Why racing rules have simply got too much

You could forgive Oliver Bearman for feeling miffed at Monza thanks to the stewards slapping a 10-second penalty on his race time and two penalty points onto his licence.

Trouble had arisen on lap 40 when the Williams of Carlos Sainz got alongside and edged marginally ahead of Bearman, the two then colliding as Sainz, on the outside, turned in as normal to the second chicane. 

The stewards said the Haas driver was at fault because he had ‘defended his position and, instead of giving up the position, had caused the collision’. The crucial bit, when you got down to the letter of a finicky directive, was a failure by Bearman to have the front axle of his Haas ahead of the similar axle on the Williams. It’s a daft rule – in this instance.

That’s the point, of course. Each episode is different because motor racing is such a fluid sport. Formula 1 drivers are surely big enough and bold enough to work things out for themselves and apply common sense.

Instead of that, we have Sainz hitting the brakes at close to 200mph while, at the same time, mentally flicking through several pages of guidelines about what may or may not be permitted to happen next. In this instance, his antennae will have seized upon the line about ‘my front axle is ahead of yours’. Whereupon he turned in – and triggered more than a clash of wheels.

There were a few points at issue. One: according to the stewards, the guideline had suddenly become the law. Two: how on Earth can a driver see anything on either side thanks to the cockpit protection? And three: like it or not, the Haas was right there.

Where was Bearman supposed to go? He had actually braked earlier than Sainz – probably after his filing system triggered a cerebral klaxon, not so much about a possible front axle transgression but more as a warning about never knowing what the stewards might say next.

Villeneuve didn’t react well to advice that he should smarten himself up

Photo by: Sutton Images

This may be small consolation to Ollie, but it might have been worse. The officials could have checked out his appearance in the manner of a troop inspection in the barracks. Twenty-seven years ago in Brazil, Jacques Villeneuve was incensed when the Chief Steward took the Williams driver aside and suggested he tidy himself up and get his hair cut.

I’m not joking. This sartorial policing at least brought some unintentional levity to an earlier official outburst noted only for its supreme silliness.

This was at the time of the infamous ‘fiddle brake’. McLaren had cleverly installed a brake-steer system which, through a second brake pedal, allowed the driver to operate either the right or the left rear brake and improve the car’s turn-in and stability through a corner.

The game was up when ace photographer Darren Heath, having noticed the rear discs glowing unexpectedly, had seized the moment and captured the three-pedal arrangement by sticking his camera into the cockpit of Mika Hakkinen’s MP4/12 abandoned by the trackside towards the end of the previous year. 

The FIA had “great unhappiness” about this because it implied “surreptitious activity and must be avoided in the future”

Having previously assured McLaren that the system was legal, it was one thing for the FIA to, as it were, brake with the other foot and shout ‘foul’ (the system being banned early in 1998, after McLaren had kicked off the year with domination); quite another to issue a press release admonishing the motorsport world for using the term ‘fiddle brake’.

This expression has been common parlance since Bernie Ecclestone was a boy. It’s a layman’s way of describing, in simple terms, the McLaren system by comparing it with the fiddle brake on a trials car.

The FIA, however, had - and I quote Brazilian Grand Prix Bulletin #22 - “great unhappiness” about this because it implied “surreptitious activity and must be avoided in the future”. The statement just fell short of saying that anyone caught uttering the phrase would also be checked for cleanliness behind the ears and have their fingernails inspected.

Snapper captured the ʻfiddle brake’ in the footwell of the McLaren MP4/12

Photo by: Darren Heath – Getty Images

In this historic context, Bearman needs to watch his language. In the post-race press release at Monza, he said: “I really had to fight as we were slow in the straights.” I mean, that could cause ‘great unhappiness’ as it suggests pugilistic intention as well as surreptitious activity by deliberately driving at a reduced pace.

Of course, none of this would matter if the drivers were allowed to get on with what comes naturally, sort out their differences afterwards and not resort to whinging on the radio while quoting passages from the F1 version of the Highway Code.

It never used to be like this. At Zandvoort in 1977, James Hunt collided with Mario Andretti as the McLaren driver ran Andretti’s Lotus wide at the exit of Tarzan. The subsequent dialogue between the two was salty – to say the least.

But that was it. No stewards’ enquiry. No reruns of the television transmission to determine if one specific part of a car was fractionally ahead of the other in some ridiculous geometric case study. 

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall if an official had attempted to tell either driver that he was penalised for being ‘predominantly at fault’ (as the stewards claimed with Bearman).

That’s a bit like saying you’re a very naughty boy for daring to go racing. ‘Great unhappiness’ wouldn’t make a start on how either Mario or James would have reacted to the introduction of pedantic rules in a sport that has – or ought to have – calculated risk at its core.

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Hunt and Andretti about to come together at Zandvoort in 1977. They settled the matter between themselves

Photo by: Motorsport Images