All the different penalties

[Nitrodaze]

The juries in F1, (not sure if the members change from race to race, or if it is the same group in every race), they are very active, and push out penalties left, right and centre.

Many of the incidents are in my book race incidents, and should not be penalized.

we have a current discussion regarding VAR in football, Video Assisted Referee. Many says that it takes away some of the sport, that has controversial referee decicions as a part of the game.

some of the same feelings are voiced amongst many F1 fans.
many also say that the race control push out sentences without hearing the drivers point of view. They should be heard, before sentenced to penalties are pushed out,

What do you feel on this issue?

The stewards are mostly the same team of people but with one external member who is rotated regularly. The external member is usually an ex-F1 driver who has been out of the sport for at least five years or more it appears. This external member is supposed to bring in a level of objectivity to the process of investigating an incident or infraction. Hence, you can picture the scene in the steward's office; four or more salaried stewards to one consultant ex-driver.

The stewarding operation has been fraught with inconsistencies and many occasions of decisions that have bordered on sheer prejudice against some drivers. 2019 for instance had several decisions that seemed the stewards were gunning for Racing Point drivers and team. And there was that infamous decision of Mika Salo against Hamilton for practising starts in the pit lane.

That aside, their job is like the referee of a highly tense and competitive football match. If the referee whips out the yellow card every time a player causes another player to fall to the ground, the fans would not enjoy the game. Hence, a careful level of discretion is required to balance between fairness and fans enjoyment of the race to that of the strict letters of the regulations.

The problem why fans perceive some of the decisions of the steward's office to be unfair is partly because fans lack the information that was available to stewards which informed their decision. But also, some of the infractions were so minor to warrant a warning rather than a punishment. Like Bottas accidentally spinning in the pit lane. It was unintentional but could potentially be dangerous. Nonetheless, the punishment was very harsh. A fine would have been better and would have not interfered with the interesting scenario of the race with Bottas in 2nd place.

This is one area of the sport that they should be putting lots of efforts improving rather than altering pitstop procedures l think.