Singapore 2022 Heroes and Zeroes

[Jericoke]

With a wet race on a street circuit, things are difficult and unpredictable, makes it harder to give 'zeroes', but certainly some heroes.

Heroes
Perez.  Anyone winning a wet race is a hero.  Someone who can build a 7 second lead despite several safety cars is also a hero.  Doing both?  Double Hero.

LeClerc.  Finishing a race on the podium after a pole is pretty good.  Not necessarily heroic, unless you realize how often Ferrari (and LeClerc) had blown such opportunities, so well done.

Sainz.  See LeClerc

McLaren and Aston Martin.  Double points finishes?  When all 6 Ferraris, Red Bulls and Ferraris finish the race?  Are you kidding me?

[Alianora La Canta]

Warning: Long post and rant alert!

Heroes:

Charles Leclerc - for not throwing anyone under the bus after he was robbed of a win by them - and the second opportunity to meaningfully fight for victory in a row. More details in the "Zeroes" section. Also for keeping up with a Red Bull despite having a car that had to be hustled to extreme lengths to avoid being quarter of a minute off the pace (Carlos Sainz can tell everyone about how that feels).

The fans - who put up with two days of monsoon rainfall to watch this and were good sports throughout. Particularly noticeable any time Lewis Hamilton appeared.

Alex Albon - for starting the race despite being on a ventilator three weeks ago. Not finishing was unfortunate, but starting was a significant achievement in itself.

Zeroes:

The FIA - proud recipients of the Epic Fail of the Season award, more details of this coveted award below.

Christian Horner - for accidentally admitting Red Bull hasn't received a certificate of approval from the FIA for its financials on a Channel 4 interview, and getting extremely defensive about its failure to hide what was going on. While this didn't reveal whether the reason was a minor or major breach of the spending limit, it does reveal it wasn't in compliance. Something that would further invalidate its drivers' title from 2021 and potentially invalidate its constructor's title too. Contrast Aston Martin - which from my understanding may be in bigger breach than Red Bull since it's arguing about how its factory expenses are allocated - learning from earlier errors and quietly stating it was in discussions with the FIA. Not hiding anything, not yelling at people, possibly getting a more sympathetic hearing. Hoping the FIA will not want to admit it was wrong to award Max the 2021 title is not only unlikely to win sympathy, but risks the FIA ceasing to be lenient towards Red Bull. As Toto Wolff said independently of this, "Next time, try speaking to your Chief Financial Officer".

Ocon - engine blow-ups aren't his fault. Slowly trying to make the corner anyway despite leaking engine oil and having a giant plume of smoke in the air, then reversing over the same oil, instead of going down the escape road? That is his fault, and mildly embarrassing on a day when most drivers drove well at full speed.

The Epic Fail of the Season Award

I should be awarding this at the end of the season, but I am so confident that the FIA's astounding performance in Singapore will not be surpassed that I am choosing to award it today.

Confirmed FIA regulation breaches that have no element of ambiguity about them in the 2022 Singaporean Grand Prix:

    Regulation breach 1: Moving the 3-hour window (Article 5.4 b) of the Sporting Regulations, interpretation of which the FIA breached being mandated by the Bianchi settlement of 2017).
    Regulation breach 2: Not red-flagging conditions believed to be unsafe enough to mitigate Perez's SC offence (Article 57.1 of the Sporting Code). Note that if one does not believe Perez’s offence was mitigatable, this would result in a breach of Article 47.3 of the Sporting Code having been made instead.
    Regulation breach 3: Green flag with marshals on the track (Articles 55.14 and 56.7 of the Sporting Code; I think I saw it twice during the race)
    Regulation breach 4: following a reprimand with a warning (which is lower on the penalty list in the case of Perez failing to follow the SC (Article 47.3 of the Sporting Regulations):

- Lap 10: reprimanded
- Lap 36: warned
- Later on Lap 36: 5s penalty (this was correct, it was the first Lap 36 one that was the problem - though it could be argued a correctly-implemented red flag might have spared Perez this penalty)

Note that all 4 changed the result of the race in different ways.
- the first three are safety regulations whose breach either has or will put people’s lives at risk.
- the first two involved, in full (the 3-hour window) or in part (the red-flag one), regulation breaches done by the FIA in cold blood.
- the first one was set by the Bianchi settlement of 2017, and thus not in the FIA’s gift to do even with standard regulatory change notice, let alone without it (the rest could, technically, be altered through the standard regulation change procedures).

This race result should not be regarded as settled as it is at serious risk by lawyers. At which point, the other 5 races where the FIA unambiguously breached its own regulations since summer 2021 (as well as potentially other breaches preceding these) in a way that changed the result of the race are also at risk (some of which also put people’s lives at risk):

Spa 2021: Running the race without medical cover - in any form whatsoever (Article 2.8.3.8 b) of Appendix H of the International Sporting Code, mandated by the Bianchi settlement of 2017) outside the 3-hour window (Article 5.4 b) of the Sporting Regulations, interpretation of which the FIA breached being mandated by the Bianchi settlement of 2017).

