Four of F1’s ‘unwritten rules’ (Video)
How do F1 drivers know when they've pushed too far?
At the Italian Grand Prix weekend driving standards was a hot topic again – hardly surprising given the furore over Lewis Hamilton’s penalty at Spa, and Monza’s combination of two tight chicanes plus a soaking wet track.
With Hamilton’s appeal against his penalty due to be heard on Monday 22nd September it’s a good time to try and clear up the vast grey areas surrounding the rules of racing in F1.
The only thing that has become clear about the rules of F1 racing during the past two events is how unclear the regulations are. The rules of racecraft occupy a tiny portion of the vast tomes of FIA regulations – the detail is supposedly filled out by a number of implicit or ‘unwritten rules’ though it can be hard to work out what they are by looking at past precedents.
What the rules do say
The regulations governing wheel-to-wheel racing in F1 are detailed in the Sporting Regulations (articles 16 and 30) and Appendix L to the International Sporting Code (Chapter IV, Article 2.g).
The latter is what Hamilton was punished under at Spa and simply reads:
The race track alone shall be used by the drivers during the race.
A rigid interpretation of that ruling would likely have seen hundreds of penalties dishes out over the Monza weekend during the GP2 and F1 races. Of course, these rules aren’t enforced to the letter, which is why the unwritten rules are so important. So what are these unwritten rules?
Cutting corners
Let’s start with the ‘unwritten rule’ that’s at the heart of the recent controversy: cutting corners.
Unwritten rule 1: You can cut a corner and gain an advantage if you’re defending
At Hungary in 2006 Pedro de la Rosa dived down the inside of Michael Schumacher at the turn six/seven chicane. Schumacher missed the chicane and kept the position. Fans who had been used to seeing drivers penalised for gaining an advantage by cutting the chicane were perplexed to see Schumacher not receive a penalty. Here’s a video showing the contentious move:
Afterwards de la Rosa spoke to the stewards who told him they’d ‘clarified’ the rules:
The position is that if you are not side by side with the driver ahead of you going into the chicane, then the driver who is ahead of you can jump the chicane and keep his position without being penalised.
Unwritten rule 2: If you cut a corner while attacking you can’t overtake your rival at the following corner
Leaving aside the vexed question of whether or not Hamilton had gained an advantage by cutting the chicane at Spa after he’d yielded his place to Raikkonen (see here for a debate about that), the stewards announced before Monza a change in the ‘unwritten rules’ about what happens when an attacking driver cuts a corner.
In future, they said, if a driver passes another in front of him by cutting a corner, not only must he give the place back, but he must not pass the driver at the following corner.
Pushing a rival off the track
Should drivers ever be allowed to push their rivals off the track? I’m a bit uneasy about the idea but the stewards actually turn a blind eye to it in a lot of cases:
Unwritten rule 3: A defending driver can push their rival off the track
There’s actually quite a few examples of this happening. A famous one involved Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya on the first lap at Imola in 2004. Montoya had his Williams alongside Schumacher’s Ferrari at the exit of Tosa, but Schumacher pushed him off the track.
Schumacher stated in the press conference afterwards that he hasn’t seen Montoya (!) to which Montoya uttered his famous response that Schumacher must have been “blind or stupid”.
Similarly in 2003 Schumaher pushed Alonso off on the Hangar straight at Silverstone, to which Alonso reacted with outrage.
But Alonso’s no fool, and realised that if Schumacher was going unpunished for it he could to, so he pushed Hamilton off the track on the first lap at Spa last year. But Hamilton’s no fool, and he pushed Glock off the track at Monza last weekend. And Raikkonen did it to Hamilton at Spa.
It’s not pretty, and as F1 is usually preoccupied with being safe and desperate to improve overtaking opportunities, perhaps this is an unwritten rule we could do without?
Defensive driving
This often goes hand-in-hand with the above rule. It’s been tested a lot in recent years and I wrote a post about it in April when GP2 racer Romain Grosjean pushed the unwritten rule too far.
Unwritten rule 4: A defending driver may move off-line once to defend his position and then move back to his original line on the way into a corner, but cannot push a rival on that line off the track
In the run-up to the controversial move at Spa, Kimi Raikkonen gave a typical example of how to execute this move. He moved off the racing line to the right of the track to cover the inside of the corner, then moved across to the left to get the best line possible into the corner, while Hamilton was trying to pass him on the left-hand side.
