Why Bottas's penalty was wrong

Two years ago, the FIA made the wise decision to be a little more lenient when it came to penalising Formula 1 drivers for incidents in the interests of encouraging good racing. That made a lot of sense as to be too harsh hardly incentivised overtaking.

Yet still the 'racing accident' verdict is sometimes a little too rare. Valtteri Bottas's penalty for colliding with Lewis Hamilton at the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix is one such example.

Looking at the incident closely, there are several factors at play. From Bottas's perspective, he made a good start, was well-placed in third on the run to the first corner and was seemingly more interested in holding that place than challenging Hamilton for second. His positioning on the run to the first corner certainly supports that idea.

But that was complicated by what the two Mercedes drivers were up to heading into the corner.

Rosberg held a mid-corner line, and rightly so, which did serve to back Hamilton up a little. There's nothing wrong with what either was doing, but the consequence was it brought Bottas into their orbit.

So Bottas went to the inside and headed for the apex. He claimed he was more worried about attacks from behind, and there's something to be said for that - although he could also have taken a slightly more defensive approach to the corner to cover that off.

At the same time, there was an opportunity to take second as Hamilton had left the door wide open into the first corner. That, combined with the two Mercedes being a little hesitant into the turn and Hamilton trying to cut back inside his team-mate, created the conditions for what followed.

When Bottas started to make the move, he was entitled to do so - provided he would be able to take the apex without his momentum carrying him too wide into Hamilton.

In that scenario, Hamilton would have been obliged to leave him a little room - although he admitted he wasn't aware Bottas was there. Note, that's leave a little room, not simply jump out of the way.

But Hamilton's argument that he didn't know Bottas was there is a little dicey as it's the start of a grand prix and if you've been a little backed up into the corner, there's every reason to expect a car could appear there even if you can't see it. There are 20 cars behind him, and there was every chance one might turn up where Bottas did.

Bottas did have a small slide on his way to the apex before hitting Hamilton, which he corrected. Whether or not that was caused by trying to scrub off a little extra speed when he saw Hamilton taking the apex or by simply being too hot into the corner - and the balance of probability suggests the former even though the latter can't be ruled out - is another question.

Either way, even if Bottas had turned tightly enough, Hamilton was still on a collision course with him. There was not the room for a Williams to make it round without contact even if Bottas was on the perfect line. So that's a moot point.

So we have an incident here dictated by several circumstances: it's the first corner of a grand prix and things are hectic, the two leaders are going a little more slowly that might be expected while focusing on each other, Bottas is in a position where he can legitimately make a move that is on the very aggressive side of acceptable.

While it wasn't a complete surprise to see him given a penalty, and you can see why the stewards did so, the circumstances surely dictate this would have been better left as a racing incident.

Picking one other Bottas-related incident out from recent history - when Kimi Raikkonen collided with him late in last year's Russian GP - that's a far more clear cut example of the driver behind launching a move that isn't on, too late, against a car on a normal approach to the corner. What Bottas did last weekend was no divebomb.

Amid the current crisis as to what F1 should be, the one thing we can be sure of is people love to see racing and battling. Racing needs to be hard, but fair, and being wary of reaching racing incident conclusions over high profile incidents will only play against that.

If we accept the claims of those who want to see lots of overtaking, but don't like the DRS or high-degradation rubber, then it's only going to get worse for them. If you make it harder to pass, and don't accept more often that things can go wrong and that there is a difference between someone launching a legitimate move that goes slightly wrong and a completely reckless one, it will serve only to make the racing duller.

The key is to be able to differentiate between a move that is on but not over the line, and one that is over. While the fact it was the start of the race is a mitigating factor in the Bottas incident, this doesn't mean anything that happens at the first corner should always be treated as a racing incident.

Romain Grosjean's error at the start of the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix, for example, was clearly his fault and rightly punished.

The standard thing to do in situations like this is to call for "consistency" - but that's a dangerous word. No set of circumstances is exactly the same and that's exactly why the FIA has engaged a 'driver steward' in F1 races. In Bahrain, it was the excellent Derek Warwick, but even the driver stewards have to be bound by F1's own guidelines.

Stewards are generally told that any decision they make has to bear scrutiny in a court of law. And while that applies less to such on-track incidents than it does other rules infringements, it does mean that a common sense approach isn't always possible.

Another good example of this is when Romain Grosjean passed Felipe Massa in Hungary 2013 on the outside of Turn 4. It was a great move, and while Grosjean did drift over the white line demarking the edge of the track most - even Massa - agreed it was an acceptable pass.

But once it was sent to the stewards, they couldn't think of it like that. It was a question of fact - did Grosjean cross the white line or did he not? If he did, then it's a penalty according to the rules, whether you like it or not.

That's why "consistency" is a difficult thing to implement. Actually, all you can do is apply sound judgement and allow room for common sense to prevail. In the case of Bahrain, while the incident did compromise Hamilton's race - and car - it's not the outcome that dictates the severity of the punishment but the nature of the error.

As for Bottas, he admitted there have been question marks over whether he's too conservative at the start of races. In fact, this has been something of a sore point within the team for a few years - so with question marks over his future who can blame him for taking the aggressive route at Turn 1?

Bottas tried a bold, but legitimate, move and it didn't come off. While he was the single biggest contributor to what happened, there were enough confounding factors for it to be accepted as one of those things. It doesn't have to be 50/50 exactly to be deemed a racing incident.

Sometimes genuine accidents happen in racing and, while unfortunate for all involved - especially Hamilton in this case - that doesn't necessarily mean it warrants a penalty. Most importantly, if you want to encourage racing these kinds of marginal calls should be let go.

Sometimes it's no one person's fault.