Latvala is a victim of blame culture

Jari-Matti Latvala shouldn't be starting next month's Rally Sweden. He should be benched for running down a spectator on the Monte Carlo Rally.

I've heard enough of that opinion.

Can I offer an alternative view?

The Automobile Club de Monaco should be given a yellow card for allowing spectators to stand in that area and the FIA should spend some time considering a rewrite of the World Rally Championship's sporting regulations.

The rule Latvala fell foul of is article 40.4, and it reads, verbatim: "If a crew is involved in an accident in which a member of the public sustains physical injury, the car must stop immediately."

The fan in question was back on his feet before the Volkswagen was even back on the road. Those around him have assured the team he was fine and sustained no physical injury. Get that? No physical injury.

No physical injury, then surely no case to answer?

Regardless of whether Latvala saw the guy or not, the FIA's own regulations trip the case up at the outset.

Article 12.1.1.c of the 2016 FIA International Sporting Code is also quoted in the communication of the decision, but that vaguely points to: "Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interests of motorsport generally."

Again, to me, this makes no sense in this case.

Maybe to say 'scapegoat' would be taking it a little bit far, but there's certainly a blame culture attached in this instance - and we need to seriously consider the road we've started down here.

Latvala had picked up damage in the incident that ended in hitting the spectator © LAT

We want the world's best rally drivers to drive flat out down some of planet earth's most treacherous roads, don't we? Of course we do; then let's not start looking to blame them if and when it goes wrong.

One thing is 100 per cent certain: Latvala did not want to go off the road on the exit of that right-hander. More than that, he certainly didn't want to hit anybody.

Latvala was doing his utmost to keep the car under control, but when he dropped it, he couldn't help where it went. Just like Stephane Lefebvre couldn't help where his Citroen DS 3 WRC went when he rocketed off the road earlier on the event, scattering fans left, right and centre as he shot through a field.

Remember the FIA's own safety video, launched late last year - the one with the car almost rolling onto the fans in an effort to shock us into conformity? Well, I watched that one again.

Interestingly, it informs us that: "In an accident, anything can happen." Fans are told to "stay in designated, safe spectator areas," and finally Latvala himself tells spectators: "Always follow the instructions of the marshals."

What were the marshals' instructions on the outside of that right-hander? Was that a designated safe, spectator area?

Personally, I struggle to understand how Latvala didn't see the spectator. And the fact that he got on the brakes and locked up twice, just moments before he hit him - not to mention the fact that he told WRC TV reporter Julian Porter he had hit him - makes compelling evidence.

A brief aside: that conversation left Porter in an impossible position and one for which he deserves a significant degree of sympathy.

If Latvala did see the fan, he knows he's done wrong. I'm fortunate enough to know Jari-Matti a little bit, and, trust me, he will have learned this lesson a very hard way.

Today's scenes are a far cry from Portugal '81, but spectator safety is still an issue © LAT

And learning that lesson has absolutely nothing to do with a €5000 fine or any stewards' decision. Latvala's a moral, upstanding and very decent fella. What we should remember is that he was all of those things in the heat of competition.

He'd damaged his car, was trying to assess what state the Polo was in, his vision was clouded by steam, mud and water and he was trying to limit time loss while the car was being forced on by an aggressive anti-lag system.

Is there mitigation in any of that?

No. If he saw him, he should have stopped.

But, in split seconds, maybe mistakes were made.

Here's another one for you.

Many was the occasion when drivers would talk about events such Portugal or Argentina and accelerating away from crowded hairpins or junctions.

"You'd get on the power out of the hairpin and the rear of the car would naturally slide," one of the drivers said. "Every now and then you would feel a thump in the rear quarter.

"Coming into that corner, you'd seen quite a lot of fans on the outside of the corner on the bank. What had I just hit? Bank or spectator? Maybe this was a few years ago, but it is still not so far [away] on some rallies today."

What's a driver to do in that case? Stop and check, just in case?

The answer, of course, is yes - don't forget the lost time would be credited back to the driver once the stewards have seen the onboard of him doing the right thing. The same goes for Latvala; had he stopped, he would have got his time back.

That's the perfect world.

In these unsighted - or, at best, partially sighted - incidents in the middle of the stage, drivers are so focused on speed and computing the next pacenote they don't have the time or the headspace for this kind of thing.

Which brings me back to the point of being proactive rather than reactive. How about we avoid the whole car-human interaction thing altogether; don't let the people stand there in the first place.

Meeke reckons onlookers need to act with more caution © XPB

Kris Meeke's take on all of this is perfect. In an accident, anything can happen.

"If the fans want to see us doing our job to the best of our ability," he says, "the best thing they can do is stand right back and give us the room."

And this is possible. We saw an unbelievable turnaround in Portugal last year, where the organisers and the FIA worked hand-in-hand to deliver a new benchmark in spectator safety.

Those standards need to be implemented universally and without exception.

Once in place, and still in that perfect world, article 40.4 could be erased rather than rewritten.

In the meantime, let's stop throwing drivers under the bus - apologies for the rather poor turn of phrase - and put an infrastructure in place where they can do their jobs without fear of recrimination or appearance before the stewards for breaking rules that don't appear to tally with the alleged crime.

Right, with all of that off my chest, I've been left with no room to write about what I really wanted to write about: a fabulous display from brilliant Brits Meeke and Elfyn Evans. How good were they?

The Northern Irishman almost eclipsed Vic Elford, the last Brit to win in the Alps... in 1968.

And as for Evans, he was sensational. He came to this event knowing he stood a real chance of winning WRC2 and then took his rivals to the cleaners. Malcolm Wilson reckoned it was his best rally ever. No arguments here.

And no more on the Latvala front.

Let's learn some lessons and move on.