Why it's wrong to mock Wehrlein for his forfeit

Not for the first time, Sauber ended up with three race drivers for Formula 1's season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Although this year the situation was much less the Swiss team's own doing.

Pascal Wehrlein's withdrawal on Saturday morning, on fitness grounds, opened the door for Antonio Giovinazzi to make his F1 debut. There's no doubt it was a great opportunity for the Italian, who is Ferrari's third driver this year, but Wehrlein copped a lot of flak.

Out came the criticism: he's not very brave, they don't make F1 drivers like they used to, he should have just given it a go. Alternatively, if it's so problematic, why did he bother showing up at all? Surely he should have worked out in testing that his fitness wasn't up to snuff.

Scorn rained over Wehrlein, but the downpour came from people who have missed the point.

"I think it is really awful how people think that they have any sort of competence to say anything about him," says Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn. "They just have their weird views, from wherever they come, and have no authority at all to judge over anyone.

"Pascal needs time. But I think it is rather appalling how people think they can judge this and they should look at themselves first."

Kaltenborn's anger is understandable. There are two key points when it comes to the physical-preparation setback Wehrlein suffered when he hurt his back in a Race of Champions shunt in January.

The first is that it stopped him from training properly for a while, and the second is that he missed the first test at Barcelona. So not only had he trained less than his contemporaries, he then got less time behind the wheel. An old cliche is there's no substitute for time in the seat, and that goes for physical prep as much as it does for improving pace and fine-tuning set-up.

Still, he returned for the second test. So why did this lack of fitness not show up sooner? Wehrlein's answer was simple: "We didn't do a race distance there..."

The German didn't complete a full day's testing in the C36, instead splitting duties with team-mate Marcus Ericsson throughout the second week. Wehrlein logged more than 50 laps just once in four days, and only Fernando Alonso, driving a McLaren-Honda that had an aversion to regular track time, completed fewer laps in total.

Even more relevant is the fact that Wehrlein's minimal mileage came through a series of short runs. His longest run throughout testing was 12 laps, on day one. The next day his longest stint was 10 laps. Then 11 on day three, and nine on the last day.

It's not just that Wehrlein hadn't completed a race distance at Barcelona - he hadn't done any long running at all. Ericsson completed more than 50 laps more than Wehrlein over the four days, including a 54-lap race simulation. Other drivers to do half-day running, like Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton and Renault's Nico Hulkenberg, didn't do race sims but still had a series of runs longer than 15 laps.

This was a deliberately conservative approach by Sauber, one that was sparked by the injury.

"I got cleared from the doctors just before the second test, so I went to Barcelona with a very easy approach, just to see how my back is doing - 'do I feel any pain?'" Wehrlein explained on Saturday.

"I never drove under race conditions in Barcelona. I never drove with the maximum limit. I never drove in race circumstances.

"And now this weekend is race weekend and I'm not feeling that I could do the whole race at my best performing level."

It's easy to say with hindsight that Wehrlein should have completed more mileage in testing, and that such an approach would have ensured any weaknesses would have been sussed out before wasting two Friday sessions in Melbourne - then Giovinazzi could have had more time acclimatising.

Kaltenborn says easing Wehrlein back into testing was the only sensible approach after his injury and the impact it had had on his training.

"We started building him up because that was the right thing to do, it was the right step," she says. "So we split it. Other teams do it too without having this situation.

"We did that and came here with the clear intention that he is going to drive all weekend."

Kaltenborn says she "would never have done this" - bring Wehrlein to Melbourne - if there had been a suggestion from testing that he was unfit. "You cannot have indication for this," she says, "because then you know something really isn't right".

Instead, Sauber found out the hard way. Wehrlein's performance in free practice validates his decision to withdraw, as it immediately revealed what Kaltenborn mentions above - that something wasn't right.

He was half a second slower than Ericsson on outright pace in second practice but, more tellingly, had an erratic and very slow long run. His average over 12 laps was two seconds worse than Ericsson's over 14 laps. Even cutting out the laps where he made obvious errors, or backed off, only brings that deficit down to 1.3s.

Whether Wehrlein was already physically flagging on that run or had mentally checked out by this point is up for discussion, but the effect remains the same: his performance was legitimately not good enough. Had that continued through the weekend (and you could assume it would get worse as the physical exertion took its toll) his race could have been unimaginably bad.

