28/07/2009
FEATURE BY GLEN CROMPTON
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Before I type a single word of this article, I want to make a couple of things absolutely clear.
I regard the loss of Henry Surtees' life as a dreadful tragedy and in no way wish to politicise this loss. In fact I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to Henry's loved ones. And as for Felipe Massa, my stomach turned as I regarded footage of his incident during qualifying at the Hungarian GP. I extend my best wishes to Felipe and his loved one and sincerely hope that his recovery goes well.
I have stated the above because I cannot write what I am about to without referring to both incidents and I do not want idiotic hate mail suggesting that I am diminishing the seriousness of either incident
So Renault has been banned from the next Formula One Grand Prix event because it did not correctly bolt Fernando's front-right wheel on during his first pit stop at the Hungaroring. That is the decision of the stewards at that event.
I have to admit that I am miffed. I do not think I am alone in regarding such a penalty as draconian and perhaps without precedent. In my decades of watching F1, I cannot recall a team ever having been excluded from a subsequent event as a result of an improperly fitted wheel which later parted company with its car, and I have certainly seen plenty of them part company with cars for this reason.
In the worst case I can remember, Michele Alboreto's Minardi shed a wheel in the Pitlane during that dreadful weekend at Imola in 1994 and when that wheel finished its upward journey, it descended back into the pitlane and injured a Ferrari mechanic. There was no race suspension for that one.
But back to the present day. In a nutshell, I am nothing short of astonished that Renault, as a team, has been excluded from the next GP. Why? Because Renault, according to the steward's report, has been adjudged guilty of a crime that MIGHT have caused a catastrophe.
In its own right and taken in context of the recent loss of Henry Surtees' life followed by Felipe Massa's horrendous injuries at Hungary, I find it difficult to begrudge anyone their instinctive reactions to what that wheel leaving Fernando's car might have caused. But the fact is that it did not cause anything other than Fernando's retirement. And I would hope that FIA appointed stewards are not emotively reactive.
However vile it may seem, I am compelled to point out at this juncture that Henry Surtees did not lose his life because a wheel was improperly fitted to a car. The wheel that struck Henry was the result of another car striking a barrier in its own crash which resulted in a wheel detaching from the crashed car and bouncing back onto the track. This accident absolutely proved that a stray wheel is potentially lethal. What it may also have proved is that FIA regulations concerning the tethering of wheels to the chassis of open wheeler race cars are still lacking.
That which exacerbates my fury at the Steward's decision to exclude Renault from the 2009 European Grand Prix is that on Saturday the 28th of July, Felipe Massa was struck and seriously injured by a component jettisoned by Rubens Barrichello's Brawn. There is no uncertainty about this. A coil spring from Rubens' car struck and seriously injured Massa. I have just finished reading Doctor Iain Corness' article on Pitpass in which he confirms my fears that Felipe may never return to the cockpit of an F1 car or any other race car for that matter.
And yet I find no indication that the Brawn team are to be excluded from the next Grand Prix.
Renault is to be excluded from the European GP because a failing on their car might have caused a catastrophe though it ultimately didn't. A failing on a Brawn car did cause a catastrophe and there is no penalty in sight.
Let me be very clear here. A large coil spring from a Brawn car was left bouncing down the track and ultimately collided with Felipe Massa's head. It should not take a degree in engineering to understand that for such a large coil spring to be detached from a car is the result of a series of failures. For a start the spring would have at least one, and probably, more retaining devices on screw threads to tension it and allow it to serve its function. Then, as is the nature of coil spring usage, the shaft upon which the spring would be situated would be mounted at two ends and the coil spring could only fly free of the car if one of these mountings failed. Which, in simple terms, means that there must have been two points of failure on Rubens' Brawn to precipitate the accident which so horrendously injured Massa.
Were arguments apropos culpability to be heard within the jurisdiction of any decent, democratic court things would turn on the concept of negligence. In this context I urge you to consider that a Renault team member may not have got his wheel nut in place in time and not secured his retaining device which resulted in a wheel falling off the car and ruining its race and not much else. An apparent chain of failure at Brawn has probably ended Massa's F1 career. And yet Brawn will race at Valencia and Renault will not.
Though I do not count myself among them, cynics have sprouted their thoughts all over the internet which seem to suggest that Brawn's initial supply of Honda cash has been exhausted and that, in an effort to extend the meagre resources at their disposal, "lifing" of parts has been extended. This roughly means that in the critical world of F1 where any given part of the car has a life that is likely measured in minutes and seconds, these lives have been extended beyond the limits that their engineering authors intended.
Whatever the case, I am wont to question the FIA stewards' penalty. Is excluding Renault from the next GP likely to discourage them from a future transgression more than a large fine or deduction of points would? I personally doubt it. Indeed I suspect that the reaming the relevant team members might have copped from Flavio is far worse than any penalty the FIA could impose. Moreover, Renault's car was in the lead when it pitted and stood a show of winning the race. The biggest penalty of all must surely have been Fernando's retirement.
All of which leads to the questions of crime and punishment. Is an FIA imposed sanction supposed to dissuade others from committing a similar crime? Is the punishment, even if unprecedented, supposed to change the behaviour of all the teams? If so, would it not be easier to simply define punishments and crimes in the venerated and oft-cited Sporting Regulations? By dent of intent, Formula One teams are encouraged to ensure wheels are properly affixed to their cars, particularly when leading a Grand Prix, without FIA sanction.