What Raikkonen’s didn’t do was commit Grosjean’s error at the Circuit de Cataluinya. Grosjean pushed rival Kamui Kobayashi clean off the track when he moved to claim his line for the first corner:
Grosjean’s punishment was a drive-through penalty.
Hamilton was pulling the same move on Webber at Monza when the pair made contact. So had Hamilton broken the unwritten rule? Here’s the video of what happened:
I haven’t been able to look back at onboard footage from the cars but it looks to me as though Hamilton gave Webber – just barely – enough room for Webber to get into the corner without hitting the McLaren or going off the track. Webber’s car appears to slew slightly to the right before striking Hamilton’s wheel. It’s possible that Webber may have out-braked himself, which might have been a factor in the stewards’ thoughts.
But certainly, Hamilton cut this one extremely fine, if my interpretation of the ‘unwritten rule’ is accurate. He was probably only a few centimetres from getting another penalty.
Of course, if this were a written rather than unwritten rule it would probably be a lot easier to make a call on close decisions like this. And the same goes for the other unwritten rules.
A bizarre way to regulate a sport
It’s difficult to understand why important clarifications like this aren’t written down – either as hard-and-fast rules, or just guidelines to give stewards a bit of wiggle room.
Why aren’t these rules written down? Why are they apparently only covered them in drivers’ briefings? Do the FIA not want fans to understand the rules of the sport?
If a ‘clarification’ gets made in the briefing room ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, but isn’t announced to the press, how are fans supposed to know what’s going on? And how do future drivers find out about them unless a charitable rival tells him (not likely)?
A cynic would suggest the stewards issue whatever decision comes into their head and then ‘clarify’ their position with ‘unwritten rules’ afterwards simply to look consistent. And über-cynics would suggest they tend to favour one team when they do it.
Max Mosley gave a typically withering response to criticism of the FIA’s inconsistency and lack of transparency over the latest row:
It’s a reflection, and I’m sorry to say this, of the stupidity of the people who say it because they haven’t really thought the thing through and put themselves in the position of the people who have to take these very difficult decisions.
But when the rules as written give so little detail, and when the stewards issue ‘clarifications’ that seem to contradict past precedent, and when controversial decisions are published with so little reasoning (the Hamilton-Raikkonen incident was summarised in seven words), you have to question the sense of leaving important rules of race-craft shrouded in secrecy.
It’s like a trap designed to catch unlucky drivers out and give them arbitrary penalties. It’s almost as if Mosley gets some sort of thrill out of punishing people.
The comments on this article are split across multiple pages. If you are having trouble viewing them via the links below click here to see all comments.
You’re going to get into trouble for that last line…
Btw, “Hamilton gave Webber – just barely – enough room to get into the corner without hitting the McLaren [Red Bull?] or going off the track…”
In all, a VERY good and comprehensive article. Maybe (I think Doctorvee was saying something similar), it would be a good idea to keep track of these unwritten rules and the examples of where they have been applied or mis-applied.
“It’s almost as if Mosley gets some sort of thrill out of punishing people.”
Sneakily clever.
This is like manna from heaven! I’ve been looking for these ‘unwritten’ rules since Spa, when I was as puzzled as everyone else that Lewis was punished for ‘not using only the track’.
In an interview with Lewis a year or so ago about the meeting with Ron when he gave him the drive for 07, Lewis reports that Ron told him to be fitter than any other driver and know the rules better than any other driver. I remembered this when in a subsequent TV interview (might have been after a race) a journalist questioned Lewis about agressively moving twice in front of a rival when your only allowed to move across once. Lewis immediately corrected him by saying that you can move once, but then move again to regain the racing line for a corner. This was why I was surprised in Spa. I think Lewis and McLaren and indeed Charlie Whiting understood that if you gain advantage by cutting a corner to pass, you show that you have relented that advantage by letting the other guy past. Was this ‘next corner’ bit new for Monza? I’m still confused – maybe I’m just one of the stupid people Max keeps going on about.
Great site, btw
Keith,
Good summary, despite your comparison between M Schumacher maneouvre with F Alonso’s last year or Kimi this one against L Hamilton is bizarre.
