Max Verstappen, Red Bull, Singapore, 2023

Gasly pleased Singapore steward admitted “wrong judgement” over Verstappen

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Alpine’s Pierre Gasly praises Singapore Grand Prix steward who admitted to mistake in penalty decision.

In brief

“Fair play” steward admitted error – Gasly

Gasly appreciated the admission from a Singapore Grand Prix steward that they made a mistake by failing to give Max Verstappen a grid penalty that weekend. Several drivers and tewam representatives questioned why the Red Bull driver was only given a reprimand for impeding Yuki Tsunoda.

During the Japanese Grand Prix weekend teams were told the stewards accepted Verstappen’s penalty had been too lenient. Gasly, who queried other calls made by the stewards in Singapore, welcomed the admission.

“It’s a fair play on their side to recognise because no one’s perfect, we all make a wrong judgement sometimes,” he said. “I think it was good from their side.”

Testing of IndyCar’s 2024 hybrid engine continues

IndyCar president Jay Fyre has revealed that the series is undertaking on-track tests again for the hybrid engines it plans to run in 2024.

“We’ve got two teams at Barber today, testing. So we’re on a very robust test schedule of things,” he said at the press conference following the reveal of IndyCar’s 2024 calendar. “As you know, there’s little things that happen every day when we test things, but any time something happens, you learn something from it. So I think we’ve learned a lot the last couple weeks.”

The 2023 season finished on the second weekend of September, but IndyCar was already doing track tests with teams in August and has been busy since to make sure the hybrids are ready to run in races from the off next year. “The teams are putting a lot of miles and a lot of laps on this right now.”

F1 fan’s mafia boss lookalike dies

Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has died in hospital, meaning one unlucky Formula 1 fan will never have to worry again about being mistaken for the man who orchestrated many of Sicilian syndicate Cosa Nostra’s crimes.

Ahead of the 2021 Dutch Grand Prix, an F1 fan from Liverpool who was travelling to Zandvoort to watch the race was arrested in The Hague while dining in a restaurant. The innocent fan was blindfolded and taken away to a high-security Dutch prison by police who had mistaken him for the internationally-wanted crime lord Denaro. Upon scrutiny of his alibi, police realised the fan was not in fact Denaro and he was released.

The decades-long hunt for Denaro finally concluded this January when he was arrested after going to a private hospital in Sicily. Denaro’s illness led to his transfer from a maximum-security prion in mainland Italy to a nearby hospital last month.

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Comment of the day

IndyCar’s announcement of its 2024 calendar put a lot of focus on ovals, with two hosting night races and the Milwaukee Mile appearing on the schedule for the first time since 2015. But is there something missing?

I do like Milwaukee but I hate that we are losing Texas as it means that now outside of Indy there’s no other super speedways and no higher banked ovals.

They need to bring back better diversity with ovals as right now it’s basically all short track, low banked stuff and there fine but we need some of the faster, wider & higher banked multi-grooved ovals that allow for more dynamic racing with the draft battles & possibility to do the slingshot passes that used to make that style of racing so exciting to watch.

Get rid of the double headers that only serve to pad the field & bring back Texas, Michigan, New Hampshire & Pocono. And do whatever it takes to get Cleveland back as well, Then we’ll have a good calender with the sort of diversity the series used to be known for in the CART days.
Roger Ayles

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Ron, Greg, Theo Parkinson and Corey!

On this day in motorsport

  • 30 years ago today Alain Prost won his fourth and final title, Michael Schumacher took his second grand prix win and Lola started their last race

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Ida Wood
Often found in junior single-seater paddocks around Europe doing journalism and television commentary, or dabbling in teaching photography back in the UK. Currently based...

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19 comments on “Gasly pleased Singapore steward admitted “wrong judgement” over Verstappen”

  1. Great article there by Speedcafe.

  2. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
    26th September 2023, 7:01

    What happened to the amount of people commenting on this site – has it dropped significantly? Have people moved onto new sites. Even the live function seems sparse compared to before.