"I feel I couldn't do the whole race distance at my best performing level," was Wehrlein's reckoning. "I am feeling good in the car, and I wouldn't step into the car with no baselines, with nothing, taking a risk.

"I want to be in the car and not even think about my fitness level. I want to be in the car and then know I will be able to do two race distances after each other.

"At the moment I'm not feeling like I could do that. I'm feeling that at some point I would think about my fitness level, and I would think about how I am starting to get tired, and I don't want to do that."

It could be argued that Wehrlein should have persevered, and at least tried to do the race. But if his performance dropped, as he feared, then 'looking bad' has worse consequences for a driver in Wehrlein's situation. As a Mercedes junior, expectations are high and the scrutiny is more intense.

Participate, flop, then blame it on fitness would have looked like he was making excuses. Participate, flop, then keep quiet for fear of looking like he was making excuses would have looked like he's not that good.

An uncompetitive Wehrlein would have been in a lose-lose situation if he'd taken part. Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff backed his young charge's decision, and rightly points out it was a "very mature approach" from Wehrlein. After all, how many times do drivers - young or old - make headstrong decisions out of stubbornness that have worse long-term effects?

Kaltenborn feels Wehrlein's critics are missing this exact point.

"It takes a lot for someone so ambitious - and you all know how ambitious he is - to openly admit and say, 'Guys, in these circumstances, I cannot cover the entire race distance'," she says.

"So one should rather appreciate that kind of openness and honesty, which is not easy to maintain with the kind of pressure these guys have."

This brings us back to the issue of perception. Wehrlein was asked why he couldn't continue when drivers have battled physical ailments or problems in the past - Mark Webber throwing up in his crash helmet in the 2007 Japanese GP and Kevin Magnussen completing the Singapore GP and scoring a point without a drinks bottle are just two different examples.

But that's Wehrlein's point - "every situation is different". Especially as in this scenario he's returning from injury and there's a genuine fitness question mark, not just something a bit unfortunate that's happened mid-race.

Let's say a footballer had a hamstring injury in June, and didn't starting training again until mid-July. Would anyone seriously criticise them if they missed the first match at the start of August, instead delaying their return by a week or two to ensure full fitness? Absolutely not.

Have those criticising or poking fun at Wehrlein forgotten that a large chunk of the talk about F1's big, brave new era has been of drivers being pushed right to the limit physically? It's understandable that a niggling thought would have existed in Wehrlein's mind had he continued.

As new Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe said last Friday: "With much higher loads now in the car, with higher cornering speeds, driver endurance is much more demanding, so we may see more mistakes in races."

Romain Grosjean went into even more detail after qualifying, calling the cars "brutal to drive" and claiming "we are not far from 8G with the peak in high corners".

"It is hard on the body," the Haas driver continued. "The speed we go through the corners is insane compared to the past. You need to be more precise, more accurate, more on it and the body gets a pretty tough time into some corners, so it could be that the physical training from the winter will play a big role."

And so we come full circle. 'New F1' is about pushing drivers harder than ever, and either during testing or the Melbourne weekend every driver spoke at some point about how much physical work they had done over the winter and how important it would be.

Ultimately, it's extremely unlikely that even a fully-fit Wehrlein would have nicked a point or two in Australia. Giovinazzi finished a twice-lapped 12th, while Ericsson was a second slower than the others in Q2 - so Sauber's pace deficit was quite severe.

Nonetheless, it was the right call to get a replacement driver in. That Giovinazzi finished two places from the points on his debut, with no preparation, is of course testimony to the skill of the Italian and the maturity of his own performance, but it also highlights how attrition-hit the season-opener can be.

The last thing Wehrlein would have wanted to do was not race in Melbourne, to give up probably his best chance of getting some points this season, and to see someone else drive in his place and make the sort of impact that Giovinazzi did. Those are extremely powerful negative factors he will have had to consider.

Maybe Wehrlein would have been fine had he just persevered. It's impossible to say with certainty. The bottom line is, whether the decision in Australia was right or wrong only Wehrlein really knows - and for that very reason, who is anyone else to judge?