Last year, almost everybody agreed, even in Great Britain (after a big debate of course), Fernando did nothing but keeping his line, the same than Kimi this one, despite in this case, not everybody agreed, at least in Great Britain.
In any case, would be good for the sport if the FIA just start to write those “non written rules”. Maybe they should not be 100% right for every case, but at least the drivers will know how to behave and what will be the consecuences if they don’t.
It is like having a wall, maybe the wall doesn’t make justice in every occasions, but the drivers know very well if they go off the track, his race is finish!
Ah, that last line was priceless…
Yes, a clarification would be in order. Overall, I don’t like an sport where you’re allowed to crash into rivals without punishment, or you can make them go off the track. I’d prefer something were the willingness to take risks, the skill of the driver and the overall quality of the machine you’re riding make a difference.
Otherwise, aggressive driving will rule and we will have Hamiltonian drivers competing to see who has the biggest balls.
When Kimi do this all you was talking that he pushed Lewis of the track. When Lewis pushed Glock off the track and fight with Webber in a very dangerous way you said that the rules are not quite good… Maybe we have to decide what we think about this situation whitout looking on the driver nationality.
V8 supercars do not accept “a driver pushing a rival off the track” they have a rule regarding “racing room”.
on the hamo webber incident = i reckon Hamo did cut it fine, only saw webber’s onboard and it was very close, a bit sill from a man whose got a world title at stake.
if they hit at any differant angle, they’d have both been out.
i say dont be to harsh on drivers or it will end up deterring them from having a go at passing, which is the VERY last thing the sports needs!
only need to punish if deliberate or so obviously dangerous that something needs to be done!
thing is, with wheel to wheel racing u will get incidents etc from time to time!
at the end of the day it’s all a matter of ettiquite
Friend of Max – The Red Bull/McLaren thing, bit of a clumsy line by me. What I meant was “Hamilton gave Webber – just barely – enough room for Webber to get into the corner without hitting the McLaren or going off the track” – which is what I’ve changed it to now.
Prateek –
John Spencer – Thank you!
“Was this ‘next corner’ bit new for Monza?” – That’s the very nub of this argument here.
IDR & Gregoff – Sorry I’m not sure what your points are about the “driver pushing a rival off the track” stuff but I think Jones makes a good point about how drivers in other series have the concept of “racing room”. I’d like to see F1 adopt that. It seems crazy that the (unwritten) rules seem to favour the driver in front so much, when overtaking in F1 in normal conditions is so difficult.
Many thanks Keith for this collection, and for this excellent site. Keep up the good work!
Comment from Sam moved here: Will Fernando Alonso pick BMW, Honda or stay at Renault in 2009 …
I tried to dig deep into to the sporting and technical regulations following the Spa incident and I was very surprised nothing is written there except that sentence Keith mentioned above, the same one stewards used in explaining the penalty …
During the Monza race, when Massa overtook Rosberg by throwing all 4 wheels over the kerbs (and the artificial grass patch), I wondered is this is a case of attacking those kerbs to the limit or is it already cutting the chicane … Me wondering did not affect anything. It however looked like Massa and Ferrari wondered too as it took a whole lap before Massa (already well clear of Rosberg) slowed down and let Rosberg re-pass … How much time Massa (and his slow thinking crew) wasted there …
If the game is all about “unwritten rules”, then they should make the game completely free of rules. Now that WILL be EXITING. Think of all the actions that will happen….
If the rules, written or otherwise, are to be held as consistent between GP2 and F1 then Hamilton should have had a penalty last weekend in my opinion – his move on Webber looked worse from the footage we have seen than the Grosjean move.
@Milos I’m sure ITV commentary said the FIA had asked Massa to give the place back to Rosberg, but they thought he had just taken the normal line so were a bit puzzled by it. Maybe shows not all decisions go in their favour!
Great article Keith! So many unanswered questions? Do you think it would be possible to get a straightforward answer to all this from the FIA. And going by his comments, I think Mad Max would be hard pressed to explain it all.
You would think that all these ‘unwritten rules’ would have been written down by now, knowing the complexity of the sport. This must be a hangover from the 50s and 60s with the ‘Gentleman Racers’. No wonder the poor Stewards have to ponder them after the race!
I am all for rules that allow for racing, overtaking and all the things which keep the sport interesting. Its little wonder at the moment that most drivers seem content just to hold position!