    1. @come-on-kubica
      For me it’s about the quality of the comments/ers. It’s been going down and now I feel less inclined to get involved. The idiotic haters just as the idiotic fans just polarize almost any thread. There is no room for discussion because both are fully entrenched. Therefore it always ends up in denying other ‘facts’ over your own ‘facts’ and thus a shouting match. Disagree on anything they say and you’re automatically ‘in the other camp’.

      Which is sadly also a good representation of what is happening in the real world … on almost any topic

      1. But that’s the kind of fans that F1 wants. Not the long termers that understand the sport, but those who will fanatically support a single driver at the expense of common sense.

        And like when you get obsessive people shouting everyone else down in the real world, the moderates just tend to get drowned out and eventually stop talking, and caring altogether.

        1. @Sham
          Sad but true
          –Metallica

        2. Coventry Climax
          26th September 2023, 11:43

          Maybe ‘the moderate’ should try to find a way to not get drowned out.
          Currently, in the Divided States of America for example, more than half of even the politicians now hold the view they should ignore people; either their president, the other politicians, or just large amouts of their own fellow country men, and for no other reason than not sharing their own point of view.

          There’s a noun that comes with the verb to ignore: Ignorance.

          1. I’m afraid that many of the moderates, myself including are becoming disillusioned with the sport being slowly but inexerably turned into a show and the sporting side being slowly removed. So they (we) can’t be bothered to keep commenting where it is clear that we aren’t wanted or particularly valued. Thats OK, there’s plenty of other things I like, but it doesn’t stop me having an opinion on whats wrong with the sport.

            There is already very little to distinguish the individual cars until you look really closely, the teams are so restricted that they can’t even customise gear ratios to a circuit anymore or change to a wet weather set up (which is half the reason the cars can’t race in the wet).

            DRS and Chocolate tyres simply means more drive by overtakes and less actual racing, which in turn means the fastest cars are guaranteed to make it to the front no matter what. You dare to slide the car, the tyres are worthless for the rest of the stint.
            All good for getting the cars close together and meaning the stats look all shiny for those who don’t understand better, but rubbish for actual racing.

            Formula 1, in my ideal reality, would be about the ultimate engineers designing the ultimate cars and engines for the ultimate drivers to race with – not a near spec series with engines that must last, what 7?, race weekends and can’t even be upgraded anymore along with a best guess at a compromise gear ratio set and drivers afraid to push the limits even briefly on the tyres because it costs too much time over a stint.

            Some recent changes are positive – the cost cap for example.

            But frozen engine specs? Extremely restrictive technical regs? I mean, come on – this is Formula 1. By all means the rules should be enforced and used to promote safety – but what is wrong with an engine design regulation that says “1.6L, using this fuel spec and no more than this amount of it, these materials are banned, GO!”, for example? Lets have some variation again.
            Car design – “this size, this weight, these crash tests, no moveable aero, no active suspension, no electronic driver aids, GO!”

            I know that it can’t be quite this simple, but I’m sure my meaning is understood.

          2. Coventry Climax
            26th September 2023, 22:43

            @sham , I absolutely share your idea of what F1 should be and isn’t anymore; that’s not hard to conclude as the general gist in my replies here.

            But, that’s a different concept from the type of fans F1 seems to be after and the type of commenters this site gets.

      2. Coventry Climax
        26th September 2023, 11:18

        Couldn’t agree more.

    2. I agree with what all of you are saying but we shouldn’t give up. We need to completely ignore the trolls and keep writing to each other because that’s a major enjoyment of the sport. The sport would lose even more of its appeal if we stop sharing our views with each other.

  3. Denaro’s illness led to his transfer from a maximum-security prion

    “Prion” ?? His illness was caused by too many undercooked steaks from infected cows?

  4. Coventry Climax
    26th September 2023, 11:32

    Beneath -edited- is what I -belatedly- replied to (one of?) the first articles here about a steward saying their decision was wrong.
    We still don’t get the full background of it here. Was it one steward? A lone wolf with a grudge on or, opposedly, a spokesman on behalf of all the other stewards? Makes a huge difference.
    Either way:

    It should actually just still be news for reasons that it’s detrimental to the sports for stewards to discuss, come back on etc. decisions made, to the press first.
    The stewards make their decisions collectively, so if they -in hindsight- collectively feel they made the wrong decision, that should be discussed and dealt with within the FiA first and only. Should the FiA then agree with that and come to the conclusion that a mistake has indeed be made, and that it should be put right, that’s the time for the FiA to take action and come out to the press with it and inform the public.

