Six penalty points for one crash puts Turvey halfway towards ban

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In the round-up: Formula E driver Oliver Turvey was given six penalty points for a single incident during practice yesterday.

In brief

Turvey halfway to ban after Rome shunt

The stewards came down hard on Turvey over the pile-up he triggered at the end of the first practice session for the Rome EPrix. The NIO driver crashed into Jean-Eric Vergne and Jake Dennis at the end of first practice, causing significant damage to all three cars.

Vergne, Dennis and others had been stopped in a queue of cars, preparing to perform practice starts. Turvey arrived on the scene at speed and slammed into the back of Vergne’s car, then hit Dennis. All three escaped without injury.

The stewards found Turvey guilty of “causing a collision dangerously”. The NIO driver, who had a clean licence before the weekend started, was given enough penalty points to move him halfway towards a one-race ban.

The stewards said Turvey was “fully aware” of the practice start procedures but forgot them due to “a combination of circumstances”.

“After watching the footage, hearing the radio communication between team and driver, taking into account that these massive accident was based on a human mistake, the stewards consider that the taken penalty is appropriate for this case,” they noted.

FIA stewards rarely issue more than three penalty points for a single incident. In 2019 Nikita Mazepin was given four penalty points for his role in a multi-car crash at the start of a Formula 2 race in Sochi.

In addition to his penalty points, Turvey was also required to start yesterday’s Formula E race from the pit lane. The second race takes place today.

Newgarden on top as first Indianapolis 500 test closes

Two-times IndyCar champion Josef Newgarden, who is seeking his first Indianapolis 500 victory, was quickest at the end of the first test for this year’s race, averaging 365.03kph in his Penske. Last year’s winner Takuma Sato was second ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya.

The new IndyCar season begins next week on the Barber Motorsport Park road course in Alabama.

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Comment of the day

Is Formula E up to the standard expected of a world championship?

Initially, I was quite intrigued by the whole concept of these all electric cars driving around brand new, in-city, circuits, but the way the series operate is atrocious.

We are now at the seventh season of the series, the first one being a FIA world championship, and things go from bad to worse. The first rounds at Saudi were a farce with the whole missile stuff and today we had another extremely dangerous accident, due to poor communication/organisation. There is a “trend” (let’s say) of strange incidents happening at the most weird times (end of practice sessions).

Unfortunately the series don’t operate like a FIA championship and I really hope they manage to be more organised with time passing by.
Miltiadis (@Miltosgreekfan)

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On this day in F1

  • 40 years ago today Nelson Piquet put his Brabham on pole position for Argentinian Grand Prix amid accusations the car’s hydro-pneumatic suspension contravened the rules

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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24 comments on “Six penalty points for one crash puts Turvey halfway towards ban”

  1. Is Formula E up to the standard expected of a world championship?

    I find F1 fans are just jaded. Here’s a successful racing series that people will find any reason to belittle just because it doesn’t fit their image of what racing should be.

    FE obviously doesn’t have the budget of F1 so of course things are going to be held together by duct tape behind the scenes while the F1 equivalent is welded together, and there will be gaps and mistakes because of that.

    1. F1 is hardly a perfect example anyway.

      It’d be nice if more F1 fans were open minded enough to embrace FE because it is different, rather than reject it because it isn’t the same.

      1. Indeed, it is quite shocking to see comments berating FE on every F1 forum. It is kind of the intolerance you see from certain Android users of Apple owners. Seems to be a basic human element at play and I don’t understand why. I am just glad to have a different series racing every weekend.

        Regarding professionalism, F1 is hardly the paragon with its inconsistent application of track limits, penalties and deliberate use of SC and DRS to generate artificial entertainment. MotoGP on the other hand seems to be the best-handled at the moment with its junior-senior structuring, track limits enforcement, long-lap penalties and general competition at fair costs.

        It is quite evident FE is running on a budget but most incidents are borne out of narrow street circuits (especially “new” ones like this weekend) and split-second driver misjudgements which are fine. Still hate the power-spike penalties but those have existed since Season 1 and teams seemed to have gotten over it, until they hit a new kind of bump. It would be farcical if it happened for everyone but then it does not, so still something that teams can calibrate in software. Might seem a bit amateur but really enjoyed the unsettled cars on braking along with the body-brushing late dives.

      2. I have seen every Formula e race since the beginning, and like it because it is different to Formula 1 (there’s no point in having two series the same, although I definitely don’t want it to replace F1). I have mentioned before that I want F1 to be pure, and part of the reason for this is that there are other series, like Formula e, that focus more on entertaining races, whereas F1 is the only one that focuses on determining the best driver/team in the world.

        However, I would agree that Formula e does need major improvements. I was considering giving up on it after the farce that we saw in Ad Diriyah, particularly race 2 with those ridiculous penalties, although I’m glad I didn’t after yesterday’s brilliant race. The silly penalties for incidents like power spikes are infuriating. Fanboost is obviously a disaster; I’m sure even fans who only watch Formula e don’t like it. (However, I’ve often seen attack mode grouped in with fanboost, and disagree about this. Attack mode is a brilliant strategic feature and really improves the racing). I like Formula e, but I don’t think it would take much change from the organisers to make it considerably better than it is.

        1. @f1frog

          Attack mode

          There’s even something more than fanboost? Oh dear.

          I was totally onboard with FE until I heard about fanboost. I’m not belittling another series because it’s not F1. I would also drop F1 if it introduced things like fanboost.

          1. There’s even something more than fanboost? Oh dear.

            This is exactly the attitude that @skipgamer is complaining about. Yes, fanboost is a ridiculous idea that should have been laughed out of the blue-sky-thinking meeting where it was suggested. But that doesn’t mean that all ideas that FE have are bad.

