Inconsistant Stewards

[Willy]

Okay, please explain how Grosjean can pull the same stunt twice in different races and one time he gets a race ban and the next a ten second stop & go penalty.

[lkjohnson1950]

This time he didn't nearly decapitate a 2 time WDC, championship points leader and most importantly FERRARI #1 driver. 

[Canada Darrell™]

This time he didn't nearly decapitate a 2 time WDC, championship points leader and most importantly FERRARI #1 driver. 

 

[Scott]

Still makes you wonder.  It's OK to wipe out someone with a bonehead move on the first corner as long as you don't 'almost' kill someone (don't forget Alonso walked away without a scratch)?

 

[Scott]

Wouldn't a good way to deal with some of the driver error penalties to be swapping grid positions or handing over race points when it applies?

i.e.  you block, you trade grid positions if it benefits the blocked driver.  In a race, if you cause a collision and are determined to be the cause of an incident, all your driver and team points gained go to the driver/team you crashed into?

[John S]

Okay, please explain how Grosjean can pull the same stunt twice in different races and one time he gets a race ban and the next a ten second stop & go penalty.

The only explanation I can think of is the difference in speed he was carrying in each incident. We are never given the full info that the stewards see so it's hard for us to really know what happened, we see the TV pictures but this may not tell the whole story.

I'm not happy defending 'wrecker Roman' but I do think every incident deserves full detailed examination before the stewards give punishments and they should not be influenced by previous misdemeanors, unless they occur in that race of course, - that's the FIA's job which it ducks at the moment.

Maybe they should routinely publish their findings after each race with telemetry data, the FIA published statement on the incident (see below) just reports the absolute bare minimum.

The bigger problem surely is the strange FIA rules that mean no further punishments can be considered, even if the stewards; missed something, got it wrong, or plain just showed favouritism. Most other sports have an override mechanism from the governing body to either; (a) reopen any controversial or odd decisions taken on the day, (b) give further punishment on a totting up basis for repeat offenders.


http://184.106.145.74/fia-f1/f1-2012/f1-2012-15/Formula%201%20Japanese%20Grand%20Prix%202012%20DocumentNumber-43.pdf



 

 

[Alianora La Canta]

I think they decided to treat the ban as a "semi-reset" situation. Combined with a tendency to judge by consequences instead of actions (this accident did not involve multiple title contenders being removed from the race or near-headstrikes), that would explain why it was "only" a 10-second stop/go penalty. I say "only" - I remain convinced that if Maldonado, say, had done it, then it would have been a drive-through at most.

[F1fanaticBD]

The judgement was purely based on the fact that no other influential team was pressing for a harsh punishment, though it was an error made by Romain, it was nowhere near as horrific as the Spa.

In my opinion, it was worse than Spa, because there Romain was in front, and it was more of a racing accident with a bit of aggressive driving from Romain. But here it is just simply missing a breaking point, and in my view because of utter ignorance. But as there was no peer pressure to hand over a harsh punishment, hence a 10 second stop and go penalty.

Wonder what are the penalties left that he doesn't served yet?

[Alianora La Canta]

Penalties Romain's not had yet:

- Community service
- Post-race time penalty
- Suspended ban
- Licence removal

[Cam]

Grosjeans story is that he was so busy watching Perez that he misjudged where Webber was in front of him.  If it is true it shows a concerning lack of awareness for an elite driver, my concern is that this was brought on by desperation to avoid the very event that occured. After all the criticism, he was already so paranoid that he developed tunnel vision and latched onto Perez.  Somewhere in the back of his mind he probably had a (not unreasonable) expectation that the Red Bull would clear the corner in front of him.

I surmise that if you had access to all the data you would find that both Webber and Grosjean were both taking reasonable but very different lines through the corner.  After all Grosjean wasn't all locked up and sideways, and it was a fairly light touch of front tyre to rear tyre that in itself did not cause any damage.  Thus while it was clearly Grosjeans fault it was much further on the scale towards "racing incident" than Spa.

A 10 sec stop/go is virtually a race ban anyway, and it couldn't have been administered at Spa because he was already out of the race.

[Irisado]

It was a less serious misjudgement by Grosjean, so I don't think that the stewards were being inconsistent, rather they just imposed a penalty which was appropriate for the incident.

As for Grosjean, at least his first lap antics have livened up a number of races which would otherwise have been pretty dull, and not all his first lap incidents have been his fault alone, as the analysis on the BBC showed.