And as for the ‘unwritten rule’ that seemed to appear only at Spa, and only for F1, we should pay attention to the next infringement of it by a non-McLaren car, and see what penalty is imposed…..
Great article Keith, I certainly hope a lot of readers who come here read it and keep it in mind, before they go criticizing drivers for their race actions.
The Hamilton – Glock incident, I think was just a case of Hamilton taking the proper line through the corner, like someone said in a previous post. Glock may never have had that opportunity to get so close in that shrinking space had there not been a car immediately ahead of Hamilton, which slowed him down, just after he had overtaken Glock.
The Ham – Web incident was about 60 -40, Both cars moved in the same general direction, but Hamilton was well ahead when he started his move, and Webber was closing in. It was obvious Webber was going nowhere with that move.But he was left a car’s width and still attempted to stir into Mclaren.
Lets not forget, Kimi driving Massa off the track, at high speed,at Spa
So the unwritten rules are the guidelines or advice fed back to the drivers and teams in the drivers’ briefings with the race director or the stewards? The drivers all seemed to talk confidently about the concept of ‘gaining an advantage’. And yet, the written rules as published by the FIA flatly contradict the unwritten rules by which the stewards supposedly operate. The written rules state that you must use only the track at all times (meaning the bit between the white lines). This turns out to mean that you must keep at least one wheel on the track. Given that the technical regs specify measurements down to the millimetre, why don’t the sporting regulations get a tad more specific about the position of the cars on the track, maybe by incorporating the ‘one wheel within the white lines’ bit? But then of course the regulation as implemented by the stewards is completely different. It turns out that you can leave the track at any time, do whatever you like and come back onto the track, just so long as you haven’t blatantly/subtly/whatever gained a perceived/actual/theoretical/whatever ‘advantage’ by so doing. Again, this qualification MUST be incorporated into the written regulations, otherwise they are meaningless.
p.s. Does anyone think McLaren will actually win the Spa appeal?
John – and think back to the Massa/Sutil brawl in the Pit Lane. Massa was not supposed to have gained an ‘advantage’, even though he was a lap ahead of Sutil and already had it….
Very interesting topic, Keith.
The relationship between FIA and drivers seems to be something like: “Don´t ask us to tell you if you are wright or wrong. We will not gonna help you on this issue.”
Max favourite maxim:
“We are always right even when we are wrong” as that is the main purpose of a governing body…
So all U want to say that is HAMILTON was right in every move that he made and he should not be punished at all for whatever moves he make.
I am not sure why this mess is not happening when other drivers do it.?Why it always rises when HAMILTON does it?
Though HAM was clearly fast in monza he made some ruthless move on webber and glock.???
Madurai – Hamilton was tough with Webber and Glock but, as I wrote in the article, it’s petty similar to what’s gone before. He did cut it very fine with Webber though.
Brar – Yep I think that’s pretty much Max’s motto…
Its not that “SCHUMI did it”,”kimi did it” so did HAM.
I suppose evry other driver gave room to their rivals.
eg:Massa was just riding on the kerbs when he overtook NICO.Not a part of wheel was in grass.But he let NICO through.TRUE SPOTSMANSHIP.It all depends on indiviuals.
Sounds more like a dictatorship than a governing body to me.
madurai – what we are more concerned about here is that a driver was penalised for a move he made in one race, but nobody was penalsied for doing exactly the same move in the races beforehand, or afterwards.
Are these rules being made up race-by-race? Are they being made to penalise one team or one driver? Or are the Stewards so varied in their ideas about applying the rules that its a lucky dip every time you go racing?
Excellent article Keith.
To be honest, the Rosberg-Masa incident at Monza just muddied the waters even further. Massa made a perfectly good move at the (second?) chicane and though he was over the kerb he still had two wheels on the track, as far as I was concerned. Yet he was made to give the place back.
However, racing in clear air on your own that is the line that virtually every driver would use.
Let’s be honest, this is all about finding ways to manipulate the championship and keep things artificially close. Having vague, fluffy, unwritten rules is an excellent way to do it because you have to be around watching for a while to get similar situations where the rules were applied differently.
DJ This is what I am concerned about “Are they being made to penalise one team or one driver?”.Why is that one driver always being HAM and the TEAM Maclaren that everyone are concerned abt when many drivers also get penalities that..????
