Webber was speeding in the pit lane during the race??

[Scott]

According to this article he was, and he received no race penalty.  I'm glad he didn't, but it isn't very consistent of the FIA, is it?

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=40851

[stealthhaggis]

Very inconsistent if true. He should have been penalised, like you though I'm glad he didn't.

[Canada Darrell™]

That link didn't take me to the article for an explanation so...

WHAT THE HECK??? Was he speeding? I like Webber but what was the reason for no penalty?
Scott, you remember your time in CART, and I only did it for 2 or 3 seasons, but when they put me on pit radar duty my only job was to immediately radio race control when a driver went even a 1/10th of a mph over the limit and they were penalized. I DON'T GET IT! Someone smarter than me (and there's a lot of you) please explain this to me?!

 

[Scott]

Sorry, it seems PitPass yanked the story (maybe they got a call from Jean Todt)...anyhow, gpupdate has it here. 

He got a puny fine and he was over 10k over the limit, which is massive for speeding in a pit lane.  There is no question that race control would be called, but the question is what they did with that info...apparently nothing more than a ticket at the end of the race.

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/formula-1-news/235012/webber-fined-2-200-for-pit-lane-speeding/

If it had been a Mclaren, well...probably would have been some breach of the sporting regulations.   

[Ian]

Well, seems like the rules only apply according to who you are, yes, Webber deserved his victory, but when others have sped in the pitlane it's been a drive through penalty at least, or a 20 second time penalty after the race according to what your name is and whether the steward has an axe to grind.

[Scott]

There was still an hour to go in the race, so there is no way it would have been a delayed time penalty.  Nothing to talk about - was he going too fast or not??

[Alianora La Canta]

Webber did the speeding incident before the race. Drive-throughs can't be issued until the formation lap. Therefore technically all the stewards could do was issue a fine, in the same way they do if the speeding is done in practise, qualifying or after the chequered flag.

[Dare]

Scott and Darrell,what years were you two
involved in Cart and do you have any interesting tales

[Scott]

I saw that...you know where the confusion is?  PitPass had a story that claimed it was during the race - and that is probably why they pulled it and my link didn't work properly.  Then I found the gpupdate story and didn't read it carefuly.

Sorry guys.

[Canada Darrell™]

Scott and Darrell,what years were you two
involved in Cart and do you have any interesting tales

Scott probably has some good yarns as he did it longer than myself. I do have a couple of lasting impressions that I came away with..

#1 - Some low-ranking long time volunteers took their "job" wayyyyy too seriously! Maybe thats not quite the right way to put it....umm...some people were just plain <bleep>

#2 - Towards the end of my first year I came away thinking "man, this series is run so Mickey Mouse I could put this together"

#3 - Methanol smells great! Especially when you're right in the pitbox. And the pressure waves you felt through your body as those cars launched from the box...WOW!

[Scott]

'98-'01...not really much longer than Darrell (a season I think).  I got Darrell the info he needed to get on board (he lived in Vancouver at the time, and I lived in Calgary but came each year to the Vancouver races - we actually worked together over the telephone - I bought, and he sold).

No long yarns, but I can agree that there were two classes of officials - those who had 'hard cards', meaning they went to every race and had all their expenses picked up, that took themselves WAY too seriously.  There were a couple of exceptions, but most thought they were as famous as the drivers.  Then there were the rest of us, who couldn't even get CART to give us a few sandwiches for lunch, but who also did 90% of the work (we would be there to set up and tear down while the others would waltz in with their coffees an hour later and complain that we had done it wrong, and then chat together until the first car showed up).  There was one guy in the template tent who was the technical boss who was normal, and another guy in tires who owned a handful of Burger Kings in California who was great fun, but the rest were sour-puss's.

I worked most of the time in the template tent - scrutineering the cars.  It was really interesting, but I have to say, there was the odd time when in post race scrutineering that politics would fall into play and we would actually pass a top three car that probably should have failed.  The 'hard card' officials would try to whisper among themselves so we wouldn't know what was going on, but it probably never occurred to them that one of us was the one holding the templates.   

As for the racing itself, each of us were assigned a pit to be in for the race itself.  I was in Tagliani's pit one year, Carpentier's another (2 Canadians), and Tony Kanaan's another year.  I forgot the name of the other guy, but he was a little Brazilian - he was in CART for ages, but I just forget his name.  Of those 4, Kanaan was the king of class.  Had plenty of time for everyone, and was happy to pose for pictures.  Like Darrell said, it was absolutely amazing to be 2ft away from the car as it came in for a pit stop, and felt like someone punched you in the chest when the car peeled out and the pop-off valves were popping. 

Montoya was pathetic.  Even in those days, he walked around with a posse the size of a baseball team and expected you to move aside when he walked towards you. Most disgusting thing I saw was him walking up in front of his pit crew and right there, decided to tickle his then girlfriend's tonsils with his tongue.  Most of them just looked away and ignored them.  The crews were generally pretty friendly, especially in the scrutineering tent (surprise, surprise).  More Aussies in CART than I had expected.  I managed to get quite a hat collection by chatting with the teams on my free time.

That said, I had a ton of fun, and if I ever find myself retired or divorced, I'll be back at CART/IRL or who knows, maybe even F1 officiating.

[lkjohnson1950]

I worked the Hot Grid for Long Beach and Vegas F1 in the early '80s. That's a great job. You work a few minutes Saturday and Sunday (we did all the support races too), and get to wander the track during all the practices. We didn't deal with the regulars, except our boss. The drivers were all pretty much too good to talk to us, though I did get a couple words with John Watson once. The crews were cool though.

Lonny