FIA were a huge fiasco today. I really wonder what kind of people are in race control now. This was an important race for Verstappen to announce his second title. I don't know how FIA can't get more prepared for a special race like this. They made really unbelievable mistakes. Some of them were like:
- We saw a tractor coming in before the drivers entered pit lane.
- They finished the race one lap early.
- Gasly got unbelievable penalties like 20-sec time penalty and 2 penalty points for speeding under red flag (But as for FIA's huge mistake about the tractor, there is no problem according to them
).
- They shouldn't have given full points for this race because it wasn't even a full race.
- They weren't even sure of Verstappen's championship for a while.
I think Leclerc's penalty was fair because he pushed Perez outside while Perez was trying to overtake him. We see 5-sec penalty being given in this kind of situations actually.
Indded, that was FIA fiasco. Truck on track immediately bring memories of Bianchi tragedy. Seemst that they haven't learned anything or forgot it. They don't allow to race them during rain and elay race by few hours because of it, but it's not problem to release truck before safety car on wet track without much visibility.
Though, penalty for Gasly is right IMO, he really had to slow down.
F1 gave explanation why full points were given, but rules should be more clear, because even if they themselves don't fully know it and moment when they didn't knew whether Max is champion or no was hilarious.
And I didn't even noticed that they finished one lap early.
The common sense is to give penalty in the following circumstances:
- is not the 1st cut they do during the race
- the opponent is doing an overtake and you gain an advantage doing the cut.
Both of these requirements were missing.
I don't think I can recall a case of a 5-second penalty for a cut while the opponent is not doing an overtake.
I don't agree. Perez maybe didn't tried to overtake, but he chased Leclerc, what provoced his mistake. My memory don't works so good that now I would bring specific cases, but I think it's regular practice to give penalty in such cases, even if there is no overtake attempt.
Ferrari didn't even went to appeal this penalty.