[Cecil Terwilliger]

I think all of those incidents should be penalties all the time. When two cars are parallel, you should not be able to force the guy off the track. It is literally the antithesis of wheel to wheel racing. They were mirror images of Hamilton's penalty on Albon from last year, except the other drivers were willing to ruin their race by driving on the gravel to avoid contact and Albon wasn't. Instead his race got ruined because Hamilton hit him. Both are against the rules. A driver should not be forced to choose between ruining their race by going wide onto the gravel or getting DNF'd by letting the other driver hit them. You should not have to DNF to prove a point. Stewards should penalize based on the action, not the result.

The problem is they rarely enforce the rules consistently. Stewards have been a wreck ever since they got backlash for correctly giving Seb a 5s penalty in Canada in 2019.


And don't even get me started on the penalties for ignoring double waived yellows for Latifi and Mazepin. Masi completely lost all credibility in Baku when, not only did he refuse to call VSC or SC while Max was in a high danger situation after his crash, but then refused to enforce the rules because too many drivers broke the rules!!