Formula 1 VTB Russian Grand Prix 2020Formula 1

[Famine]

There's now considerable rumblings that FIA F1 steward, Mika Salo, is leaking stewarding decisions to a commentary colleague at Finnish broadcaster CMore before they are announced.

 

[Samus]

There's now considerable rumblings that FIA F1 steward, Mika Salo, is leaking stewarding decisions to a commentary colleague at Finnish broadcaster CMore before they are announced.

Long story short, Mika Salo keeps leaking stewarding decisions to the Finnish broadcaster CMore, most probably straight to the commentator Niki Juusela who Salo has been working with as a commentator himself on many occasions. Today in Sochi, Salo was the driver steward, and right as the cars got on the warm up lap, Juusela started talking about "breaking news" how Hamilton was going to get 2 x 5 second penalties, and that it would be announced "shortly". Officially these penalties were not announced until over 10 minutes later on lap 7.

Someone is going to be adding "Former FIA Steward" to their CV pretty soon if this is proven, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be too hard to do so.

 

[andrea]

Steady on Valterri, you didn't actually do anything this race, other than what should have been done after HAM penalty. We'll never know how the fight would've gone without it.

Paper victory.

 

[Liquid]

If the decision is already made, why do they wait until well after the race is underway to announce it?

Not that I agree with leaking confidential information but more a matter of why is that the protocol if the decision is already finalised?

Edit: To clarify, I was under the impression that stewards don't even look at these decisions at all until after the race has started, hence the "no decision until the race is underway" and not that they were already judged with only the announcement delayed.

The latter just seems like a strange protocol to me. Quite fussy.

 

[Samus]

If the decision is already made, why do they wait until well after the race is underway to announce it?

Not that I agree with leaking confidential information but more a matter of why is that the protocol if the decision is already finalised?

From the rest of the post, it's suggested he's leaking the info before it has even been formally decided. Here is the full post I posted the first part of:

Long story short, Mika Salo keeps leaking stewarding decisions to the Finnish broadcaster CMore, most probably straight to the commentator Niki Juusela who Salo has been working with as a commentator himself on many occasions. Today in Sochi, Salo was the driver steward, and right as the cars got on the warm up lap, Juusela started talking about "breaking news" how Hamilton was going to get 2 x 5 second penalties, and that it would be announced "shortly". Officially these penalties were not announced until over 10 minutes later on lap 7. Juusela was also saying that Hamilton had been given 2+2 penalty points, and was pretty much confirming that he would be getting a race ban for Germany. Seemingly these were reduced to 1+1 later, which means that Salo is texting him in the middle of an ongoing negotiation, not even giving confirmed information.

This is not the first time this has happened, as most of the times when Salo is a driver steward, CMore seems to be very well informed on potential penalties well ahead of them being announced. Today was the most egregious example of this happening however, as Juusela almost couldn't contain his excitement upon getting this secret text message (I assume it's text messages). If I remember correctly, he even mentioned that he is getting information "direct from Sochi".

Here is a video with subs. He announces the "likely" penalty just as they announce it's under investigation.



Can't see where else he's getting info nobody else is.

 

[Jimlaad43]

Hamilton's two Penalty Points have been removed and replaced with a $25,000 fine for Mercedes after the team apparently took the blame for telling Lewis to do his starts where he did. So Lewis is back to 8/12 points on his license.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hamilton-penalty-points-removed-russia/4883276/

 

[SlowGrayAudi]

Hamilton's two Penalty Points have been removed and replaced with a $25,000 fine for Mercedes after the team apparently took the blame for telling Lewis to do his starts where he did. So Lewis is back to 8/12 points on his license.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hamilton-penalty-points-removed-russia/4883276/

Oh no! Not $25,000

How will they ever pay that!!!

 

[Touring Mars]

Someone is going to be adding "Former FIA Steward" to their CV pretty soon if this is proven, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be too hard to do so.

Yeh, if this is true, then Salo is Finnish(ed).

-

Enjoyed the race highlights this evening - after a thrilling end to the Nurburgring 24-hour and a fantastic day of BTCC, I needed a snooze.

 

[Dennisch]

Hamilton's two Penalty Points have been removed and replaced with a $25,000 fine for Mercedes after the team apparently took the blame for telling Lewis to do his starts where he did. So Lewis is back to 8/12 points on his license.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/hamilton-penalty-points-removed-russia/4883276/

HaMiLtOn Is So LuCkY hE nEvEr GeTs A pEnAlTy FoR aNyThInG

 

[ShiftingGears]

Paper victory.

A win is a win.

If Hamilton prepared better and didn't force a split second decision from the rest of the team for the practice starts, it might've been a different story.

But he didn't.

 

[Grayfox]

I am surprised hamilton still got let off for the points thing.

