F1-RED CAR RULE STRIKES AGAIN
- 27 May 2013
Once again the FIA has given the impression that it will do just about anything to assist Ferrari and hamper McLaren (or anyone else) in the F1 World Championship.
The demotion of Lewis Hamilton to third place in the Belgian Grand Prix is the latest in a long line of decisions that many fans (and a large proportion of the sport’s media) see as a blatant bias towards the Italian team. The reports from McLaren today that they had queried Hamilton’s move during the last few laps and had been given the OK from race officials just make the impression even greater. McLaren F1 CEO, Martin Whitmarsh, claims that “From the pit wall, we then asked Race Control to confirm that they were comfortable that Lewis had allowed Kimi to repass, and they confirmed twice that they believed that the position had been given back in a manner that was 'okay'. If Race Control had instead expressed any concern regarding Lewis's actions at that time, we would have instructed Lewis to allow Kimi to repass for a second time." Two hours later the stewards penalised Hamilton 25 seconds which dropped him back to third place and gave the win to, you guessed it, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.
Just two weeks ago Ferrari, and Felipe Massa, received no on track penalty for an extremely dangerous manoeuvre when they released Felipe into the path of Adrian Sutil during a pit-stop. Sure, they were hit with a ten grand fine but for a team with a $250,000,000 budget this is not even a slap on the wrist and caused no harm to Ferrari’s title hopes.
The list of decisions beneficial to Ferrari goes back into the mid nineties. Michael Schumacher was only “stripped” of his 2nd place in the world championship after his disgusting intentional
collision with Jacques Villeneuve during the title deciding race at Jerez. He lost no points, no wins, no suspension, no nothing of any importance. Two years later the Malaysian stewards caught Ferrari with illegal barge-boards and disqualified them from the results, handing the world championship to Mika Hakkinen. Ferrari appealed, and although they admitted the cars were illegal, they were reinstated as winners of the event forcing the championship down to the last race at Suzuka. Fortunately Hakkinen ran away with the race and rightfully won the title. Several years later, in mid-season, Michelin tyres were found to have an illegal profile and Michelin had to produce entirely new tyres within a couple of weeks. That Michelin had been using the same profile tyres for the past two seasons and they had been passed as legal by the FIA seemed to be irrelevant. McLaren were on Michelin, Ferrari were on Bridgestone.
In 2005 it was the banning of Renault’s Mass-Damper suspension system that almost handed Ferrari another title. Again Renault had been using the system which had been passed by the FIA for well over a year. In 2006 Ferrari and Schumacher again escaped any real punishment for his intentional “accident” during the final moments of qualifying at Monaco which prevented any drivers on a “hot” lap from beating his time. Last year we had the ridiculous spectacle of McLaren being hit with a $100,000,000 fine for “spying” on Ferrari. Again, the fact that a Ferrari team member approached McLaren with the information was deemed unimportant. McLaren was found guilty of bringing the sport into disrepute due to the actions of one of it’s team members. Ferrari, whose team member caused the affair was given no punishment at all. And these are just the major ones. This list does not include the minor ones such as Alonso being demoted 10 grid spots for “blocking” Massa at Monza during qualifying in 2006. The fact that Massa didn’t get to within a second of Alonso was neither here nor there. Just a bad joke.
And all this has been brought up again when the FIA are trying to find a way to promote overtaking. What we had was an exciting dice for the lead between two young brave chargers who were both determined to win. To quote Mario Andretti after that sensational scrap between Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux at Dijon-Prenois in 1979, “It was just two young lions clawing at each other.” That 1979 French GP has gone down in history as one of the truly great races with one of the highest “hit” rates on you-tube. This didn’t last quite as long but it was the best end to a race we have witnessed in many years, and the race, along with the sports credibility was badly damaged by this decision.
Sam Snape
10-9-08