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A good race; a greater controversy.

Let’s get the basics out of the way. Lewis Hamilton claimed victory at the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix and Mercedes continued their clean sweep of wins.

However, it was in very controversial circumstances after Sebastian Vettel was given a five-second penalty for obstructing Hamilton as the German rejoined the circuit having ended up on the grass at Turns 3 and 4. More on that later. (In fact, most of the post will be about it as it’s all anyone is going to be talking about.) But firstly, let’s quickly address the rest of the race. (Feel free to scroll down if you’re only interested in the controversy…)

The front two were near enough in a race of their own throughout with Vettel’s teammate, Charles Leclerc, never quite in the fight and Hamilton’s teammate, Valtteri Bottas, a distant fourth. Leclerc will be pleased at least to bounce back from his eventful – for all the wrong reasons – home race two weeks ago with a solid podium but he still needs to work on his qualifying performances. Despite often looking the faster Ferrari through the practice sessions, he has made mistakes when it really counts and left himself with a lot to do on Sunday. Bottas unfortunately reverted to Bottas 1.0 and was never really on Hamilton’s pace all weekend. A very scruffy Q3, where he was lucky to escape the barriers after a spin, saw him start 6th. He then lost a position at the start, spent numerous laps stuck behind slower cars and is now 29 points behind his teammate in the standings.

Daniel Ricciardo continues to look more and more at home in the Renault, demonstrating his late-braking talents – which he had seemed to be struggling to dial in to his new car at the start of the year – to keep Bottas behind him for far longer than he had any right to. The Honey Badger ended the race a commendable 6th and was followed home by the sister Renault of Nico Hülkenberg to complete an excellent weekend for the French team on a track at which they had not expected to be all that successful.

Max Verstappen recovered well to 5th after unfortunate timing with a red flag in Q2 left him starting 9th on the grid, whilst teammate Pierre Gasly’s struggles continued as he went in the opposite direction, from 5th to 8th. Lance Stroll had an excellent home race, progressing from 17th on the grid to finish 9th, claiming two well-deserved points to silence some of his critics, at least for a while. And finally a quick mention also for the unfortunate Lando Norris, whose rear suspension seemingly melted thanks to severely overheating brakes – something I have never seen before in the sport – which put paid to a very promising race for the youngster. His car unusually left stranded at the side of the pit exit – because it was not in a dangerous position – evoked memories of the 90s where broken cars would be scattered around the track, abandoned. And of course he used his retirement to produce yet another meme.

What We’re All Here to Talk About

Now then. Where to begin…

What Happened

In arguably the battle of the year so far, Hamilton had been right on the tail of his long-term rival for some time. After the pit stops, he quickly closed a five-second gap and then began pressuring Vettel in what was shaping up to be a thrilling fight to the end of the race. We had already had nine laps of this when Vettel made a mistake under pressure – certainly not his first – and overcooked his entry into Turn 3, catching a snap of oversteer but in the process having to take to the grass.

This is where the controversy occurs. Vettel rejoined the track very close to Hamilton, who tried to go around the outside but then backed out as he was squeezed towards the wall. Hamilton came on the radio to say that Vettel had rejoined the track dangerously – understandably so when you see the incident from his on-board camera – and after a few minutes of investigation, the stewards handed Vettel a five-second time penalty. With that, the race effectively died. Whilst Hamilton states he continued to try and pass for the remaining laps, and to his credit he certainly didn’t just sit three or four seconds back and coast home, there was no real need for him to take any risks.

Now. For 95% of people, at least judging by social media, this appears to be a slam dunk and not up for debate; it was totally the incorrect decision and a huge injustice for the Ferrari driver. But as I see it – and I have looked into this in massive depth over the last 24 hours – it’s a closer call than that. There are many aspects to examine in little over a second of action and then many different ways to interpret the minutiae. Every point has a caveat and I could easily follow most of the following sentences with a ‘but’ or a ‘however’…and in fact I do a fair few times. Let’s start with the fundamentals: the rules.

The Rules

Here are two pertinent regulations.

The first: “Should a car leave the track the driver may rejoin, this may only be done when it is safe to do so and without gaining any lasting advantage.” Removing this from the bigger picture, putting it plainly in black and white, Vettel did return to the track in an unsafe manner and he did gain a lasting advantage in that if he’d rejoined more slowly and safely, Hamilton would have passed him. Only he didn’t really have the opportunity to do so. He was simply trying to recover control of the car the entire time he was on the grass and in the split second which followed on the track. The first time he checks his mirrors is around the point at which Hamilton had to bail out. Having said that, it’s down to his mistake that he is in that position so why should Hamilton be the one to suffer? (See what I mean about the caveats?..) As Hamilton put it, “I was just driving the normal line so I shouldn’t have been in the position of being close to crashing. It was his responsibility to avoid that, but it ended up being mine. So because of that I lost a chance of passing”.

