F1 Cost Caps And Invalid Protests

F1 Penalties, and the lack thereof

The FIA is such a unique organization to examine.

Last week at Circuit of the Americas, Fernando Alonso was given a 30-second time penalty after a Haas protest was upheld because race control did not display the orange-and-black flag for Alonso driving an unsafe car with a mirror hanging. That mirror would eventually fall off, with even F1 Media showing it on the television world feed.

This week at Mexico City, the penalty was revoked by this set of stewards. Not on any merit or denying the penalty was correct, but because the protest that led to the penalty went beyond the allowable time to lodge a protest in the sporting code.

In layman’s terms, the FIA told Haas they could lodge the protest in an hour instead of 30 minutes. But the rulebook says 30 minutes is the time limit, therefore the protest is not valid.

Alpine successfully argued that it wasn’t impossible for Haas to meet the 30-minute deadline to lodge a protest (it could have done so with a handwritten submission) despite FIA telling Haas it had an hour, and that the stewards didn’t have the power to extend that deadline #F1

— Chris Medland (@ChrisMedlandF1) October 28, 2022

Yikes.

I’m sure there are plenty of good people involved with the FIA. That extends to the stewards, too. As for the marshals? God bless these people who should be paid instead of volunteering for the “privilege” to work a grand prix. But with that being sai-, er, written, I don’t think the idea that the FIA, the stewards, and race control as a whole should know and understand the rules they are enforcing and citing is that large of an ask.

Missed calls are expected. Humans are making these decisions on the fly, and they’re not going to always be right all the time. But it was clear to everyone involved, from fans to garage observers, thatb the stewards spent way too long on something that shouldn’t have even been on the table last week. Did nobody think to look at the rulebook in the many hours between the protest being filed and the penalty being announced?

There doesn’t need to be a special process to outline here. The solution to this issue is the exact same solution to the mess in Japan a few weeks ago, in which nobody knew Max Verstappen was the 2022 champion except for the FIA and F1 Media. It’s important for the stewards and the media to operate independently from those bodies, but there should be more shoulder nudges when it comes to…