Hi. Fellow PURE steward here. I did a review of the video and these are my thoughts.
This is quite tricky to make a call either way because of several factors:
1. It's Monaco. Contact is an inevitability, as the track is overly narrow.
2. Based on the replay, Biffy's tires were quite degraded compared to Cobra's.
3. It's the last lap.
Having said that, this is what I feel about each incident:
T1 - Dax's bump with Biffy may have affected Biffy enough that it ruined his exit speed, which could have given Dax an advantage going up the hill. Unfortunately, since I don't have Dax's POV, I cannot verify this.
Approaching T3 - Biffy's maneuver could be constituted as a block. However, like with the first incident, without Dax's POV, I cannot make that determination.
T5 - Biffy would have first rights to the apex as he was sufficiently ahead, but he elected to give Dax room, although it was borderline. Because of how tight that corner is, that's understandable. Same thing with the contact. However, I believe that because of the bump, Dax gained an advantage as his nose was ahead after the exit, and did not concede ground approaching the hairpin. Because he did not back off, that could have caused Biffy to be aggressive entering the hairpin, which made him go wide, although that's speculative.
T8 - Both cars were relatively even exiting T7, but wheelspin from Biffy gave Dax the momentary advantage heading into T8. Dax turned in as though he was aiming for the corner apex, while Biffy probably thought he was still in line with Dax, so thought he had the rights to the apex. In this instance, everything happens so quickly, so this leans toward a racing incident.
T11 - Dax bumps Biffy on exit. After that Biffy wiggles, but the inputs indicate that Dax did not back off the throttle sufficiently to negate whatever advantage, real or perceived, he gained by doing so. Rather, he took this opportunity to make a passing attempt on Biffy. The contact at the next corner is understandable.
Based on what I see, even though Biffy had the older tires and was holding up Dax, it was still up to Dax in making a clean effort to get around him, despite the obvious difficulty of doing so in such a narrow track. Even though I wasn't fond of the constant tapping and lack of conceding ground, since after the fourth incident, Dax was still behind Biffy, then I could have overlooked it all. However, because of his actions in the fifth incident, I cannot, as it resulted in Biffy being in an disadvantage, which resulted in him losing the lead.
Therefore, it is my opinion that Dax should receive an appropriate penalty for his actions at the chicane.
