Being a Formula 1 steward is a tough gig at the best of times. But the pressure of a world championship fight brings a much higher level of scrutiny.
Every decision which comes from the stewards’ office suddenly has the potential to swing the championship outcome one way or another.
That was the case at the last round when Oscar Piastri received a hotly-debated penalty for tangling with Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the restart. Charles Leclerc, the innocent victim of their clash, reckoned Antonelli was at least as much to blame as Piastri, but the stewards disagreed, laying the blame entirely at the McLaren driver’s feet.
His 10-second penalty cost him eight precious points – a significant chunk of his 24-point deficit to championship leader Lando Norris. Piastri may seem hard done by, but he’s certainly not the first contender to rue the stewards’ interference in the title fight.
10: Moss’s evidence helps Hawthorn beat him, 1958
The threat of disqualification hung over Mike Hawthorn’s head after the Portuguese Grand Prix in 1958. He had gone into the race at the top of the standings, leading Stirling Moss by just six points (equivalent to second place then).
The stewards suspected Hawthorn had driven against the track direction while restarting his Ferrari following a last-lap spin. He received help from an unexpected source: Moss, who had observed Hawthorn’s move, told the authorities his car had been on the pavement at the time, outside the track limits.
This was valuable testimony at a time when stewards did not have piles of video evidence and GPS data to rely on. It got Hawthorn off the hook: and he beat Moss to the title by a point.
The idea today’s drivers might do the same is unthinkable. As the last round showed even those competing over places outside the points are quick to report any perceived rule-breaking by their rivals – regardless of accuracy.
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9: Hamilton’s delayed Safety Car penalty outrages Alonso, 2010
The 2010 world championship was ultimately decided in a four-way fight at the final race between Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and the Red Bull drivers. Eventual champion Sebastian Vettel was only fifth in the standings when the field arrived at Valencia for the ninth round.
Alonso was third, chasing points leader Hamilton, when a huge crash prompted the appearance of the Safety and Medical cars. Hamilton hesitated as they appeared in the pit lane exit alongside him, then pressed on, passing the Safety Car after they arrived at the exit line together. The Ferraris behind him fell in behind the Safety Car queue.
Had Hamilton been unsure about whether he was allowed to reach the pit exit line before the Safety Car? He had made a costly mistake during a Safety Car period a year earlier in Melbourne. Or had he tried to trap the Ferrari drivers behind it, knowing they would lose a significant amount of time behind it?
Regardless, by ensuring he got by Hamilton gained enough time to complete his pit stop during the Safety Car period without losing a position. Although he was given a drive-through penalty for passing the Safety Car, it took the stewards 10 laps to issue it. In the meantime Alonso had become trapped behind Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber and was infuriated to see Hamilton emerge ahead of them after serving his penalty.
After finishing seventh, an incandescent Alonso said the decision and its timing was “unfair” and “completely destroyed the race” for him. “We need to apologise to the 60 to 70 thousand people who came to see this kind of race,” he added.
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8: Montoya’s tangle with Schumacher’s team mate, 2003
Another championship where multiple drivers remained in the hunt until the latter stages. Heading into the penultimate round at Indianapolis, Michael Schumacher led Juan Pablo Montoya by just three points, equal to sixth place at the time.
Montoya should have exercised more caution as he tried to pass Schumacher’s team mate, however. Rubens Barrichello had no reason to be generous towards his rival, and a 50-50-move ended in contact which put the Ferrari driver out.
Back in the days before the stewards could issue five- and ten-second time penalties they issued fewer sanctions to drivers for contact. However Montoya had already been given an astonishing penalty for a collision with Schumacher in Malaysia the year before, so his drive-through penalty came as less of a shock. That plus a slow refuelling pit stop later in the race ended his title chances that weekend.
7: Villeneuve’s race under appeal, 1997
The news that championship contender Jacques Villeneuve had been disqualified from the penultimate round of the championship before it had even started was understandably seismic. He had fallen victim to a recently-introduced rule punishing drivers for failing to slow down for yellow flags.
Villeneuve was one of six drivers, including title rival Schumacher, who failed to slow sufficiently as they passed Jos Verstappen’s stranded Tyrrell at the exit of Suzuka’s Spoon curve during practice. However the Williams driver had more ‘priors’ than the others, so while they all received suspended bans, his was applied.
