Haas F1 team principal Guenther Steiner believes the F1 stewards keep making mistakes with their decisions after they ruled against the Haas team during last weekend's race in Bahrain.
The accusations came after Romain Grosjean picked up a penalty for an incident with McLaren's Lando Norris during qualifying.
Despite Grosjean himself being held up by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel coming out of the last corner during the second part of qualifying, the French driver was handed a three-place grid penalty and a penalty point on his licence for impeding Norris, who was on a fast lap at the time of the incident.
“I tell them things that maybe they don’t want to hear but if they do wrong and they have to get better, you need to listen,” Steiner believed. “Therefore, they keep making mistakes because they never listen, because they think they are supreme."
Steiner was further infuriated after an incident between Racing Point's Lance Stroll and Grosjean at the start of the race, which was deemed as a racing incident after Stroll hit Grosjean on the first corner.
The decision to mark the coming together as a racing incident was believed to be in light of recent calls for stewards to relax the penalties on drivers in order to allow them to race each other harder, but Steiner was not impressed at the decision.
“It was clear at the apex and the other one [Stroll] just understeered into him. In the end the stewards - our best friends - decided not to do anything,” Steiner stated. "I sleep at night because I have a clear conscience. Maybe the stewards are awake because their conscience isn’t good. I’m pretty good with my conscience with what I did.”
Local time
Local time
Bahrain International Circuit - Winter testing
Replies (6)
Login to replyajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
Gunther... When does he ever agree with any penalties imposed on his drivers, and between the two of them they get plenty. I've agreed with all of the penalties they have received. In fact they have been too lenient at times. However, the one on Grosjean was not totally fair. Fair because he did block Norris massively. Unfair because he really didn't have a lot of options.
Manto02
Posts: 93
But it is indeed true that many times the stewards used different methods of judgement for similar situations. They could avoid this thing by putting he same stewards every race but they don't want to do it.
Manto02
Posts: 93
And i think that after the three places the penalty point was too much
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Just Steiner whining again, nothing new here.
Ram Samartha
Posts: 1,172
Yes, these last few days before race weekend get painful. Tomorrow we get the drivers press conference and that's usually always entertaining. Then we'll get some real racing news.
f1ski
Posts: 726
Neither is Grosjean being in the wrong place and involved in a 'racing' incedent