F1: Fresh Ingredients For F1's Stew

[Rory Phoulorie]

Thursday 23rd October 2008

Stewarding has become the burning issue of the 2008 season, but what can be done to improve the process? Here are PF1's recommendations...

Appoint Full-Time Stewards
The most obvious improvement. So obvious, in fact, that it begs the question of exactly why F1 does not already have them in place. After all, this is a sport that is not exactly short of funds.

By changing the three stewards on a race-by-race basis, the FIA has created a system that invites inconsistency. As this website argued a few weeks ago, 'only if the identity of the decision-makers is consistent can there be any hope that their decisions will be too'.


Issue Explanations
For the stewards not to provide explanations or anything more than perfunctory statements when announcing their rulings is nothing short of an outrage. The ultra-brief press release confirming Lewis Hamilton' penalty in Belgium was designed, it would seem, to confuse rather than confirm and, as such, was an insult to the viewing public and discredited the sport.

According to reports from the paddock, the FIA are considering instructing their stewards to issue explanations with their rulings next season. It will not be too soon.


Let Us See What They Can See
As well as provide explanations, F1 fans - as the lifeblood of the sport - are entitled to see what the stewards see when result-affecting decision are made. Otherwise those explanations will be reduced to exercises in paper wasting.

For instance, the only footage armchair fans saw of Hamilton's move past Sebastian Vettel in France was from an onboard camera on the McLaren. Afterwards, it was reported that 'the stewards had access to the circuit's closed circuit TV cameras when making their decision' to penalise Hamilton. It was a mistake - and continues to be - for that footage not to be made available.


Quicken Up The Process
January's overhaul was, in part, brought about because it took the stewards five days to rule on whether to retrospectively alter the result of last year's Japanese Grand Prix. While they have not yet required a similar lengthy period to make a ruling this year, they have by no means provided speedy resolutions.

Their judgements in Spa, Japan and Valencia were all issued hours after the race finished and it remains a mystery why the stewards took so long to impose a penalty against Nico Rosberg in Singapore when his offence - entering the pitlane when the Safety Car was deployed - was so obvious and clear.

Unanswered questions have also been raised over why the stewards announced they would only investigate Felipe Massa's tangle with Sebastian Bourdais in Japan when 16 laps were still remaining. It had taken them just 15 laps to investigate two separate incidents involving Massa and Hamilton at the start of the race and issue their penalties.


Full Time And Fully Trained
The argument for obligating stewards to undergo a training course is easier to make than insisting that they should have first-hand experience of motor-racing. After all, very few of the leading referees and umpires in other sports, such as football and cricket, are former players or participants. However, they are trained for the role.

Nonetheless, the current selection process behind appointing race stewards in F1 is dubious, to say the least. As far as PF1 could detect, Yves Bacqueline, one of the three Belgian GP race stewards, owed his appointment purely to his position as Race Promoter for the Spa circuit. The claims of his 37-year-old colleague Nicholas Deschaux were even more difficult to ascertain with the Frenchman having spent his career in administration as the former legal director and general secretary of the French Motorsport Federation. In that context, denying that the sport's stewarding would be improved if former drivers were involved becomes substantially more difficult.


Decide If The Race Director Has Any Relevance
In punishing Bourdais and Hamilton for their alleged transgressions at Suzuka and Spa respectively, the stewards have directly opposed the advice provided by Race Director Charlie Whiting.

The contradictions demean Whiting, as well as his position, and simultaneously invite accusations of bias and misjudgement by the stewards.

In preparation for McLaren's appeal hearing in Paris, FIA President Max Mosley claimed, "McLaren should not have asked Charlie whether Lewis had done anything wrong and he should not have answered" on the grounds that "he is not in a position to give even the beginnings of a considered opinion - his responsibility was to see that nobody got killed.".

It's a reasonable point but it does beg the question of to whom teams can refer such incidents. Even the FIA must agree that, were an identical situation to arise, an immediate instruction for a driver to let a competitor back past would be preferable to a ruling from the stewards' office approximately two hours after the race had ended.

Moreover, for the stewards to flatly contradict the reputed instruction given to the drivers before Sunday's Japanese GP by the Race Director, whose "responsibly is to see that nobody gets killed", sets a dangerous precedent that cannot be justified.


Clarify The Role Of The Stewards' Advisor
Instead of replacing Tony-Scott Andrews, the sole permanent race steward who retired at the end of last season, the FIA opted instead to appoint 'a permanent adviser' in the form of Alan Donnelly.

His remit was kept vague, probably by design, with the FIA only remarking that Donnelly would 'assist' the stewards and 'manage' the decision-making process. Therefore, the FIA was able to deadbat his involvement in various rulings this season by declaring that he was fully entitled to get involved. However, given that he was reported to have 'led' the investigation in France, and was the only steward to speak to and question Hamilton at Spa, it could just as easily be questioned whether Donnelly had assumed the position of Chief Steward.


Remove Alan Donnelly
In defending Donnelly, whose appointment in January has happened to coincide with the dawn of the most litigious year in F1, Mosley argued that "it would be impossible to find somebody who had a reasonable knowledge of formula one who hadn't had a relationship with one of the teams".

The flaw is that this is precisely the argument Mosley uses to discredit suggestions that a former F1 driver should be appointed to the role of steward - "It's very difficult to have a former driver, unless you go back to the dark ages, who hasn't had a relationship with one of the existing teams," he explained last month, oblivious to his own contradiction.

Moreover, the FIA remains wide open to accusations of bias so long as it continues to employ Donnelly as their Stewards Advisor when he is the chief executive of a company that listed* Ferrari as one of their clients. There is, of course, no suggestion from this website that Donnelly's actions in his newly-created post have been influenced by his paid association with Ferrari or that this may have been a factor in why a number of controversial penalties have been applied against McLaren. It's just that it is very easy to understand why people other have.

No other organisation would leave itself so vulnerable to a charge of bias and it is plainly absurd for the FIA not to appreciate that.


Decide If Nationality Does Matter
Finally, an issue that has bothered us for some time and, despite our request for clarification, the FIA have yet to respond to...

In January, when the latest overhaul of the stewarding system was undertaken it was announced 'And in a bid to ensure total impartiality of decisions, the appointed FIA stewards at each race will be chosen from nationalities that are totally neutral - so they are not the same as any of F1's competitors.'

However, as the FIA document from this year's Japanese GP clearly indicates, this is not the case. Graham Stoker is a London-based lawyer whose nationality is British - the same as Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and half-a-dozen of the teams. Curious.

* In a counterproductive move that actually encouraged the conspiracy theorists, Sovereign Strategy removed Ferrari from the listing shortly after Donnelly's appointment. It can, however, still be seen via the web archive website - and the picture that accompanies this piece.

Pete Gill

Planet F1