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people won’t be aware we have access to.
“First of all, we have all the video feeds — the pictures
that have gone to air; the vision captured by FOM but
which hasn’t been put to air; the closed circuit cameras
around the track, and all the onboard material as well.”
The vast amount of camera footage available to the
stewards is backed up by a stream of data that feeds into
both Race Control and the Stewards’ Room.
“We have GPS tracking, which shows where cars are at
any given time,” says Connelly. “We also have access to all
the team radio transmissions, which are very important as
they allow us to know if a team has warned a driver that
he’s about to impede another car and whether a driver
has ignored that information.
“Finally, as of this summer, we can now obtain real-time
telemetry from the cars. That’s really useful as we can
overlay telemetry information from an incident with data
from previous laps, so we can tell if a driver has done
something like failing to back off under yellow flags.
“Linking all this together you can come up with a
complete picture of what’s going on. You have a mass of
information that isn’t available to the public or the teams.
That’s why decisions are sometimes taken that people
have trouble understanding, but they simply don’t have all
the information the stewards do.”
And if meting out suitable punishment is still a cause for
debate among the stewards, there is also the vast store of
historical precedent for the stewards to draw on.
‘ YOU CAN COME UP
WITH PENALTIES BASED
ON HISTORICAL DATA’
CHARLIE WHITING
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“We keep all the incidents from recent seasons on
video on a hard drive, and all of that is available to the
stewards,” says Whiting. “It’s an invaluable resource
because, of course, the same stewards are not at every
race. This way they can refer back to all that past
footage and it helps them make a more informed and
consistent decision.
“The stewards also have a list of penalties they can
refer to dating back to 2003,” he adds. “It’s categorised
by offence and penalty, so the stewards can quickly
see who’s done what, where, and what penalties were
handed out. That way they can, for example, look at
all the penalties given for causing a collision over
past seasons and then cross reference that with the
video and you pretty quickly come up with suitable
PHOTOGRAPHY: VLADIMIR RYS
Whiting (left)
as the race
director must
decide on
matters as
diverse as the
positioning
of a trackside
photographer
and whether
to refer an
accident to
stewards who
will assess an
offence and
adjudicate
on suitable
penalties
penalties for ‘crimes’, based on historical data.”
Connelly, however, insists that the stewards’
investigations often go deeper than even that, with
consideration also being given both to how an incident
impacts on a race and a driver’s previous race history.
“Take a driver who has caused as collision,” he
says. “Typically the offence is punishable by a drivethrough,
but more recently there have been a couple of
occasions where a stop-go has been imposed. That has
typically been because the offence has been a second
one or more by that driver during the season. So you do
look at the driver’s record.
“We also now take into account the consequences of
the penalty. This wasn’t done previously and it might
lead people to think that there are inconsistencies, but
if someone is coming third in a race by 50 seconds, then
giving them a drive-through is not a penalty, potentially.
So you do look at the consequences.
“You’ve also got to look at the consequences of their
action. To relate this to a civil situation, if I throw a punch
at you and miss, I’m probably going to get charged by the
police with attempted assault or something like that. But
if I connect and break your jaw, I’m going to get charged
with assault causing bodily harm or something like that.
That could lead me to suffer more dire consequences.
It’s the same action, but the repercussions are much
different each time.”
Connelly points to Romain Grosjean’s one-race ban as
a situation in which history, precedent and outcome all
fed into a decision he presided over.
“That incident could have completely changed the
outcome of the FIA’s premier championship,” he says.
“But what Romain got the extra penalty for was not that,
or at least not wholly for that. When you’re a relatively
new driver to Formula One and you have the privilege
of driving in a potentially winning or podium finish
car, you’re mixing it with a group of drivers who have
many years more experience than you do at the sharp
end of the field. It therefore behoves you, in our view, to
exercise greater care and attention because you are, with
all due respect, the new kid on the block and maybe a
little out of your league compared with the guys around
you at that end of the grid.
“It was a very serious decision and one that was taken
only after lengthy weighing of the facts, the evidence,
history, everything,” he adds. “However, every decision
weighs heavily on the stewards’ minds. No decision to
penalise a driver is ever taken lightly.”
In the past the weight of race-affecting decisions
was regularly handed to a group who all too often had
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