Tag Archives: stewards

Apr201127

Rob

0

Alonso vs. Sauber in fairness

In Australia Sauber’s cars crossed the line in seventh and eight places, they were then disqualified because of a technical infringement on the car. A (supposedly) non performance critical part was a few millimetres outside the allowed margin, Sauber sucked it up, said they were wrong, improved their process and got on with their lives. Ferrari weren’t punished at all for the malfunction on Alonso’s DRS in China.
So what is different about the two cases and why were Sauber punished and not Ferrari? If Sauber are to be believed then their infringement wasn’t a performance gain whereas Ferrari’s most certainly could have been so that argument is moot given that Alonso wasn’t punished. Could it have been the pure infringement of the rules that caused Sauber’s penalty? Well Ferrari’s DRS system was clearly active in an area of the track where it shouldn’t have been and so directly contravened the [...]

May201019

Rob

0

Schumacher, Alonso and the punishment

With Schumacher taking a penalty for overtaking under the safety car and Mercedes not appealing that means that Schumacher will go down in the record books as being beaten by Rosberg again – not something that he’s going to enjoy making a habit of. It seems that everyone other than Ferrari thought you could race to the line, even the commentators but then everyone knows which team has the ear of the stewards.
The punishment at first seems fair, a 20sec penalty, but when it’s taken in the context of a safety car finish it’s clear that it’s about as damaging as disqualification as all the cars will be finished. Some have talked about swapping the cars back as punishment but a) that’s not in the rule book, and b) that doesn’t really punish anyone. It seems that the 20s penalty was the lightest reprimand that they could hand out – [...]

Mar201013

Rob

0

McLaren’s rear wing and the prospect of provisional results

The rear wing of the the McLaren – or rather the mechanism that can affect the effectiveness of the rear wing at high speed on the McLaren has been questioned by the other teams ahead of Sundays race. The stewards have passed it as legal and the FIA have backed them up on this, but with the propect that one of the other teams could appeal or lodge a protest then the race result may end up being provisional.
The issue centres around the device on the McLaren which allows the driver to change the airflow over the rear wing. Normally the device will be shut and won’t effect the airflow at all but at high speed the driver can open the flap which will then let the air pass through the chassis and exit over the rear wing which has the effect of stalling it, reducing drag and therefore increasing [...]