Isn't he suppose to know the rules and go, "Eh guys, that is not allowed"

I guess if he ignores double waved yellows it is OK if the team tells him to.

 

[McLaren]

Isn't he suppose to know the rules and go, "Eh guys, that is not allowed"

By that same approach, the team should know the rules as well & wouldn't have said it was okay in the first place, either.

The rules say a lot of things. It has never stopped them from being broken by accident or attempts to circumvent.

 

[Grayfox]

By that same approach, the team should know the rules as well & wouldn't have said it was okay in the first place, either.

But the team is not in control of the car, the driver is.
He has the final say with how the throttle is controlled
We have seen drivers ignore BOX BOX BOX requests

 

[Rangeraus]

There's now considerable rumblings that FIA F1 steward, Mika Salo, is leaking stewarding decisions to a commentary colleague at Finnish broadcaster CMore before they are announced.

What was he thinking?

I am just guessing here... but if there were any betting plunges during that time he might be in a bit of trouble.

 

[NotThePrez]

But the team is not in control of the car, the driver is.
He has the final say with how the throttle is controlled
We have seen drivers ignore BOX BOX BOX requests

To be fair, Hamilton did ask his team if he could do the practice start, and they confirmed it twice, and specifically told him to position his car so that he didn't block other drivers.



Lewis may have control over the car, but he also relies on his team to know what they're doing, and at least partially relies on the team to make sure that everything is done as by-the-book as possible. To that end, this was much more of a Mercedes screw-up than a Lewis screw-up.

Speaking of penalties, I don't know if it was talked about earlier today (as I was asleep when the GP took place), but I'm very surprised that Leclerc wasn't penalized for knocking Stroll out on lap 1. The incident as far as I can tell was pretty much a copy/paste of Lewis colliding with Albon in Brazil 2019 and Austria 1 this year, both of which resulted in 5-second penalties.

 

[chromatic9]

Looking at the onboard footage of Lewis doing his starts, it did look potentially dangerous as drivers are accelerating hard out of the exit and then see a parked car around the corner. On other tracks you can see ahead while on the pit limiter.

This argument of what if a car crashed or stalled there doesn't work. Of course they will have to take avoiding action and be aware of a rare outcome beyond control but you don't have rules to allow continual potentially dangerous car placements around the circuit because it's possible a broke down car could be in the same spot one day.

Lewis in asking probably was unsure, sensed this may be wrong here and should know some tracks you can and others not due to layouts differing and the dangers, the team should know too. No one else was doing it and I'd probably keep those super license points on.

 

[Jimlaad43]

There have been calls to redesign Turn 2 at Sochi to make it a bit more like the first few corners at Bahrain. TBH, there are calls to make it anything but what it is. I've had a quick crack at doing that, and a few other modifications to the circuit to make it less awful.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=7528177

Looking at Turn 2, between the circular area and the building on the inside, there pretty much isn't anything else you can do to it, so I went the other side of the building. Then, removing a bunch of samey or awful slow corners to make them at least more challenging and this layout would be a little bit better.

 

[Wiegert]

The only satisfying change regarding Sochi should involve:

modifications to the circuit calendar to make it less awful.

 

[mustafur]

It seems every Sochi race is the same, lap 1 Turn 2 creates chaos with some retirements then the rest of the race is uneventful and the tyres last too long, the low grip surface meant the Softest tyre compounds Pirelli brought are still too hard.

The issue with Hamilton wasn't even enough to spice up the race.

 

[Frank McGank]

If they want a race in that area, should just make the reintroduction of Istanbul Park permanent. It’s just across the Black Sea from Sochi. Honestly the Azerbaijani GP is good enough. There really aren’t enough F1 fans in west asia to warrant that many grands prix.

 

[mustafur]

If they want a race in that area, should just make the reintroduction of Istanbul Park permanent. It’s just across the Black Sea from Sochi. Honestly the Azerbaijani GP is good enough. There really aren’t enough F1 fans in west asia to warrant that many grands prix.

It's all money coming from Governments, I don't think they care about the area, more the cash.

I think F1 really needs to look into choosing it's GPs based on how good the race can be, you can do damage to the brand hosting it constantly at tracks that add no value to the series.

 

[TenEightyOne]

It’s just across the Black Sea from Sochi.

I'm not sure the distance is so relevant, it's still 2,000km by road so would most likely be an air relocation.

 

[Jimlaad43]

We might like to complain about too much runoff areas ruining the challenge of tracks, but Turn 3 really doesn't have enough. There have been enough enormous crashes there through the years that just show that there isn't enough space for a car to slow down once something goes wrong. It either needs the wall right by the white line like an oval circuit with Safer barriers, or it needs to extend by a massive amount, like Turn 8 at Istanbul or the clone at Austin. Just another example of how unsuitable Sochi actually is.