Haas team principal Guenther Steiner’s call for Formula 1 to introduce permanent stewards failed to win support from his rivals.
Steiner blasted the Monaco Grand Prix stewards over the penalty imposed on his driver Nico Hulkenberg during the last race. He referred to them as “laymen”, which earned him an official reprimand from the FIA.He also criticised F1’s practice of rotating the stewards between races, saying a permanent staff should be introduced to improve the consistency of decisions.
“It’s now time, we’ve been discussing this since years and years, and we always go back to this – every other sport has professional referees,” said Steiner.
However rival team bosses said they are satisfied with the current arrangement. “So far, this year, the stewards made correct decisions,” said AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost, who pointed out only a small number of stewards are used by F1 over the course of a season.
“Most of the time the stewards are well-known,” he said. “It’s not that at every race that they’re completely new. They are changing from time to time, but you see always the same faces.
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“It’s always the same story – if a team has some troubles, for whatever reason, then at the end, they tell that it’s the stewards that are guilty. It’s not the stewards are guilty. If we do our job in a correct way, then I don’t think that the stewards make problems.”
Several aspects of F1’s race management procedure were revised in the aftermath of the controversial end to the 2021 season, when FIA race director Michael Masi was ousted over his mishandling of the championship-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, whose driver Lewis Hamilton lost the world championship in that race, also backed the current approach to officiating races.
“I never had my doubts in the system, I had my doubts in individuals,” he said. “And I think that as a steward and as a race director you have immense pressure to do the right things and probably every decision is going to have someone that likes it and the other one that doesn’t.
“So I think they’re just trying their best they can and we need to support the FIA where we can.”
Steiner has clashed with F1’s race management several times in recent years. He criticised the race director of the 2022 United States Grand Prix after he was given an incorrect deadline for the submission of a protest, which led to it being dismissed. Four years ago Steiner was fined for referring to a “stupid idiotic steward” during the Russian Grand Prix.
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elchinero (@elchinero)
12th June 2023, 14:35
“they’re just trying their best ” That’s it?! “trying”. Can a wheel guy use that excuse: “But, but, but, I was “TRYING”!
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
12th June 2023, 19:17
Yes, terrible excuse, the stewards have been inconsistent for years.
T
12th June 2023, 19:41
The wheel guy is paid personnel with benefits and a contract not a volunteer.
I believe we agree on the same consensus but you need a better argument
drmouse (@drmouse)
13th June 2023, 14:48
I know the marshals are volunteers, but is the same definitely so of stewards? I was always under the impression that they were paid.
Redba
12th June 2023, 18:36
Once permanent staff is set then people will start complaining about bias when they make decisions mostly against one of the Teams.
The drama will go on forever.
Euro Brun (@eurobrun)
12th June 2023, 19:58
Sounds like Toto is actually agreeing with Steiner here to be honest!
MichaelN
12th June 2023, 21:19
It’s such a classic Wolff move to endorse singling out individuals while supposedly defending ‘the system’.
Do more people need to go through what Masi was subjected to?
drmouse (@drmouse)
13th June 2023, 10:19
Masi screwed up big style in a very visible way. Any high-level, high-visibility worker for any company would have received the same treatment from their employer. Heck, if I’d brought the kind of bad publicity to someone I was working for that he did, I wouldn’t just be moved/demoted. I’d be let go and would struggle to find work elsewhere.
There is, of course, a question over whether there was more blame to go around, whether Masi was just the “fall guy”. If so, it is probably why he was just shunted to another position rather than fired. Not something I agree with, but it is fairly common at all levels.
Nick T.
12th June 2023, 21:42
A much bigger issue is how soft F1 becomes. They used to only trigger safety cars if the track was literally blocked or there was an insane amount of debris (or like a wheel) on line on the track. Now EVERYTHING is a safety car. It’s embarrassing. It’s even more embarrassing that fans who came in since DTS know nothing else and now actually complain when SCs aren’t immediately thrown for the most minor issue.
S
13th June 2023, 9:34
It’s also embarrassing that some people can’t, or simply refuse to, move with the times….
F1 isn’t what it used to be, but then, the rest of the world and life in general isn’t either.
Nick T.