Madurai – the suggestion that the governing body favours Ferrari over other teams started years, perhaps decades before Hamilton arrived on the scene.
I am also thinking back to a few years ago. when Jenson Button started with Honda. His car was always chosen to be weighed at a critical time in Qualifying, and at one point he missed a vital time window. It may just have been coincidence, or the way the camera was pointing, but it did make me ponder……
But we get this furore only when it involves HAMILTON and MACLAREN in the recent….
if I can remember correctly HAM was just let off in FUJI gp after all other drivers reported of RASH driving…
Madurai – It’s been 14 years since a driver lost a win due to a stewards’ decision (see here). It’s a rare event and definitely worth looking into in detail. And elsewhere on the blog people have been asking for an article along these lines.
There are loads of other incidents like the Fuji one that could have been included here but I didn’t want to make the article too long and it made sense to use examples from the last two races. But perhaps this is something I’ll do a sequel to in future.
John Spencer, you are exactly right. None of the other drivers in their haste to blame Hamilton after Spa, mentioned this “next corner rule”. They said things like “spirit of giving up the advantage”, “mustn’t be impatient”, “could have waited a bit”, but nothing CLEAR, which means that they obviously didn’t have a clue about the “rule”. Then at Monza they “clarified” it. Mmmm, more like made it up on the spot to justify the penalty. I hope Ron is aware of all this and shows what a disgrace it is in the court case.
Keith, thank you for this article. I personally think Hamilton crossed the fine line in the incident with Webber but the stewards took no action, so I thought maybe I was “the cheese who stands alone” on that one.
I’ve been thinking of the job of stewards per se and was thinking of the role of stewards in another sport which has a high priority on safety of its participants, horse racing. One particular rule I find interesting is the rule of interference (actually a group of subset rules under interference) Horse racing has very strict rules and very strict consistent adherence to them, is it only because formal betting money is involved?
Agree with John Spencer, given that other rules are detailed right down to the minutia of measurements, it seems odd that driver behaviour is not more detailed. They can no longer rely (if they ever could) on the intangibles of driver etiquette & sportsmanship vs competitiveness.
I don’t think that McClaren will win the Spa appeal. None of the other drivers have come out publicly to support the appeal. There was a large reaction from fans & some commentators but not as severe a reaction to past decisions. The other thing against the appeal is paradoxically the fact the McClaren checked twice with the referee if their “damage limitation” action was enough. This suggests that they were not confident that they had in fact done enough.
Craig, interesting that race control seemed to know what to suggest to Ferrari in Monza, whereas Mosley said that the teams were not to ask race control because he’s not the steward, and that race control shouldn’t have answered McLaren in Spa.
Or is it that race control can competently advise Ferrari during a race, but if he advises McLaren during a race, it means diddly squat?
‘I hope Ron is aware of all this and shows what a disgrace it is in the court case.’
Nope, I don’t think it will change anything… The clarification just reiterated how the drivers seem to have understood it anyway. While it was not explicitly mentioned, their statements of patience and waiting all imply that they agree with the ‘next corner rule’.
haha love that last line.
I’ve always thought that un-written rules were like a gentleman’s agreement. i.e if you break them you lose the respect of your fellow competitors and face the prospect of revenge in the future. But you can’t really be punished for them by a governing body because…well they’re not actually in the rules of the sport.
Journeyer, your understanding of clear rules is obviously vastly different to mine.
Madurai – you’re right that there has been more focus on recent steward’s decisions and these do involve Lewis Hamilton, but that’s because he’s leading the championship and the decisions the stewards make after races are having more effect on the championship than the racing that takes place on the track. It’s pretty clear that many infringements further down the field are not investigated by the stewards because these are not ‘brought to their attention’ and don’t affect championship points.
The ‘furore’ as you put it has arisen because of the inconsistency and opacity in decision making. Stats presented in previous posts on this site show that McLaren ARE more penalised than other teams and have a lower appeals success rate as well. This alone is insufficient evidence of conspiracy, but it does make the matter worthy of investigation (contrary to Max Moseley spluttering assertions).