            Attack mode is FE’s equivalent of the F1 mandatory pit stops. It provides a brief performance advantage, at the cost of a bit of lap time. This leads to the same type of on-track passes and strategic decisions that pit stops lead to, but without the need for a 20 person pit-crew and without the constant moaning about how badly the tyres degrade.

            It is activated by taking a different at a particular part of the circuit, much as an F1 car chooses to go through the pits, but because they don’t need to find space for all the pit garages the FE organisers can make the time penalty as much or as little as they like. They have made it small (a couple of seconds), which much better for the racing than a front runner suddenly coming out of the pits amongst a bunch of mid-field cars that he isn’t really competing with.

    2. FE and its fans are not going to win a lot of F1 fans, because they are the ones who are verbally attacking F1. FE is like the embodiment of “woke” and many people are sick to death of “woke-ness”.

      1. Calling people ‘woke’ is like calling them a ‘anti-racist’ or ‘fighter of injustice’.
        It might be a popular slang in populist groups, but it doesn’t really convey that people repeating this word are thinking through what they are saying.

        1. Indeed, people who think that being “woke” is an insult are probably “asleep”.

      2. @aliced

        I guess that is partially true in the sense that we are supposed to celebrate or even admire something second rate just because it is different (‘diverse’).

      3. @aliced Yes sick to death of woke, but I don’t find FE particularly woke. It’s just the green thing AFAIK, but maybe there’s something I don’t know? It’s not like drivers are there because of their body or whatever? And they did race in Saudi-Arabia.

    3. Its dreadful to watch, terrible. Poor drivers, no speed, small tracks, fences everywhere. I’d rather watch a kid play with a model racing track. Way more exciting. Nothing against the technology but the execution is .. well unacceptable

    4. Totally agree @skipgamer. We should compare FE and F1 one-on-one. See it as just another series with it’s good and less good things. I find it fun to watch, just fix the power spikes issue and scrap fan boost.
      If the development of this series goes on par with the development of electric cars, we something to look forward to.
      And remember, F1 has only 60 odd years more experience and heritage, so what do you expect…

      1. shouldn’t

  2. That first test in Perez’s post is absolutely sick. It looks like it is a test focusing on the quickness of your hands to turn the steering wheel, while also exerting the maximum steering lock as possible.

    1. Haha, at least he did not have to do “squats” while turning the steering wheel, it looked like this is what he was doing from the still image.

  3. The force feedback steering device is what I’d like to try.

    Re Canadian GP, I previously expected the eventual outcome would be solely down to entry restrictions, but the 6 million fee bit in case of a closed event, I didn’t envision. Why is Ottawa’s government in the mix, even though Ottawa isn’t even in the same province as Montreal?

    1. @jerejj Ottawa is the capital of Canada and where the government sit, it’s basically referring the national government rather than state government.

      1. @jerejj Yes as @bernasaurus correctly points out, Ottawa is the capital of Canada and is where the Parliamentary buildings are, and where our Prime Minister resides. It is where the business of running the country takes place. When it comes to big events like F1, all three levels of government get involved, those being federal (Ottawa), provincial (the province is Quebec), and municipal (the city of Montreal). It is my understanding that it is quite common not just in Canada but globally, for F1 to seek reassurances from federal governments that they are going to be paid their tens of millions for coming to their countries and running an event, which in turn injects tens of millions into the economy of not just the municipality, but of course in turn the province and the country.

        It’s going to be interesting to see what happens, for here in Ontario and Quebec we are seeing spikes in the variants, and have moved towards lockdowns while ICUs are filling up rapidly in hospitals and ‘elective’ surgeries are being put off. Vaccinations continue to ramp up, but still not quickly enough and we as a country are way behind in terms of per capita jabs in arms. Supply and the pace of jabs is supposed to increase exponentially but that has been the promise for weeks and weeks and there is much to be done yet.

        So as I look at the calendar it is in pretty much 8 weeks time that F1 would be packed up and preparing to fly to Canada, and we’ve just started a provincial lockdown for the next 4 weeks, at least here in Ontario, and all along Quebec has been in lockstep with us in terms of COVID cases and deaths per capita, as well as vaccination rates and hospital capacities.

        So it’s going to be very interesting. I just don’t know when F1 has to know how safe it is going to be, and I do think they can come over here and be in a bubble and run the race…but as for now I would say I’d be absolutely shocked if there could be an audience. Speaking just for at the moment, hospitals ICU’s (Intensive Care Units) are reaching their maximum if not already there, and certainly doctors and nurses have been run ragged and are burned out at this point while things are back to getting worse. Makes me wonder what would happen if that was still the case in 9 weeks and god forbid there was an accident and a driver or team member had to be helicoptered to the nearest hospital.

    2. I think you may be confusing Ottawa with Ontario. Although Ottawa is in the province of Ontario, the capital of Ontario is Toronto, and the capital of Canada is Ottawa. All the provinces are represented in the federal government which meets in Ottawa.

  4. I luv chicken
    11th April 2021, 12:15

    Formula e, where vehicles travelling under yellow flag conditions, are faster than while racing. Rome is/was a stupid track. As to television presentation, announcers dressed as thugs. Thought I was watching the Hot wheels version of West Side Story.

  5. If Turvey got a race ban, he would feel guilty about that.

  6. Is there a racing series where the drivers must pilot very-difficult, if not dangerous, machines against each other on equal footing? Not an engineering competition. Not virtue-signalling. No “one team got it right, and everyone else is screwed for the next 8 years.” Just equally-hard-to-drive beasts that take strength, skill, and genuine bravery to drive against others?

    My kingdom, be it ever so small, for such a series.

    1. Surely Indycars fit the bill? Or Super Formula?

Comments are closed.