They decided to put a procedure in place that lets the wheel gun man signal that the wheel is ready after he fastens the wheel nut.

After that the wheel nut retainer still needs to be fastenen.

This means they only care that the wheel nut is fastened, but don’t give a hoot about the retainer device being installed.

Realize that the wheel gun guy thought that the wheel nut (and thus the wheel) was installed properly. They are not that stupid.

They only don’t care about the “silly safety measures”.

They are DELIBERATE taking the risk that the safety device doesn’t get installed. Just to save a few milliseconds.

I simply don’t accept the notion that the problem with FIA rulings is that they’re inconsistent, in something like a random manner, either as the result of general incompetence on the part of a given set of stewards, or the fact that the stewards change from race to race.

When I look at FIA rulings, they seem to me to be almost perfectly consistent in serving very clear goals in the FIA’s interests, executing certain personal vendettas, commercial goals and back-room deals and bribes that maintain and extend the stranglehold of power in the governing body.

I think we are supposed to think that events like Spa or Fuji last year were the result of clueless stewards who should have been better trained. I don’t think they were and we forget how easily these mysterious and generally anonymous people are orchestrated directly by Alan Donnelly, Mosley’s right-hand man who is personally involved in “leading” the stewards in every high-profile case and yet whose name never appears on the stewards’ rulings. For example: who “interviewed” Lewis before the Spa debacle? Donnelly. Who are the stewards answering to at every race? Right.

It’s all too convenient to say “well, shucks, it’s a hard job ruling on all these things in the pressure cooker of an F1 event” and “the rule book is complex and subjective” and put it down to a matter of competence. It’s actually far simpler than that: the rules themselves are intentionally written with grey area and maximum latitude for race stewards or the WMSC to toy around with, including article 151c, and from there the agenda du jour (most recently the victimization of Dennis, but there have been others) is executed with almost flawless precision. The patterns are so transparently clear that it beggars belief, and yet we all sit here and talk about competence and how F1 is behind the times. It’s actually ahead of the times, from Max’s point of view – it works very well indeed.

The decision makers here are highly competent. The stewards themselves are just avatars and puppets who have the authority to make drudge decisions but are easily steered when push comes to shove. We serve sinister interests and follow the intended script when we lament the “inconsistency” and “incompetence” of the race stewards.

I suppose it was it was Ron Dennis that he hates, but Mclaren F1 is effectively Ron Dennis F1 (or at least it was until ‘liegate’).

Presumably Ron Dennis retained the Mclaren name not in the memory of Bruce Mclaren and the teams rich history, but because his name would sound daft. Dennis- Mercedes, anyone?

The rules certainly don’t make any such distinction, they simply state you can’t impede a rival, which Alonso unquestionably did.

And that makes sense – there’s no reason why the rule shouldn’t apply between team mates.