And Hamilton was ‘let off’ in Fuji last year because, er, Vettel ran into Webber. However, that incident did set an important precedent because the FIA stewards relied on YouTube footage posted by a fan several DAYS after the event. Maybe the FIA sporting regulations should set out a statute of limitations on race events. Otherwise I’m sure we can turn up footage of Fangio cutting Nuerburgring chicanes in the 1950s, and the FIA can strip him of a championship or two….
wat abt HAM getting help from stewards in EUROPEAN GP 2007.?????Is there conspiracy against TONIO,BUTTON etc….????We need to investigate..@@@
‘Journeyer, your understanding of clear rules is obviously vastly different to mine.’
Yep. Well, to be honest, ever since I watched F1 in the 1990s, that’s how I always understood that rule. The FIA only reiterated it for me.
May be Mclaren doesnot using it owns technology for developing its cars have caused FIA to react in such a way….Just a thought@@@@wat say….????
Keith,
I do enumerate a dozen of cases on the post about Vettel´s win so I must to say thank you for the article, it summarized my confuse and poorly written comment there.
In the Lewis-Webber´s case, Coulthard, “Mr Movable Chicane†and Webber´s team-mate, has wrote this on his column at iTV about Kimi´s defensive line:
“…Clearly Kimi took a defensive line into the corner, making Lewis go the long way around – but that was his right as the lead car, and HE DID NOTHING UNFAIR…â€
(http://www.itv-f1.com/Feature.aspx?Type=David_Coulthard&id=43932)
So, if there is “Driving etiquette†to Kimi´s defensive moves, why this can´t works to Lewis too?
Is interesting how ones scrutiny Lewis moves while Kazuki try to dangerously overtake at Parabolic and none seems to “remember†the move. I guess what is behind this forgiving…
Craig has mentioned GP2 and I must to say that the same Timo Glock who complained about Lewis, was the same one who crossed the white line and “defensively†pushed Lewis off the track dozens of times at Turkey in 2006.
I could use another example of how “the rules could be held as consistent between GP2 and F1â€: in Barcelona, Lewis were leading the race and fighting for the championship and his team-mate, Alex Premat, pushed him off track and won the race. Do you know what Lewis has said after the race?
“This is racing…â€
Anyway, I know why some drivers are complaining. Looking back to the history, you can understand how sometimes they try to get together, acting like a corporation. I hate to make comparisons between Senna and Lewis, but we have the same fuss that we did see on the days of The Great Man. Alboreto has said that about Senna once:
“…Senna acts like a bandit on track. I have the impression that, under his helmet, he drivers with a knife between his teethes (I do not know if there are this linguistic expression in English!)…â€
Niki Lauda made the best comment for the whole weekend which was to have full time racing stewards that are consistent from race to race rather than having different stewards at different events. If that can be done than many of these unwritten rules can remain unwritten.
“Sounds more like a dictatorship than a governing body to me.”
Funnily enough the ‘unwritten rules’ rather remind of the Westminister parliamentary system where many things are governed by conventions and practices that are not actually codified in any constitution or the like. Even, I believe, regarding such important things as the position and responsibility of the Prime Minister and how to Cabinet is appointed.
Bit of an obtuse example, perhaps, but it just shows that Formula One is not the only case where things are sometimes governed by ‘unwritten rules.’ And we are talking about a sovereign nation, not just a sport!
Keith,
The unwritten rules were created alongside with the F1 Champ, back in the 50’s. Every driver knows the unwritten rules so damm well, they just pretend they don’t, to freeely push the boundaries.
PS: Great article.
Becken, very interesting post. Basically the rule is:
Lewis Hamilton: scrutinise EVERYTHING he says and does on and off the track and twist it to show he is a bad and dangerous driver, he is a nasty person, he’s not as good as Vettel, Schumacher, Alonso, Senna, Massa (insert ANY driver’s name here), he has no respect, he doesn’t deserve to be in F1, blah-di-blah.
Any other driver: if they win, great; if they lose, too bad. No interest in what they say or do off the track, are allowed to say whatever they please without criticism or analysis; they deserve to be in F1.
