Time For Professional Full-Time Race Stewards?

So Lewis's appeal has been denied. Now let’s all be honest nobody actually expected it to succeed ? I mean what possible motivation would the FIA have in over-ruling the stewards decision in an appeal which was always going to be chucked out as inadmissible, sad fact is that drive-through-penalties are not appeal-able and never have been.

The real scandal of Spa isn’t the International Court of Appeal’s decision today. The scandal is in large part that there is only one full time race steward in the sport and Charlie Whiting clearly made a call saying that Lewis had ceded the place correctly and advised Mclaren accordingly when asked.

How in a professional international sport such as Formula One can part-time race stewards be allowed to decide what is and isn’t acceptable under the rules? It doesn’t happen in the football and it sure shouldn’t happen in Formula One!

But that’s not even the real scandal for many it will be that Toro Rosso’s Case in the Japanese Grand Prix in 2007 allowed an appeal of a drive through penalty and surely would set a precedent—so why exactly was this appeal allowed well the reasoning can be found in the full text of the FIA’s decision today:

“27. The Court, in a judgment of 12 October 2007 rendered in the Toro Rosso case

concerning the 2007 Japanese Grand Prix (driver Vitantonio Liuzzi), concluded,

in similar circumstances, that the appeal against a decision to impose a 25-

second penalty was admissible.

However, none of the parties concerned had raised the inadmissibility of the appeal in that case, the FIA for its part leaving the matter to the sovereign appreciation of the Court. Therefore, the Court was able, in the conclusion of its decision, to declare the appeal admissible, but it did not give reasons for its decision on the issue, as the question was not debated.

Consequently that judgment does not present itself as settled law with respect to

this question and does not bind the Court in the present case.”

Now that’s interesting because nobody argued that the appeal was a breach of the rules the Court can ignore them and overturn the decision. Surely not! If the justice systems of the world relied solely on the laws that the people in the court room happened to want to remember well there would be chaos. But hey its the FIA we can do whatever we like.

Some might point out that the text of the decision reveals the true reason in a much more subtle way—the text is a very accurate press release as one would expect.

When introduced for the first time in the document McLaren are referred to by their full name “Vodafone McLaren Mercedes” and Ferrari by their full title “Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro” all right and proper. Strange then that when Toro Rosso are mentioned for the first and only time in the penultimate paragraph they are simply referred to “Toro Rosso” not their full title now and at the time of the 2007 appeal “Scuderia Toro Rosso.”

Time for professional full time race stewarding team elected by the teams themselves  undoubtedly.

Time for the fans to put aside their accusations of bias in favour of a certain Italian Team?

Time for a new governing body?