F1 – Where's it all going?
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More safety cars than Le Mans, more stewards enquiries than Aintree and the race result decided with a 20 lap sprint at the end. This Canadian Grand Prix was not F1 racing as it should be. I’ll grant there was some superb (and some daft) driving but I’m not up for watching a sprint race; I want to see 2 hours of real racing.
Having created a situation where we have close racing it should not come as a surprise that there are loads more ‘incidents’ and drivers with aggressive styles are coming in for the most flack. When we’ve had close racing before, in the early days of Schumy and Ayrton for instance, who were both “very robust”, I don’t recall there being hosts of enquiries.
Congratulations to Jenson on his win and to Mark Webber for a great drive. It was good to see Vettel displaying a weakness and hope to see him under more pressure in the future, but it all seemed a bit artificial for me.
You don’t recall there being hosts of enquiries because the stewards didn’t publicise when an investigation actually did take place, the only time it was made public was when an actual penalty was handed out.
I find it frustrating that people criticise the stewards, simply because FOM is actually going to the effort of providing such information as whether the stewards are investigating an incident.
One final point. The stewards job is and always has been to investigate every single incident that occurs. Not doing so is negligent. Investigating is simply looking at an incident to determine cause and whether rules were broken. If it’s clearly a racing incident, they leave it at that. However, if it’s a bit more complicated, they will deliberate on passing judgement, often until the race finishes, so that they get the full picture, and make a fair and just decision.
How can anyone be against that?
The only debatable dubious SC periods was the start of the grand prix and the length of the SC start after the red flag. The rest of the SC periods were required.
As for the stewards, you can argue that they investigate and penalise too much, but the got the majority of the decisions right in my view.
And actually, these last two races are actually anomalies. If you remember, before Monaco, there had been no SC periods at all and Karthikeyan was the first person to finish 23rd in a race. Just the ineffectiveness of DRS and the small track width in Monaco, plus the rain in Canada, has created incident racing. So, the idea that there are loads more incidents in F1 is not true, it is in fact the opposite.
That’s not a criticism of the Stewards at all, its a criticism of the way F1 has developed, if that’s the right word. I enjoy the close racing that we have seen this year but there are,in my view, just too many imposed interruptions. Watching F1 cars trail round behind a safety car for lap after lap, watching hard won track position eroded behind safety cars, seeing teams and drivers benefit from suspended race situations is, in my view, not what racing is all about. I have watch and supported F1 for more than 40 years now and I have also raced single seaters and rallied myself, and I’ve had my share of one way conversations with stewards in both disciplines. Most of these interviews were associated with crossing (usually with just one wheel) the white lines that form the track boundary – you don’t see that getting penalised too often these days! I have no beef about stewards, they just apply the rules that the sports politicians devise.
If there are marshalls on the track then the safety car has to be deployed, after watching that idiot fall over in front of a car on sunday I dont know how you can argue against them.
You wont find disagreement about the safety car being out too long after the (re)start, but if the drivers are lobbying the director to stop the race (and from what I’ve heard they all thought it was too wet), then he has no choice. As Martin Brundle said, if he doesn’t act and then someone is seriously injured it’s his neck on the line.
The only debatable dubious SC periods was the start of the grand prix and the length of the SC start after the red flag. The rest of the SC periods were required.
As for the stewards, you can argue that they investigate and penalise too much, but the got the majority of the decisions right in my view.
And actually, these last two races are actually anomalies. If you remember, before Monaco, there had been no SC periods at all and Karthikeyan was the first person to finish 23rd in a race. Just the ineffectiveness of DRS and the small track width in Monaco, plus the rain in Canada, has created incident racing. So, the idea that there are loads more incidents in F1 is not true, it is in fact the opposite.
Absolutely spot-on, Herman. About everything.
I was rather disgusted to read all the comments of the drivers being ‘pussies’ and ‘wimps’ during the race. Anyone who complains that F1 as a sport is ‘too health and safety conscious’ should be ashamed on themselves in my opinion.
It’s nothing new, leads have always been eroded when the safety car has been deployed, I think they did ok in Montreal, perhaps the First start could have been a normal racing start and the SC could have come in a couple of laps early after the restart (I think they were waiting to see if the brief downpour many had predicted was ever going to materialise) but overall it was ok, we still got a cracking race!!
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