@ S Hughes – well how did Hamilton successfully manage to create that rule you mentioned in less than 18 months since he arrived in F1 …
sorry Keith , I know you had another post on this topic few months back
back to those written/unwritten rules – I think it is same in any business. if you deal with people who follow those “unwritten” rules you save yourself lots of paperwork and headache and generally conduct the business easier and quicker
if you deal with people who pretend there are no unwritten rules and therefore there is nothing to follow, then you are asking for trouble. you either quickly adjust and start writing everything down (or at least start making everything crystal clear) or you do get yourself in trouble.
and then you can also get in trouble, if you are new in town and no one told you about those unwritten rules
To S Hughes, all drivers moves should be scrutinise if they are infringing or very close to infringing. Other drivers as mentioned above have had infringements, not just Hamilton. To me, Hamilton is highlighted in many, may of these discussions for a number of reasons. Has another driver been involved in as many incidents this season as Hamilton, Kimi a couple, Massa maybe one, Hamilton at least 4 I can think of straightaway, so he is top of my list and therefore more likely to be discussed. The other issue is that Hamilton when interviewed is proud of his aggressive prowess or being on the borderline of infringing. So he is really inviting such scrutiny. Didn’t show one iota of remorse, embarrassment or humility after running into Kimi at a red light. Even the most die-hard Hamilton fan could argue that was his finest moment? If it was a pure accident, he looks foolish for a stupid mistake, if deliberate to avoid looking foolish, then he broke the unwritten rules and damaged another rivals race.
I also think he broke an huge unwritten rule last season by driving and testing a car that he knew was created by using stolen work papers, still he probably thought he had no choice as he signed a contract with McClaren and he would be in breach of that contract. Again, even if under duress, not his finest moment?
I don’t think I’ve read any comment here that says he is a nasty person, or that he doesn’t deserve to be in F1. All I’ve read is that some of his driving incidents are questionable from a rules point of view and perhaps from unwritten rules point of view. As are other drivers questionable incidents. Why does it always come down to two sides, pro and anti Hamilton? No in-between???
It depends on your perception, some think his technique has brought excitement to the circuit, others think too cocky & borderline at times. I wouldn’t say Hamilton is the John McEnroe of F1, in my opinion but he is not quite the Roger Federer either, still I would not never say he does not belong in F1 or is a nasty person. But hey, it is acknowledge that both you and Becken are Hamilton fans and will vigorously defend him
I don’t think Hamilton will win his appeal because the FIA respects no procedural values and, as the site’s analysis shows, there is no recognizable substantive interpretation of the rules at issue.
Proving this point further, the FIA is atempting to prejudice the appellate panel by issuing the Hamilton Rule, and the statements that Whiting’s opinions during a race are of no value. Issuing an attempted retroactive rule and announcing that your chief official is a not reliable authority on the rules is pretty pathetic. But the FIA does not want to be in the business of gainsaying the hacks it hires as stewards and creating some consistency because it would be in session all year—tf teams had any expectation of procedural justice there would be a raft of appeals after every race.
If they lose this appeal, McLaren should appeal Massa’s penalty in Valencia. McLaren said not a word about this at the time, even though there is clear precedent for a time penalty for what Ferrari did and the fact that the fine was patently deminimis.
Kate,
Sorry for been “vigorous” on Lewis defense, but I don’t know what season are you watching. I must agree that Canada incident was stupid and Lewis were there in a good company with his mate Nico Rosberg. Do you remember that Nico did hit Lewis in the same way?
But Lets take a look in what Kazuky Nakajima has made on this season so far:
Australia: Hit Kubica
Turkey: hit Fisichela
Valencia: Hit Alonso in Spain and in the first lap
Italia: hit Sutil in Parabolica
Coulthard has a good collection of incidents this year:
Australia: crash into Massa
Bahrain: crash into Button
After crash into Massa he said:
“…I admit I did the same thing to Alex [Wurz] last year, but I admitted it and apologized. He had better. If he doesn’t, I’ll knock three colours of **** out of the little *******…”
What you think about it?
Sorry, Kate, but I can´t remember to read any of your comments about David or Kazuki incidents, or about Nico´s “finest momentâ€. Why target only Lewis? If you were between pro or anti Hamilton field you have had watched carefully others crashes and been scrutinizing the attitude of others drivers not only Lewis´s.
About “Lewis driving and testing a car that he knew was created by using stolen work papersâ€, how do you know that? How can you state that Lewis already know that?
The only driver who generated an evidence who could incriminate himself was Fernando with his exchange of e-mails with Pedro. Why didn´t you observe this about Alonso´s e-mails?
…And so you state that you are between PRO and ANTI Hamilton field. Don´t make me laugh…