Quote:
Originally Posted by pman10
I stand corrected. This was by far the worst race of the season.
Aside from the first lap and Webbers incident, it was a snore fest, and was decided by cheating manipulators (Hamilton) and pure dumb luck.
Now, I think that the penalty was completely unfair but for a different reason. Something like passing the safety car should be a black flag or an IMMEDIATE drive through penalty. It is not fair to allow the driver to eke out a 20 second margin and then given him a penalty! The FIA needs to ensure that there is no advantage to cheating at all costs. And in this case, passing the SC was a huge advantage to Hamilton.
Overall, a pretty frustrating and generally lame race for me.
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FIA stewards cannot slap drivers around when they "seemed" to violate regulations. They will need to justify that indeed there was a violation, then hand out the penalty.
How would you feel if a driver was penalized with a drive-through and later video shown that he was indeed passed the SC line before the Safety Car did? By regulation he DID NOT violate anything and got penalized. If drivers are "all guilty until proven innocent", what are you going to do after finding out drivers are indeed innocent? Deduct 20 seconds off from his race time? That sounds like manipulate result.
The stewards were reviewing all the telemetries and various video feeds (including aerial shots) multiple times and have a solid conclusion. You just cannot punish driver before there's a verdict that he was indeed guilty. Given the time that races still proceeds, Race Control and Stewards are strectching thin on determining when the pitlane close and open, when will SC comes in, is the track clear, who violated what, the delta time...etc etc....