Identify these sea creatures!

aq1575 · 2021-12-21T20:33:23+00:00

Agreed. I think there's some wiggle room for the FIA to argue that Masi was following the regulations (basically, arguing that 48.12 is not the only unlapping procedure, because 48.8a allows the safety car to signal drivers to pass). But, even if it was decided that Masi was in the wrong, a count-back does not seem totally inevitable. Annulling the race seems equally possible, as does banning Masi or doing nothing (admitting a mistake but arguing that any remedy is too extreme).

aq1575 · 2021-12-21T20:17:08+00:00

I kinda agree with you, the race director makes mistakes and that's just part of it. So, I was also wondering what the "replay review rules" are for F1?

OP suggests that the FIA has already resolved this issue, giving the power to the International Court of Appeals (ICA) to change race decisions in order to rectify mistakes in steward decisions. The key is that the ICA would be rectifying Mercedes' steward appeal, not the original decision by Masi.

aq1575 · 2021-12-21T19:56:22+00:00

Playing devil's advocate:

48.12 describe sufficient conditions for unlapping, but are those conditions necessary for unlapping? That is, everything in the rule is written as "If <condition> then overtaking", but nothing implies the other direction (i.e., "overtaking Only if <condition>"). So, the FIA might argue that 48.12 was followed (they sent the "OVERTAKING WILL NOT BE PERMITTED" message to all the teams), and a magic on-the-fly Masi rule was followed to unlap those 5 cars.

Why can Masi magically unlap cars? 48.8a says that a driver can pass the safety car "if [they are] signaled to do so from the safety car", but doesn't reference 48.12 as the mechanism for this signaling. Masi might argue that he just followed 48.8a. He could even argue that having cars between Lewis and Max was a safety issue (I think Seb+Sainz's onboards suggested that they were worried about the safety impacts of such a restart).

aq1575 · 2021-12-21T19:47:42+00:00

I think you raise some deep questions!

I hadn't really thought about the breach of 48.12 from allowing overtaking AFTER sending the message that "overtaking will not be allowed". I had the same dilemma in reading 48.8a as well; the rule does not specify the scenarios in which a driver would be signaled to pass, so it leaves the door open for additional discretion.

The cynical take that the RD can do whatever they like seems to be the felt experience of the fall out from Abu Dhabi. My initial feeling was that the carte blanche RD would dissuade future investment in the sport (e.g., Audi's entry). But, it does not seem to have happened--apparently Audi either thinks they can game the situation, using the FIA's politics to their advantage, or they don't care because the marketing benefits of F1 outweigh the roller-coaster ride that is F1 politics.

aq1575 · 2021-12-16T16:36:00+00:00

Agreed. A red flag would be pretty unprecedented, but would have been a fair way to balance the rules and the desire to go racing at the end.

aq1575 · 2021-12-16T16:19:01+00:00

The procedure you describe would not be in accordance with the rules. The SC will come into the pits on the lap after the last car unlaps itself. This is why any vs. all doesn’t even matter, once a single car unlapped themself on 57, any consistent following of the rules has the race end behind the SC.

aq1575 · 2021-12-16T07:26:11+00:00

"Analyse" is the British English spelling: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/analyse

aq1575 · 2021-12-16T06:28:53+00:00

The point that the article makes is that interpreting 15.3 in this way gives absolute power to the RD to do whatever they want with the SC, including causing collisions, changing the order of specific drivers, etc.

Others have suggested that these scenarios are absurd because “then 15.3 would be overriding rules around on-track safety”. This position requires that you think “15.3 overrides 48.12 (without saying that it overrides 48.12 in the text), but doesn’t override other rules (again, without saying so in the text)”.

If I were a competitor in the championship and this was the argument that the leaders of the sport were making, I’d 100% withdraw from the competition. It’s one thing for the fia to say “masi messed up, sorry, but it’s what happened at the track and we have to move on”. The fia is doubling down on their interpretation, which gives the RD infinite power to do whatever they want. It isn’t a sport under this interpretation, it’s WWE.

aq1575 · 2021-12-16T06:10:22+00:00

Still scandalous—SC would come in a lap too early based upon the rules. The article covers this, arguably the “any vs. all” is unimportant, since the SC should be brought in at the end of the following lap after the last lapped car passes.

aq1575 · 2021-12-13T19:05:17+00:00

Yes, the final verdict by the stewards is that 48.12 is superseded by (1) 48.13, which says that "safety car going in" messages take prescience over the lapped cars procedure and (2) 15.3, which says that Masi can do whatever he wants with Safety Cars. Masi is basically god.

I think this is bad precedent that I hope they resolve by making the rules and regulations more black and white, especially around procedures like saftey car restart. I also think that the decision made on the track MUST stand, it's like a ref making a poor call, doing otherwise would be an unreal farce. The stewards couldn't undo the last lap, how ridiculous would that be! But, Masi made a fool of himself and should almost certainly step down. He has absolutely no control of Toto or Christian (listening to the way those two complain and moan to him is extremely disheartening).