Saudi Arabia 2021: Running at a track with no service road, at a venue where the lack of service road caused delays to clearing the track (Article 7.10 of Appendix O of the International Sporting Code)

Abu Dhabi 2021: Failing to adhere to the end-of-SC protocol (then Article 47 of the Sporting Regulations)

Saudi Arabia 2022: Running at a track with no service road, where the lack of service road caused delays to clearing the track (Article 7.10 of Appendix O of the International Sporting Code), and continuing to run the race when there was a clear and present danger brought on by F1′s presence (Article 2.1.6a of the International Sporting Code, as applied via Articles 37.6 and 57.1 of the Sporting Regulations according to the sessions).

Monza 2022: Failing to adhere to the end-of-SC protocol (now Article 55.13 of the Sporting Regulations).

Singapore 2022: see earlier this post.

Note that none of this takes into account ambiguous breaches of the regulations (ignoring significant collisions involving Russell v Schumacher, Verstappen v Norris and Hamilton v Sainz, putting out a Safety Car for Alonso's car being stopped halfway down the escape hatch, not yellow-flagging Gasly reversing onto the racing line, leaking the financial results independently of Christian Horner's implicit admission by telling compliant teams they could have their certificates of approval early...)

Take a bow, FIA. Take a bow.

[rmassart]

This point from Alianora:

Regulation breach 3: Green flag with marshals on the track (Articles 55.14 and 56.7 of the Sporting Code; I think I saw it twice during the race)

This seemed to happen (at least on screen) every time there was a yellow flag. It briefly flipped to green and then went back to yellow. Very strange.

Regarding the Red Bull financial situation, I read somewhere (can't remember where, but certainly unofficial) that there were issues on how Red Bull was accounting for it's subsidiaries. I am not a financials person at all, but if you can get around these regulations by using subsidiaries the whole thing us useless. And I always wondered how this can be truly enforced. How is engine development by the supplier accounted for?

Back to the race...

The race was pretty dull in my opinion. Nothing much happening, except for drivers sliding into the walls and then more often than not continuing on. Perez was great up front. Leclerc couldn't get passed him, and without DRS overtaking was impossible for the first two thirds of the race and then in the last third it was still impossible because it meant going onto the damp - as Hamilton found out.

Which brings me to my zero: the number of safety cars, virtual or real. I realise safety is all important. But with this many interruptions it just ruins the race. I preferred it back in the 80s and early 90s when races were just run from start to end and the outcome of the race was far more dependent on the driver than strategies based on "hoping for a SC" (or tires for that matter).  And yes, there were plenty of boring races with the lead car clearly in the lead. But at least you came away in the knowledge that he won due to his driving skills and car performance, not because he got lucky with a safety car pit stop. It also gave a real view of the relative performance of the cars.

If a car is stranded in a run off zone, can't it just stay there - no marshals required? Clearly this is a risk, but F1 is a risky sport. Risks should be minimised, but at some point there still needs to be a meaningful race.

[John S]

Heroes:

Hamilton & Verstappen for at least trying to overtake only to skid off and lose more than they could gain. How easy was it for Sainz, Norris, Vettel & others to simply stick to the dry line that emerged thereby frustrating the following cars? Sure if your only interested in 6th or 8th place I guess that makes perfect sense, not sure it makes for a great race though, so cheers Lewis & Max for at least attempting to race other cars. 

Checo for getting & keeping the lead for the whole race, I understand his frusration with the safety car speed but rules is rules Checo, you may not get off so lightly next time!

Danny Ric, he was without updates that Norris had, he's been sacked and a points finish looked bleak. He kept his head, kept out of trouble and was in the right place at right time to jump up order at S/C. Lady luck still loves you Daniel. 

FIA for bending own rules to get a proper race on and give us at home and the crowds at track an almost full race. the 2 hour race time is always tight at this track anyways.

Zeros:

Williams, clearly off the pace at this track, think they only turned up as they are contractruly bound to be there. 

Alpine, what the hell guys! You turn up with your biggest upgrade of the season, your car is showing promise - at least in Nando's hands - then both engines let go. If you wanna best Macca by year end you better pick up your game. Starting to look like Piastri made the right choice. 

Stewards, I'm fine with the early laps wheel banging going down as just racing incidents but why the hell couldn't you rule on Perez S/C shenanigans around time they occured? A reprimand, or even a 5 secs penalty, on the first would've prevented 2nd. Sure you had to only give one penalty since you had not policed first incident correctly, as I say - punish first and 2nd probably would never happen.  real   

[Monty]

If only I was as smart as Ali….
Zero - clearly the FIA. They seem incapable of making consistent sensible decisions and appear to be trying to generate ‘spectacle’ rather than impose the rules in a timely manner.
Safety should have been the main priority but the way they treated Perez’s multiple Safety Car infringements was pathetic - wait until after the race was finished and then apply a penalty that conveniently didn’t change the result. In the past; drive-through penalties had been applied for similar offences!!
A bad race in every sense!