Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said the team’s unsuccessful attempt to have the results of the United States Grand Prix reviewed was worthwhile.
The stewards of the race turned down Haas’ request to reconsider the results after the team claimed some track limits violations by rival drivers were overlooked. In a hearing over two weeks after the race, the stewards ruled Haas failed to provide compelling new evidence of any breaches.However the stewards also acknowledged some track limits may have been overlooked during the race and urged the FIA to devise better means of enforcing them in the future. Steiner said that admission justified their attempt to provoke a review of the race result.
“I don’t regret it,” said Steiner ahead of this weekend’s race in Las Vegas. “Obviously we were conscious that it will be difficult to make it stick but at least we tried.
“What came out is that the stewards actually said to the FIA that it’s doing a bad job. And I think that’s what was done. We didn’t get anything out of it but you have to try in life, you have to fight.”
Steiner indicated the team believed several drivers had gone off the track at turn six, where the stewards said they did not have sufficient camera footage to inspect.
“What they should have done is make sure that they had a CCTV camera on turn six so I don’t have to protest,” he said. “That is number one.
“They should make sure that they’ve got the means in place to check their own regulations, not me sitting at home or Aston Martin [who protested over a similar matter in Austria] checking what they are doing. That is not the team’s job. In half an hour, we didn’t have time to go through all that stuff because that is not our job. We are not the governing body, we are a race team, we pay somebody to do this job – the FIA.”
He believes many people in F1 share Haas’ concern over the enforcement of track limits. “I think that’s worth it for the whole of Formula 1, not only for us, because everybody agreed with it, but nobody did anything about it,” he said.
However he admitted he wasn’t satisfied with the team’s failure to win a review.
“A fair hearing would be that they would accept the Right to Review and to review it properly, but obviously they didn’t want to go there for obvious reasons,” he said. “And that’s it, end of story. But as long as we move forward and get better for the future, it’s already a win.”
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2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix
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S
16th November 2023, 10:58
The irony that the stewards would note that the FIA is doing a bad job…
Yes, the stewards are the FIA.
SteveP
16th November 2023, 18:49
One thing that the review request did achieve, and no one has mentioned, is that it established a precedent that onboard footage is not proof of exceeding track limits.
From that you can take it that if the teams know a corner isn’t properly covered with CCTV, then they can exceed the limits at that corner without penalty.
Probably not what they intended, but refusing to take onboard footage from another car of Albon clearly exceeding limits they have dug a hole they don’t want to be in.