Yet again, I find myself wondering what the point of the FIA actually is. The FIA is in charge of all racing and yet Henry Surtees lost his life because a wheel that was insufficiently tethered to a car that crashed bounced back onto the track. The FIA and its outgoing master pride themselves in trumpeting the safety they have introduced to both road and racing cars. Henry Surtees died and Felipe Massa may never race again under the current governance of the FIA. Renault offer some of the safest road cars on offer but are still set to sit out the Valencia GP because their actions do not please FIA representatives.
Miffed as I am, I decided a closer scrutiny of the Hungarian GP stewards decision was in order. According to salient extracts of the transcript of that decision I have before me I regard the following:
1. "The competitor knowingly released Alonso without out one of the retaining devices for the wheel-nuts being securely in position, this being an indication that the wheel itself may not have been properly secured.
Being aware of this, failed to take any action to prevent the car from leaving the pits."
If I am reading this correctly, this says that the team, whose individuals are apparently treated in this case as a cogent whole and expected within seconds to relay all information to all others, allowed the car to leave the pits when any member of the team had reason to believe that a wheel was not securely fitted. I suspect that this would accurately describe the case in every other mid-race wheel loss.
We speak here of men who are drilled for hours on their role of removing and refitting wheels as fast as possible. I invite any mechanic whose F1 car has lost his particular wheel after a pitstop to tell me that he didn't know it was likely to happen.
Moreover, I can recall watching cars leave their pit box with fuel rigs still attached, sometimes with a refueller also attached to the rig, and, in one case, a rear jack still attached. I have seen teams release cars into the path of other cars which has resulted in near misses and near hits. I have even seen the lollipop man change his mind after lifting his indication sign only to slam it back down. I have seen a Benetton burst into flames in the pitlane but without a race suspension. But not one of these "knowing" transgressions that I recall resulted in a team being excluded from a subsequent event. In other words, in this regard, I can personally see no reason for the unprecedented penalty handed out to Renault.
2. "Failed to inform Alonso of this problem or failed to advise him to take appropriate action given the circumstances, even though the driver contacted the team by radio believing he had a puncture."
Forgive my naivety but this one really strikes me as a can of worms. For a start, there are two separate charges split by that innocent little word "or". For the presumption of guilt, the opposite of a presumption of innocence which even the FIA seem to mostly adhere to, I'd have thought that it would need to be established that the a member of the team in radio contact with Alonso was in possession of the information. I see no such assertion in the decision transcript. And let's be frank here, an F1 pit is frenetic at the best of times and severely so during and just after a pitstop. Then comes the part after the word "or". This charges the team with failing to advise the driver to take appropriate action given the circumstances. It is implicitly assumed in this further charge, as previously noted, that a member of the team in radio contact with Alonso was aware of the problem. Once again, perhaps such a team member was but nothing in the transcript before me says so. As for Alonso's call that he believed he had a puncture, my understanding of team protocol tells me that this would likely have started a chain of events that might have discovered the real problem but do try and understand that this situation unfolded in less than a minute.
All this before I regard the greyest area in the statement "…failed to advise him to take appropriate action…". Even assuming the team were aware of the problem, which I cannot because nothing in the transcript tells me so, just what is appropriate action? Should the team have told Fernando to pull over and see if he could find somebody near the side of the circuit with a rattle gun to tighten his wheel nut and ensure the retaining device was securely in place? No, I'm sure in the context of the transcript, this is more likely to mean just pull over to the edge of the track, hop out of the car, give up and try to forget the fact that you just pitted from the lead of the race.
More seriously, I again have to refer to precedent. No team has ever been given a race ban for failing to tell a driver to stop on the side of the track because a wheel might come off his car. And so once again, I can find no reason in the second extract of the steward's decision to merit the penalty visited upon the team.
3. "This resulted in a heavy part of the car detaching at turn 5 and the wheel itself detaching at turn 9."
Well, I don't think I needed to read the steward's transcript to nut that out. That said, I presume the "…heavy part of the car…" was the wheel shroud I saw fly off and which, I understand, is a carbon composite thing and is only heavy when compared to a handful of tissues. Yet again, I have seen plenty of carbon elements leave F1 cars and I have never seen a team given a race ban for such a transgression. And at the risk of repeating myself, Fernando's was not the first wheel to leave an F1 car but I have never seen a race ban applied for this.
4. "Having breached article 23.1.i and article 3.2 of the 2009 FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations, the stewards ruled that the ING Renault F1 Team is suspended from the European Grand Prix in Valencia."
I am sorely tempted to regard this as a brazen Non sequitur. Actually, that is what I regard it as. Implicit in the statement appears to be the presumption that as a result of all prior statements in the stewards' statement, the penalty imposed is automatic. While I do not for one second doubt that the penalty applied is well within the range of potential penalties available, I do doubt that as much is quite so automatic as the statement appears to read. And for one final time, I find no prior evidence that a race exclusion is the de rigour penalty.
In the end, if I am lenient, I might convince myself that the stewards at Hungary dealt an overly harsh penalty to Renault because of the backdrop of Henry Surtees and Felipe Massa. If I am not lenient, I might go looking for reasons that the FIA and its outgoing president would want to punish Renault. But that would be the thinking of a cynic.
Glen Crompton
crompo@pitpass.com