14th June 2023, 18:16
Great attitude. Russia has occupied part of Ukraine. Should we just accept it because “times change?” Because it’s now the future, even if something has changed negatively, we should just accept it is your basic thesis. I am not against maximum safety. I am against SCs, RFs and VSCs that aren’t saving lives because the hazard isn’t a major threat.
Antz (@antznz)
12th June 2023, 23:43
I don’t agree with Steiner much but I do think consistent decision making would help the sport. I think it’s fair to say stewards are the worst part of F1, I can’t think of anything else that comes close other than maybe Paul Ricard.
Regular stewards, whether you agree with their decisions or not should at least let you know what side of a 50/50 decision you’re likely to fall on and therefore inform risk assessment. The system might be fine but it’s implementation leaves much to be desired.
drmouse (@drmouse)
13th June 2023, 10:34
I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. Inconsistent decision making, or at least the appearance of such*, has been a massive problem in F1 for as long as I have been watching (over 2 decades). Nobody can ever be sure what the stewards will do about an incident, even if it appears to be identical to one which happened in the same race.
I’m really not sure about this. As mentioned above, we can see an identical-appearing incident handled differently within the same race at times. That’s obviously with the same stewards. So, if the stewards can do things differently on the same day, at the same track, how would it help to have those same stewards held constant?
Personally, I’d like to see less discretion in the hands of the stewards and race control. Far too much is open to interpretation, and therefore can be (and often is) interpreted differently in identical-seeming incidents.
If not, we should at least be given
– more information about why an incident has been handled differently, and
– an independent, regular public review of decisions feeding back publicly-visible guidelines as to how the stewards should be handling things.
* There is always the possibility that the stewards are being consistent, but there is information which we are not privy to which makes the difference. If this is the case, that information needs to be highlighted so the teams, media and fans know why two incidents were handled differently. The appearance of inconsistency is just as damaging to the reputation of the sport as actual inconsistency.
Asanator
14th June 2023, 16:46
@drmouse Respectfully, I disagree.
Half the problem pre AD21 was that Masi would have to come out after every race and justify the Stewards decisions on everything, which put massive amounts pressure on him personally and enabled the ‘nit picking’ over every stewards decision by teams, the media and the fans without having to use official channels. It even led to him being blamed for decisions that weren’t even his. I truly believe that this contributed to the ultimate problems in AD21. We hear people regularly harking back to the good old days of Charlie Whiting, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times he came out to explain a stewards decision.
I like that fact that the stewards don’t have to explain themselves and that the referee’s decision is final. Teams that feel truly aggrieved can ultimately appeal a decision and when that happens, we usually get an explanation from the Stewards for the decision as part of the review.
drmouse (@drmouse)
14th June 2023, 17:03
To be clear, I don’t want the RD challenged in that way. It isn’t and shouldn’t be his job to justify the stewards decisions.
What I want is decisions which can be seen to be consistent, and we do not have that now. Neither drivers, teams, nor fans can predict with any level of certainty how an incident will be viewed by the stewards. This has been the case for decades in F1, but that doesn’t make it right.
The stewards’ decision should be final. But it should also be consistent and predictable (baring the few outlying mistakes). This is the case in most other sports that I’ve seen. If we want this to happen, we can’t simply leave things as they are and expect a better outcome (as has been done for decades). Procedures need to be put into place to improve things or they will remain as they are.
If the stewards are actually being more consistent than it appears, official explanations as to why they are making such decisions will help us, as fans, as well as the teams and drivers, to understand this. If they are not, a regular review issuing guidelines publicly would help them become more so, as well as acknowledging our concerns.
If not this, I’d like to hear your suggestions as to what could be done to improve the consistency of decision making, or a good reason why we shouldn’t want improved consistency.
Frasier (@frasier)
13th June 2023, 12:29
Typically the mainly politically motivated F1 bosses leave it to one guy to take the hit for saying what they all must realise is sub-optimal system of stewarding. It’s their way of ensuring they don’t add bad feeling from the [only human] stewards to their sentence for any wrongdoing that might happen in future.
sethje (@seth-space)
14th June 2023, 12:30
Regarding 2021 this statement from toto is showing some growth.