For those who watched the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on the world television feed, it was not immediately obvious why the stewards had summoned Sergio Perez to speak to them shortly after the chequered flag dropped due to his “statements made on the radio”.
But anyone watching his onboard camera via F1 TV would have heard the following:“The stewards are a joke, man. I cannot believe it. They have been very bad this year but this is a joke. That was really a joke.”
Perez was frustrated by the five-second penalty the stewards issued him for colliding with Lando Norris while trying to pass the McLaren driver. He made his remark on the radio after being told the upshot of the penalty was that he wouldn’t stand on the final podium of the season.
This was far from the first time anyone in F1 has been censured for criticising FIA staff. Haas team principal Guenther Steiner was reprimanded earlier this year for describing the stewards as “laymen” in an interview with print media. Two years ago, Perez’s team principal Christian Horner accused a “rogue marshal” of causing Max Verstappen to incur a grid penalty, and was given an official warning over his choice of words.
Despite having fallen foul of the rules in a similar way, Horner defended his driver’s reaction afterwards. “I think he was just voicing his frustration,” he said.
“The problem is, if you’re a football player and you have a rant, you haven’t got a microphone on your shirt. Whereas you can understand his frustration, he’s lost a podium, he’s driven a great race, so he’s had a vent. But unfortunately, that vent is has been broadcast. So hopefully the stewards will take that into consideration when I think he’ll be speaking to them later.”
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Horner also suggested the driver’s representative on the stewards’ panel, ex-Red Bull and Toro Rosso driver Vitantonio Liuzzi, should have been more understanding of Perez’s situation.
When Liuzzi was racing, only a tiny number of radio messages were typically played on the world feed during a race. There was no F1 TV where fans could listen in on the drivers’ communications with their engineers throughout the race.
Nonetheless the line from the stewards on this point has been consistent. Criticism of a decision is accepted, but insulted directed at officials, however slight they may seem, will be met with swift action.
However had luck been on Perez’s side, he might not have got a penalty at all. While it is often assumed that a driver’s every utterance can be heard through their onboard channels on F1 TV, as of this year that has no longer been the case.
After Verstappen’s heavy crash at Silverstone in 2021, where it was clear from his audio after the impact that he was in some pain, Formula One Management decided it needed the capability to block a driver’s radio messages from being played out live. They then have the power to decide whether or not to broadcast them later.
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At the Australian Grand Prix, when Carlos Sainz Jnr was distraught to learn of a penalty he knew would cost him a points finish and repeatedly urged his team to lobby the stewards, part of his exchange was not played on F1 TV. It was played instead on the world feed.
It’s impossible to say how many other messages might have been censored from F1 TV and then not played on the world feed. In which case, whether a driver’s radio comments gets them in trouble or not comes down to chance – or the decisions made by technicians at FOM’s Biggin Hill base.
2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
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- Why luck was a factor in Perez’s penalty for “joke” comment
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- Only Verstappen got the best from his car every weekend, rival team bosses admit
- How Sainz suffered the worst season finale for a driver since Schumacher in 1997
Zann (@zann)
1st December 2023, 7:29
I don’t think officials should use their power to make criticising them a crime. That’s corrupt
Red Andy (@red-andy)
1st December 2023, 7:54
Dissent is a penalisable offence in many sports. In many ways F1 is quite lenient in this regard – as the article points out, criticism of a particular decision will usually be tolerated, although personal abuse directed at the officials will not (we’ve come a long way from Sebastian Vettel’s infamous “message to Charlie.”)
Zann (@zann)
1st December 2023, 8:22
it’s not football is it. Checo wasn’t crowding round intimidating them holding up the race. It didn’t affect the event at all, they just didn’t really like being called a joke and decided they were too important. Is their awesome importantness in the rules?
notagrumpyfan
1st December 2023, 9:26
You’re right that it should not be the Stewards to judge if they ‘feel offended’*.
