous in their endeavour) to be honest. This(cars getting closer to each other in the pitlane) has happened more than once in F1, with no penalty in more than a decade(that i’ve been following F1) to any of the teams.
I think some overzealous lot pressed the BIG RED BUTTON… then someone(probably some higher ranking official) thought… wait a minute, this has happened so many times before… how can they make it stick? As far as i know, all Ferrari would have had to do was to look over footage from races of past couple of years to get enough evidence corroborating the same, for the court of appeals to dismiss the penalty.
I really have no problem with people suggesting that FIA has been inconsistent. However… when some people suggest that it was not the idiocracy of Hamilton in Canada, but it was Kimi and Kubica, who were driving dangerously, i really feel like questioning their intelligene quotient. So your driving god made a mistake… is the sky going to fall or will it bring apocalypse any sooner, if you admitted as much? Michael, Senna, Prost, they all made mistakes. It is human to err. Also, people will say whatever is beneficial to them(with respect to teams, drivers and who so ever else). They fool you once, shame on them. They fool you twice, shame on YOU!
Steven Roy said on 31st August 2008, 14:16
The collision in Canada was quit clearly Hamilton’s fault. Of that there is no doubt. But had Kimi not been in an illegal area there would have been no crash. Cars are not allowed to run side by side in the pits. The fact that the FIA has not enforced the rule is regrettable but Max only wants to be seen as being in favour of safety and the environment he doesn’t actually want to do anything about it.
Had Hamilton not run into the back of Kimi and taken his normal place in the line then Kimi should have been penalised.
Alianora La Canta said on 31st August 2008, 15:03
Hamilton would still have been driving recklessly whether Raikkonen had been forced into his path or not. However, had Ferrari complied with the regulations, Hamilton wouldn’t have hit Raikkonen (either he’d have hit Kubica or he’d have hit nobody at all) and Raikkonen would have scored at least six points. Since driving recklessly in Safety Car conditions (in the pits or otherwise) contravenes Article 40.7 of the Sporting Regulations, Hamilton would (or should) have been penalised anyway irrespective of whether his driving caused a crash or not.
The point is that in the long run, inconsistent punishment of the unsafe release rule (and any other safety rule) hurts everyone, including those who benefit from the short-term leniencies. The FIA should bear that in mind next time it wants to avoid punishing a rule breach it has observed.
Gary Fincham said on 31st August 2008, 22:17
So Massa followed a driver whom he was lapping….therefore he was not racing!
Did Massa need to be so aggressive in the pit lane for contention and put himself and others at risk?
I feel as though the FIA need to take a serious look at themselves; can Ferrari do no wrong?
The FIA should be embarressed with their decision and realise that a rule of their own; is a rule.
The fact is…no damge was done, BUT the FIA has got a reputation for penalising every other team but Ferrari.
SoLiD said on 2nd September 2008, 21:15
The fine is not right.
That they reviewed it after the race is fine…
But I expected a five or ten places grid penalty or such.
Money doesn’t hurt that much for such a team!
But it would have been very sad to see Massa lose a second race in a row, wich he deserved to win!
(at that from a lewis fan ;) )
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) said on 6th September 2008, 15:57
More on this story in this new post: Ross Brawn says FIA don’t help Ferrari. Senna’s GP2 penalty says otherwise
Tiger Arizona said on 19th October 2008, 12:01
Please if you could answer this question for me- why is the grand prix races is not identicaly same distance, i.e the Chinese grand prix is 56 laps whereas the Brazilian grand prix is 71?
BadGirl100 said on 23rd October 2009, 1:34
From the drop-down menu, select the appropriate setting: a. ,