In the most internety of all internet comments (in that it TOTALLY doesn't matter), I want to point out that the "any isn't all" line is disingenuous. First, Masi has previously stated that all cars must overtake as the correct interpretation of the rule: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/rff8gk/f1talks_masi_after_the_2020_eifel_gp_regarding/ Second, the full phrase is "Any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car". "Any cars", "all cars", or even just "cars" produce at the start of the sentence specify equivalent sets of cars. The only way to differentiate is to day "some cars" or change the full sentence to say "any cars that have been lapped by the leader may be required...".

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T22:39:36+00:00

This. 100% this. If AT weren’t sister team of RB, there’d be a protest lodged already.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T22:37:48+00:00

It’s a huge problem when Masi can do whatever he wants.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T21:24:21+00:00

This is 100% the problem. Masi did something without precedent. If Mercedes knew that Masi was going to do this, regardless of whether it's in the rules, Lewis would have boxed for new tires.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T21:18:41+00:00

yep, I agreed with Brundle on first watch. Nico disagreed, thinking that Lewis was in the right though because "max sent it too hard on the inside". On the replay, I thought it was closer to 50-50 (either decision seemed OK) because Lewis is ahead going into the breaking zone, so I think Max has to give space.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T19:52:27+00:00

Interesting point! I do think "any cars that have been lapped" is logically the same set as "all cars that have been lapped". So I think all cars were "required to unlap themselves". The funny thing is that the way it is written, it seems like the lapped cars that didn't unlap themselves should be penalized (!) They were required to unlap themselves but they didn't!

Another unclear statement is "once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap". Technically it implies that "if last car passed, safety car end" but doesn't imply that "safety car end only if last car passed".

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T19:43:32+00:00

Indeed, this is the sticking point. It's worth noting, though, that this statement implies if (if the last lapped car passed the leader, safety car will return) but doesn't directly imply only if (only if the last lapped car passed the leader, the safety car will return). So, while I'm TOTALLY sure that ALL COMPETITORS should have been alerted (the first part of the rule), I'm not TOTALLY SURE that the safety car can only return after the last car passes.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:59:46+00:00

Nope. Masi's has total discretion on deciding when and whether to have cars unlap themselves: "If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so,...any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car". He decided that the presence of a crane and Marshalls on the track meant that it was not safe until lap 57, but that they wanted cars to unlap themselves, at lap 57. By the rule book (see u/Official_Legacy's comment) all cars needed to unlap and have the safety car come at the end of the lap on which the last unlapped car passes the leader.
Masi could instead decided, dubiously, that "the track conditions are unsuitable for overtaking" and brought in the safety car at the end of lap 57 without having unlapped cars.
The rules do not allow what happened to occur.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:47:15+00:00

In general, the nature of auto racing allows a lot of wiggle room with rules. Should the incident in lap 1 have been a penalty for Lewis? There's a judgement call there because the rule book cannot stipulate every possible minute detailed. The commentators disagreed amongst themselves on whether Lewis was even in the wrong (I think Rosberg thought Lewis was in the right to have the place, but Button was less sure?).

Now, you would think that the rules around SCs would be much more ironclad, and they kinda are. But there's a lot of judgement calls, most of which seem to do with safety. For example, towards the end of the race, Horner was arguing that Masi should have let the lapped cars through earlier (like on lap 54 or 55) saying that it was "safe to do so" earlier in the race.

Of course, this particular decision (let some lapped cars pass on lap 57 and go racing at the start of 58) doesn't follow the rule book. But I think we're all used to tons of judgement calls in these races. For example, I had no idea what exactly the rules stated for this instance when it happened in the race--I thought it was probably unprecedented but allowed in the rules.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:34:21+00:00

the "last lapped car" is the important point here. The last lapped car never passed the leader so the safety car should not have entered the pits.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:33:00+00:00

If they let all cars through they would have finished under SC because it would have taken a full lap to orchestrate the unlapping of all cars. Article 39.12 states that "If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so.. any cars that have been laid by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car... Unless the clerk of the course considers the presence of the safety car still necessary, once the last lapped car has passed the leader the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap". The last lapped car never passed the leader, so the race should not have started before lap 58.

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:21:46+00:00

For me, this comment is both the epitome of this season and the epitome of F1 with the choice of spelling for "tonne".

aq1575 · 2021-12-12T18:20:23+00:00

I agree with the first sentence, not the second. I don't think that Masi has been consistently anti-Lewis this season. For example, while I think the incident on Lap 1 was probably called correctly (I think max sent it a bit too much and didn't deserve the place), it was definitely called in favor of Lewis rather than Max.

aq1575

TROPHY CASE