Ferrari favoured in Valencia?
Despite the praise from some quarters for Hermann Tilke’s track design and the overtaking opportunities afforded by it, today’s inaugural F1 GP in Valencia was not one of the most exciting races we’ve seen. A great lap on Saturday put Felipe Massa on pole and a flawless ‘lights to flag’ drive today saw him take a comfortable victory, which even the flying Lewis Hamilton was unable to threaten.
As far as racing is concerned, there was very little action anywhere in the field, with strategy and mistakes being responsible for most of the small amount of excitement.
The most notable events were Toro Rosso’s excellent weekend, with Sebastien Vettel finishing sixth; Kimi Raikkonen’s engine blow-up, Ferrari’s second in two races; Raikkonen (again) leaving his pit box early after the second stop, injuring a mechanic and taking his fuel rig with him; and Massa’s alleged ‘unsafe’ departure from the pit box after his second stop.
The last of these is the most interesting. F1 regulations give priority to cars already in the pit lane and puts the onus on teams not to release their cars from the pit box unless it is ’safe’ to do so. The TV coverage showed, quite clearly in my view, that the Ferrari was released into the path of Adrian Sutil’s Force India in what must surely have been an ‘unsafe’ manner, forcing Sutil to take evasive action and, ultimately, requiring Massa himself to back off to avoid a collision at the pit lane exit.
Normally in these situations the race stewards are very quick to investigate the incident, make a judgement and apply a penalty if appropriate. Indeed, a message came through quite quickly from race control that the incident was under investigation.
I suspect that if any other team had been involved, especially McLaren, judgement would have been swift and a drive-through penalty handed down in short order. But it was Ferrari in the spotlight and, yet again in this observers opinion, the normal rules do not seem to apply where the prancing horse is concerned.
The stewards decided to postpone judgement until after the race, raising the question of what penalty could realistically be applied. The situation is pretty much without precedent and I think there is a good chance that F1 will try to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.
Immediately after the race some commentators were suggesting that, as no accident resulted and no-one suffered any loss of race position, the manoeuvre was in fact not unsafe. The absurdity of this concept, proposed by a former driver, is astonishing. If someone breaks the pitlane speed limit but doesn’t cause a crash, should they then be let off? If I break the speed limit on a public highway but don’t cause an accident, should the courts let me off?
No, rules are rules and they should apply equally to everyone. Except Ferrari perhaps?
