F1 Fanatic

Is it just me or have we started to get a bit silly with decisions. When I think back to my first years of watching F1 we often had “racing incidents” of the like that we saw in Canada yesterday. What we didn’t have were hundreds of penalties for “causing an avoidable accident”. It seems like we see them in most races now, and I worry that it’s taking away from the spectacle. While I don’t want drivers to be taking each other off at every corner it would be nice to let get to the end of a race that hasn’t been impacted by drive through penalties, or worrying that the order will change when various time penalties are handed out.

What do you think? Is there too much interference from the stewards? Has the sport started to favour the driver in position too much? Or am I the only one that thinks the penalties have gone a little bit mad of late.

I think there is far too much interference. Twice in two races Paul di Resta has been penalised for breaking his own front wing with no damage to the guy he hit. How does that make sense? Hamilton looked like being penalised for touching Webber even though it was a legitimate move and he came off a wet kerb. I don’t understand this obsession with having to investigate every little bump and punish 90% of them. It’s like the stewards don’t care that someone’s race has been ruined, just that someone somewhere has touched another car. It’s ludicrous.

This is Formula 1

Yes, the supposed pinnacle of racing. If drivers couldn’t make passing moves for fear of contact there’d be none except DRS and slipstream overtakes. People are going to touch each other, it’s inevitable and unavoidable.

How do you judge if a gap is ‘always going to disappear’? A gap only disappears if another driver slots into it. If someone is charging down the inside it’s very irresponsible for them to just close the door because the attacking driver in most cases has no way of pulling out in time. No driver has to wave another through, but no driver has the right to force another off the road either.

I was thinking about this last night and wondering which moves from the past might result in penalties had they been racing nowadays – Panis on Irvine at Monaco ’96 is one such instance.

I think the volume of investigating penalties is getting a touch ridiculous, but as long as the right decisions are made in the end I don’t think it really matter.

?’If you see a gap and don’t go for it, you are no longer a racing driver’

…is a good candidate for the quote most frequently taken out of context in the history of Formula One. Senna said this in response to questions over his collision with Prost in the 1990 season finale. Over a year later he admitted that the collision had been deliberate on his part.

Because it damaged his front wing, which means that it had the potential to do damage to the car in front, even if that car escaped unscathed on both occasions. The FIA seem to have a new philosophy of prevention rather than cure.

I had thought of that. Doesn’t seem to be working though does it? We’re getting more and more penalties each race!

Unless someone comes worse off or retires and the instigator is unscathed, I don’t think anything really warrants a penalty. It’s too late to change things and penalties don’t really discourage anything other than the most severe breaches. In fact you could argue that driver agreements have done much more than penalties to clean up the racing.