F1 Fanatic

Just read MB’s BBC post race summary, he brought up an interesting item, Mark Webber rammed Filipe Massa at Monza, no penalty.
Why, was it bacause he crashed out?
Surely a penalty is justified, but if so what?
My suggestion – A drive through at the the next race, lap decided by throw of dice, but after lap 3, assuming no safety car.

My suggestion – A drive through at the the next race, lap decided by throw of dice, but after lap 3, assuming no safety car.

Ew, no. Webber crashed out of the race as a direct result of the contact. No further action was necessary. A drive-through at the next race based on a completely arbitrary throw of the dice would be very, very unpopular not to mention ineffective.

I don’t think Webber caused the crash, Massa went for an apex he shouldn’t have. If one driver can put his nose up the inside of you, he denies you the use of the tarmac there. The skill comes in placing your car tactically to do so, which is fair, and pointing your car up the inside, going late on the brakes and letting Newton dictate the consequences.

As for the dice roll idea, I don’t agree. It would introduce an element of luck into what is the most scientific of sports.

I think that’s just an accepted reality of not only sport, but life in general. If someone is found guilty of a crime in their 20′s, they go to jail immediately, not when they’re 80 with their best days behind them.

Also, if the move has spun or damaged another driver, he suffers too. Allowing the offending driver to wait until later in a race when he may serve a drive through without risk of losing a place, while the driver he struck is forced to pit on lap 2 for a new tyre and comes out in last place is in no way fair. It’s not even fair if they serve it on the same lap as it takes longer to replace a damaged component than just do a drive through.

Regarding the Webber/Massa issue though, Webber crashed out, which was penalty enough when he had scored points in each race.

One thing I’m confused by: Liuzzi had a 5 place penalty, but he was 24th anyway.

Would it not be better if he started on the 29th grid slot on the straight? Something like this:

1-3-5-7-9-11-13-15-17-19-21-23——-Liuzzi
-2-4-6-8-10-12-14-16-18-20-22-24

That could have also worked. If a 5 place drop places you in a theoretical 25th or higher you start from the lane.

@PM, Why, he caused a crash which delayed the recipient.

And Webber, crashing out, by his own admission was his own fault. He said he was trying to get back to the pits asap, and the crash was the result of going too quickly.

He was driving too fast with a damaged car. He would not have crashed out with a car in pristine condition. The damage was damage was a direct result of contact with Massa. Ergo, no penalty was necessary.

Even if Webber made it back to the pits, I still doubt he would have been penalised. Massa turned around, and while he was disadvantaged, Webber needed to make an unscheduled pit stop to replace his front wing. He would have had a bigger disadvantage than Massa. Again, no penalty is necessary. Penalties should only be issued when one driver clearly disadvantages another.

One thing I’m confused by: Liuzzi had a 5 place penalty, but he was 24th anyway.

Would it not be better if he started on the 29th grid slot on the straight?

How is that in any way a penalty? If anything, it’s an advantage – he would be starting on the clean side of the circuit, with five empty grid spaces before him. That would give him more time to pick his line into the first corner because he would be able to see what the other drivers are doing.

They did it in Canada when people demanded to know why Button wasn’t penalised. They said that at the time of the incident, Button was following a racing line that was similar or identical to a) the line he had taken on previous laps and b) the line taken by the previous driver through that section (Schumacher) on the lap the incident happened on. Basically, Button had not deviated from the line he had been taking, and thus his move across the circuit could be constructed as him following the racing line, and not a defensive move.

But I suspect the stewards only released that information because Button won the race after being involved in the tangle. And it probably helped that Hamilton admitted fault (even if it was only because the team told him to).

One situation where it would have been helpful was Valencia last year. Everyone demanded to know why the stewards took twenty minutes to pass judgement on Hamilton when the overhead shots showed him passing the safety car after the white line. To this day, I suspect a lot of the debate in the stewards’ room was over what Hamilton could actually see – sitting that low in the car, he cannot actually see the front wing, so he’d have no chance at seeing a white line across the circuit. I’m willing to bet a lot of the discussion that took place revovled around whether or not Hamilton was aware he had crossed the white line when he passed the safety car because he was at the point where the white line was no longer visible. There is, after all, a precedent to passing the safety car as it exits the pits; if not, why would the white line be there at all? An explanation of why the penalty was issued and how the stewards came to that conclusion would have gone a long way to settling the debate.