I support the general rule of “Criticism of a decision is accepted, but insulted directed at officials, however slight they may seem, will be met with swift action”. But maybe it should be different Stewards (at the next race, or via VC) who should judge on this.
It will also give time to the driver to apologise and explain his wrong use of words in the heat of the moment.
The Perez case is even more questionable. Yes he starts his sentence claimimg that the Stewards are a joke, but than clarifies that he is clearly talking about the decision (“this is a joke. That was really a joke.”)
* they might even feel offended if somebody uses the words ‘feel offended’.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
1st December 2023, 9:30
@zann To be fair to the stewards, they did say in their decision that it was odd for them to have to rule on a statement made about themselves, and ordinarily it would be referred to a different group of stewards at the next race, but this was the final round of the season.
It was a very slight insult, but I think the principle of saying ‘criticise the decision but don’t attack the individual/s’ is a sound one. After all, it’s much the same as our comment policy.
Zann (@zann)
1st December 2023, 11:07
oh yes I’m not defending Checo, he was being an idiot. My issue is with the stewards saying they mustn’t be insulted. I mean, drivers can call other drivers a joke can’t they, or pretty much anyone else, TP’s, team owners, Greg Maffei, whoever, it’s only the stewards themselves or other tres, tres important people in the omg FIA who are too special to be disrespected :)
So here I am calling those stewards out for being self-serving, self-important, and the poor things can’t do anything
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
1st December 2023, 11:34
I’m with you on this @zann
People in positions of power saying that no one is allowed to criticise them is how some of the worst monsters in history have started out.
Zann (@zann)
1st December 2023, 12:26
lol, that’d be a bit extreme :) but calling Checo having a pretty mild rant ‘misconduct’ is fairly extreme too if you ask me
sato113 (@sato113)
1st December 2023, 7:52
Did Perez get punished for this?
Tristan
1st December 2023, 8:38
They have enough staff to listen to every radio communication to decide whether to sensor it or not, because it might make formula 1 look bad. But not enough staff to police track limits fairly.
Priorities sound about right for what to expect.
More focus should be put on the content of Perez’s message rather than the policing of it. I bet they didn’t bother to ask why he thought it was bad all year, or why he thinks it’s a joke…
Michael
1st December 2023, 11:12
“The stewards are a joke, man. I cannot believe it. They have been very bad this year but this is a joke. That was really a joke.”
I assume if meant himself rather than the stewards.
SteveP
1st December 2023, 12:33
Is this an open mike? Or does the driver have to press to send?
For the former, it’s a driver complaining to himself and getting his voiced thoughts, unfortunately, forwarded to the source of his frustration.
For the latter, it’s a driver being reckless with a broadcast radio message, and the penalty is deserved.
Fred Fedurch
1st December 2023, 22:23
If he had have left out the “The Stewards are a joke.” part, he wouldn’t have received anything outside of a possible rap on the back of the hands. They would have been (possibly reluctantly) ok with the rest about the penalty being a joke.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd December 2023, 0:23
This headline is a bit confusing cause as far as I know perez got a warning, also called a “non penalty” for calling the stewards a joke, so not sure how luck would change something that didn’t affect him at all.
When I opened the article, I thought you were arguing he could’ve avoided the 5 sec penalty if he had been lucky on the stewards’ decision.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd December 2023, 0:28
Oh, before someone points out the 2 penalty points, they’re also a non penalty to me, remember they stopped giving points to gasly when he would’ve effectively got a race ban? On top of that perez would’ve been 2nd in the championship even if he had missed a race even with this disaster season, so I consider penalty points pointless.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
2nd December 2023, 0:31
And looks like the penalty points are not even for this, but for the incident with norris.
cdfemke (@cdfemke)
2nd December 2023, 5:52
F1 management is becomming a greedy joke with all that barf. Cencoring radios because drivers might look human…
Time for an euro-asian race series with a non american stakeholder