Why F1's Stewarding Inconsistencies Need To Be Resolved

Calum Gill 08:33 06/07/2021

Questionable stewarding decisions have been part and parcel of Formula 1 for a number of years now.

In Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, this came to light more than it had in recent times, thanks to time penalties given to Lando Norris and Sergio Perez, who received two penalties for two separate incidents. Both drivers were awarded with their penalties upon the charge of forcing another driver off the road, with Norris' coming on Perez early on in the race, and Perez's two penalties coming for forcing Charles Leclerc off the track twice.

Most people in the paddock have agreed that all of these penalties were harsh, as it somewhat acts as a deterrent to wheel-to-wheel racing. If you look at turn 4 on the Red Bull Ring - where two of the offences took place - it is hard to defend to a driver coming around your outside without either pushing them off or heavily compromising your line around the corner. What is different to all of the other corners you would class as overtaking opportunities on the track is that this one has got a gravel trap on the outside, meaning if a driver goes out there, the time lost will be much more than if you were pushed over the kerbs onto some asphalt for example.

Sergio Perez forces Charles Leclerc off the track during the 2021 Austrian Grand Prix - an incident that saw him pick up the first of two 5-second time penalties.

Perez's second penalty came when Leclerc was trying to go around the outside of turn 6, in what would have been a spectacular move. As you can see in the still below, Perez appeared pick up some understeer on the exit of the corner, and that took him slightly wide when Leclerc was alongside Perez, meaning the Ferrari driver found himself in the gravel for the second time in the race.

Perez picks up understeer and goes into Leclerc, whose front wing you can just about see on the right hand side of the screen.

Now one of the problems with these penalties actually goes back to the French round two weeks ago. Lando Norris was one of the recipients of a penalty in the Austrian race, but was on the receiving end of being pushed off the road by Pierre Gasly during the French Grand Prix. 

Pierre Gasly pushes Lando Norris off the track during the 2021 French Grand Prix - an incident that went unpunished.

This incident did not bring a penalty for Gasly, despite him doing the exact same thing that was done by Norris and Perez during the race in Austria. This leaves numerous questions to be asked as to why the rules were applied one way in France, but the polar opposite way in Austria.

One of these could be the surface on the outside of the track at these circuits. In Austria, gravel is the predominant surface beyond the kerbs whereas in France, bands of different coloured asphalt line the track. A suggestion you could get from this is that because when Norris was pushed off by Gasly in France, he went onto the asphalt run-off, and, as so, did not lose nearly as much time as Perez and Leclerc did in Austria, as they had to go onto the gravel. This has led to the stewards believing that the exact same offence is not nearly as bad due to the driver on the receiving end not suffering as much.

Another is different interpretations of the rules from differing driver stewards. Former French F1 driver Yannick Dalmas was the former driver on the stewarding team in France, whereas the driver steward for the Austrian Grand Prix was Britain's Derek Warwick, who raced in F1 on 147 occasions. One argument there is about this is 'why don't we have the same set of stewards each race?' A problem we have with this is possible bias towards different teams and drivers. One good analogy that can be used though is in football. Different referees are used for different matches, to avoid bias and keep decisions looking legitimate. Plus, you can't have one referee take charge of every match that there is, and the same applies to Formula 1.

All in all, until we get some level of consistency in the stewarding decisions, drivers and teams alike will be left in the dark as to what is legal. If penalties are given for the same offence as which sometimes goes unpunished, then drivers will not take as many risks, culminating in wheel to wheel racing becoming a rarity. Consistency in our stewarding decisions will allow proper racing to happen without drivers having to think about whether their actions will result in a penalty or not. And as for the stewarding teams, we need this rota of different stewards in order to keep decisions looking legitimate, but at the same time, these stewards must have a similar interpretation of the rulebook.