    What’s happened now does not seem like it is said on behalf of all the stewards, or even the FiA, (but we don’t really know?) and might well be the action of a lone wolf seeking his right and revenge for other stewards not sharing his opinion. (By the way, wolf pun not intended, but rather applicable in my mind.)

    It’s the exact type of controversy that the FiA constantly claims to like to avoid, but seem incapable to manage to.
    My take on that is that they’re hollow words and that they just actually do like all the controversy, as that sparks interest with the public, irrespective of it being positive or negative.
    And the best thing is, they have a rule that says bringing the sports in disrespect is not allowed. That’s pretty hollow too, in my opinion.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for consistent rules keeping. But where these things are concerned, the rules should apply to within the FiA as well.

    1. Agreed, apart from the fact Verstappen deserved ( and expected) a penalty for the yuki incident its very bad someone talked to the press and not a real FIA press release about an error they made.

    2. Coventry Climax, the entirety of your post is based on a mistake and you are falsely accusing that steward of things that he never did.

      Matteo Perini is the steward in question, and the reason why it was only one steward who commented is because he was the only steward who served in both the Japanese GP and Singapore GP.

      Furthermore, he had done exactly what you suggested he should have done, which was to discuss the issue in private and only within the official lines of communication.

      The FIA itself conducted an internal review and decided that the panel of stewards had made a mistake, with Perini then instructed by the FIA to brief the team managers about the outcome of that investigation during the Friday briefing session between the FIA and team personnel.

      Nobody has accused Perini of saying anything to the press – instead, the information appears to have come from one of the teams that was participating in the briefing, for which you are wrongly blaming Perini and accusing him of crimes he did not commit.

      1. Coventry Climax
        27th September 2023, 12:44

        Anon, the mere fact that this was left to some team member to discuss with the press, as you say, proves my point, even if the path Perini followed appears to have been correct – according to your information, from where? An official FiA press release? If so, then point me to it please. But it would be a huge surprise actually, as I’d expect “Media including Racefans” to have massively jumped right on top of that.
        If not, it wasn’t handled adequately by the FiA as an organisation (meaning if Perini didn’t fu, someone else did), and that would mean details of what I said may be incorrect – due to lack of information by the FiA -, but the general concept of what I said still stands.

        I’m not out ‘to get’ the FiA, but they manage to hugely disappoint me time after time. I’m of the naive type that still hopes discussions and talk might improve, or at least explain something. Not to me as a single person, but to the fans in general.

  5. It’s not enough in this case to say sorry and just move on. They should say upon a further investigation we found that the stewards erred and we therefore have no choice but to correct this error by….. so that the guilty team and or driver receive the penalty that was supposed to handed down. This can he done by adding time to the final times or penalize them in the upcoming race.

    1. Yes, if they made a mistake they should give a penalty appropriate to what it should’ve been without the mistake, but it’s also true that drivers manage the pace and such, and if you give a 5 sec penalty to a driver who hypothetically won by 4 sec and could’ve won by 6 had he known a penalty was looming, he would’ve pushed harder and neutralised the penalty.

    2. Adding penaltys after the race would make it a real circus. The results then, are not decided on track but in the board room. I seem to remember the farce in Austria where penaltys were given for off track excursions long after the race..
      Is that really what you want?

      One of the problems is the time it takes to decide to give a penalty and the fact a small penalty for a serious incident ( i.e. 5s for Perez) ruins someones race completly.

    3. The thing is they didn’t make a mistake. The regulatory framework fell short. That’s something else. You can’t blame the stewards nor Alpha Tauri for not showing up if this is how the rule is framed. What needs to happen is to change the rule book on this situation and get to a VAR like situation where stewards can decide based on footage and a party yes or no showing up is made irrelevant.

Comments are closed.