Norris/McLaren dispute penalty - but there was logic to it - The Race
the-race.com
Lando Norris and McLaren were caught out by his "unsportsmanlike behaviour" penalty in the Canadian Grand Prix

Article from the-race.com on the penalty Norris received for backing up the pack to create space for a double-stack. The article starts:

Lando Norris and his McLaren Formula 1 team were surprised by his penalty for “unsportsmanlike” conduct in the Canadian Grand Prix and felt it was a departure from how such incidents are usually judged…

I have not much of an opinion about whether this behavior should get a penalty or not… but good stewarding is consistent stewarding, and this is not that. If they are aiming to establish a new stricter and consistent standard here then it seems that should have been articulated in the race-director’s notes and driver’s briefing at the start of the weekend. If this batch of stewards just don’t know the relevant precedents and backing up the pack will be fine again next race… well… doing better than that would be nice.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•2 years ago

      I wonder if the stewards basically combined his two borderline incidents and gave him one penalty for it. I thought he was likely to get a penalty for the unsafe release and was pretty surprised he didn’t, but on the flip side it seemed unlikely to get a penalty for driving too slow under a safety car.

      As for the stewards problem, I really think they need to do a hybrid approach. Have 2-3 members of the stewards team that are on the FIA payroll and are part of the stewarding team at every event, but bring in an additional 2-3 different local stewards as well. Hopefully it would bring some consistency across how specific incidents are ruled, but by cycling new people through the group you avoid favoritism arguments.

    • @PriorProjectOPEnglish
      0•2 years ago

      I see why they did it: he gained an advantage by slowing down a lot that would not be there if he drove normally. I think it’s not the fact that he did it, it’s how much he slowed to give himself a gap to piastri…

      As discussed in the post text, I don’t have an opinion on whether or not creating a gap should be allowed. The problem is:

      • It generally has been allowed recently.
      • The rule cited during the enforcement is pretty clearly the wrong rule, there is a rule in the safety car procedures about dangerous/unpredictable/too-slow driving. Again, citing this rule would be a confusing change, but would make more sense.

      Regulating the safety car procedures is perfectly fine, but the regulation should be clear enough and consistently enough enforced that team can predict in advance whether an action is allowed or disallowed… it shouldn’t be a surprise.

      Also the F1 administrator wants the stewards to be different all the time in order to have an external check and avoid conspiracy theories about stewards consistently favouring a team/driver.

      Fair enough, the challenge here is that when the enforcement is quite inconsistent it raises questions about steward training and competency that are at least as serious as this concern, if not more.

      Also, there is a professional race-direction team that refers incidents to the stewards for review. Bias could equally be a concern here, but they seem to have decided that training and consistency are the dominating factors here.