The second: “Manoeuvres liable to hinder other drivers, such as deliberate crowding of a car beyond the edge of the track or any other abnormal change of direction, are strictly prohibited.” Similarly, whilst Vettel was not in control and thus the ‘deliberate’ aspect can be ignored, Hamilton was certainly hindered. But, by definition, a manoeuvre is ‘a movement requiring skill’, so surely not being in control means this can’t be classed as one. Either way, it has now come to light that a large part of the stewards’ decision came from Vettel’s movements after regaining control. Their data shows that, after checking his mirror, he opened the steering to move towards the edge of the track. Certainly a manoeuvre this time but up for debate whether, by that point, it was impeding Hamilton.

It all boils down to what each fan or member of the F1 paddock wants from the rules. They are a necessary evil. Remember how angry everyone was when Verstappen came on the scene and repeatedly exploited loopholes to defend dangerously? There have to be lines somewhere and, once those lines are drawn, surely they have to be enforced. The gravity of the situation shouldn’t be a factor. If this had happened between Sergio Pérez and Antonio Giovinazzi for 12th place, there is less at stake, and people obviously wouldn’t feel as passionately, but does that mean that the situation should be ruled differently?

Precedent

The bigger picture here is the consistency of rulings. Whilst most fans immediately stated that they are inconsistent, an almost identical incident between Verstappen and, ironically, then-Ferrari-driver Kimi Räikkönen at last year’s Japanese Grand Prix also brought about a five-second penalty. At the time, most seemed to go with the opinion of harsh but fair, and Ferrari obviously thought so. Vettel himself said “Look at Kimi. [Verstappen]’s off the track and he comes back and if Kimi just drives on they’d collide. But it’s not always right that the other guy has to move.” Sound familiar? The late, great Charlie Whiting described it as “a fairly straightforward one for the stewards”.

Here comes another caveat though. There was also a pretty similar incident between Ricciardo and Hamilton at Monaco in 2016 which was not penalised. This one was also for the lead of the race so had the same gravitas as Vettel and Hamilton’s incident. Did that factor in to the decision? Only the stewards will know. At the time, some certainly thought he was lucky to get away with it.

Just one more point to add to this already perplexing and convoluted mire I’ve created. Hypothetically, if Hamilton had kept his foot in and they had both ended up in the wall, what penalty, if any, would fans have expected to be dished out?

An Attempt at a Conclusion

So this is the crux of the matter. Did Vettel rejoin the track in an unsafe manner and cause Hamilton to take avoiding action? Yes. Did he have any control of that once off the track? No. Was it his fault he was off the track and thus out of control? Yes. This could go on and on, further down the rabbit hole.

We as fans have to accept that the stewards have far more information than us to base their decisions on and that they are more experienced than 99% of us. But it would be far easier to do so if there were a consistent panel of respected figures who were accountable and then came out and explained exactly how and why they came to their decisions. Surely that’s not too hard for the senior leaders to put together. The fact that the crowd ends up booing Hamilton – surely an innocent party in this whole debacle – in the absence of anywhere else to direct their anger, is a real shame.

It is hard to come to a definitive conclusion. I remain somewhat on the fence. I am fully for hard racing but I also understand that there have to be rules and, with the rules that we have currently, I can see why they came to the decision that they did. In this instance, they have applied the letter of the law rather than spirit of the law. The bigger question is whether the rules need to be amended. Generally this year the stewards have been more lenient and the public and pundits have seemed happy with it.

I guess it depends whether Liberty Media want the headlines to come from the racing or the controversy. As, if we can be certain about one thing in all this, it is that more lenient stewarding would have resulted in a far better end to the race.

Well, that and the days of ‘Ferrari International Assistance’ being long gone.

Answering the Burning Questions

(I guess I should still answer these…)

Will the track really favour Ferrari as predicted? We’ve heard that a few times this year.. Yes, for once the top two teams were evenly matched.

How much of an improvement will the Mercedes engine upgrade provide? Not a significant one seemingly. Also, one of them blew up…

Will the Wall of Champions claim any new victims? Kevin Magnussen had a brush with it but properly crashed on the other side of the track. And isn’t a champion anyway.

Can Bottas continue to get on top in qualifying or will Monaco prove a turning point? It’s looking more like the latter.

Will Leclerc bounce back from his less-than-ideal home Grand Prix? It was certainly an improvement, if not a great weekend.

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