Boards
Singapore GP Thread (F1 just got stupider)
Yeah, the race thread for tomorrow if I can be bothered with it.... I'm tempted not to watch though.
---
It seems the FIA / stewards decided action needed to be taken in order to try and stop the criticism being thrown at them for the Hamilton incident in Spa....
I actually can't remember a more downright bizarre penalty. Certainly got to be right up there with the worst. At least the Hamilton thing was a grey area, but....
Nick Heidfeld has been docked three grid places for............... entering the pit lane. Yup. No, seriously.
I'm not quite sure what he was supposed to do in this situation. Perhaps they could clear that up. As I see it, he had the option of
a) going in to the pit lane as normal, and impairing Barrichello's lap somewhat
b) Going into the pit lane at a high speed and getting majorly fined / potentially causing a big accident
It's a simple case of incompetent track design. They don't even have GPS so it's not like Heidfeld could have known where Rubens was and sped up / slowed down accordingly. He didn't break a single rule (the blocking of Rubens was unavoidable) and gets penalised for it...
The stewards are pretty lucky that it happened to Heidfeld, cause if that was a driver people cared about, they would be absolutely savaged. Heidfeld had a good quali and is driving for his career right now - big time - and he's potentially had that screwed up for him. He's starting alongside Nakajima, who as much as I like, is fairly likely to end Nick's race at the first corner, and if not he's still stuck behind a bunch of slower cars. And since when was there a three place grid penalty anyhow.....?
Well, anyhow, the stewards penalise a totally unpenalisable incident. Can't get stupider, right?
Uhh, Barrichello gets a 10,000 euro penalty for not declaring pit lane entry.....
I'm sensing a logic failure of epic proportions, even by F1 standards. Somehow, I think there might be a few of these incidents (you know, implementing non-existent rules) with mid-pack drivers in the rest of the season. Don't want to seem biased now, do they?
Well, at least people can stop moaning about the Hamilton decision now - this was infinitely more stupid, and could be infinitely more costly.