He was allowed to race under appeal, but subsequently disqualified. Schumacher won the race and flipped a nine-point deficit into a single-point lead heading into a finale which proved even more controversial.
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6: Verstappen’s brake test on Hamilton, 2021
There were enough hotly disputed calls during Hamilton and Max Verstappen’s bitter 2021 championship fight to fill an entire top 10.
Red Bull unsuccessfully lobbied for Hamilton to receive a harsher penalty after the pair tangled at Silverstone. Verstappen responded with what looked like a retaliatory move at Monza. There were arguments over Hamilton’s rear wing and whether Verstappen interfered with it in parc ferme, yellow flag infringements and various on-track incidents.
Come the penultimate race in Jeddah, Verstappen was trying everything he could to keep Hamilton at bay, including cutting the track to stay ahead. At one point, fearing a penalty, Red Bull advised him to let Hamilton past. Verstappen attempted to do so immediately before a DRS detection point, so he could immediately re-pass the Mercedes. Hamilton, wise to this, hung back.
Verstappen went further, jamming on the brakes and causing a collision. The stewards found him in breach of the International Sporting Code which forbids driving “unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers.” They pointed out his braking pressure during the second deceleration, which occured with Hamilton immediately behind him, registered 69 bar.
For that, they handed him a 10-second time penalty which proved inconsequential to his finishing position. Even drivers not involved in the title fight were surprised by the leniency of the call. Norris joked he would “try brake testing” one of his rivals at the next race. “It’s only a 10-second penalty.”
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5: Alonso’s qualifying fury, 2006
“I don’t consider F1 a sport anymore,” fumed Alonso after the stewards deleted his three fastest lap times in qualifying for the 2006 Italian Grand Prix. With championship rival Schumacher lining up on the front row, the decision which dropped Alonso five places to 10th put his 12-point lead in jeopardy.
Alonso, who had been delayed by a puncture early in Q3 at Monza, was belatedly starting his last lap when he was caught by Schumacher’s team mate Felipe Massa. Massa drew close enough to be affected by the slipstream of Alonso’s car, which the stewards accepted as grounds for a penalty.
The rules were later revised to allow more leniency in such situations, but for Alonso the damage was already done. Schumacher took maximum advantage on Sunday, winning while Alonso dropped out with engine failure, leaving the pair separated by two points with three rounds to go.
4: Hamilton’s win handed to Massa, 2008
Hamilton led the points with the Ferrari drivers for company at the Belgian Grand Prix in 2008. Kimi Raikkonen worked his usual Spa-Francorchamps magic for much of the race but a late rain shower brought Hamilton onto his tail.
A riveting back-and-forth ensued, during which time Raikkonen forced Hamilton wide at the clumsy, recently-built chicane at the end of the lap. Hamilton gave the place back, then repassed Raikkonen at the next corner. The fight went on and was only decided when Raikkonen spun into a barrier.
Or so it seemed. But after the trophies had been handed out the stewards decided Hamilton hadn’t done enough to restore the advantage he’d gained by going off and issued a post-race 25-second penalty. That handed victory to Raikkonen’s team mate Massa, who had never figured in the battle at the front, and dropped Hamilton to third behind Nick Heidfeld.
The decision clearly still rankled with Hamilton many years later when he described how the FIA “screwed” him in a video titled “lesson to my younger self”. “They will say it’s okay for you to let Kimi by and that you’ve done enough,” he recalled, “and at the end of the race they will not let you keep that win.”
It was not a vintage year for the stewards, who two rounds later overlooked Renault’s outrageous piece of cheating in the Singapore Grand Prix. ‘Crashgate’ only came to light the following year, and is now the matter of a court case brought by Massa.
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3: Schumacher’s Silverstone nightmare, 1994
The circumstances which led to Michael Schumacher being disqualified from one race and banned from two more began with a driving error which was compounded by mistakes by both his team and the stewards. The matter eventually ended up before the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council which, tellingly, did not confine its punishments to Schumacher, but also took action against Benetton and a race official.
It began when Schumacher overtook his championship rival and British Grand Prix pole-winner Damon Hill during both pre-race formation laps. The stewards issued a five-second stop-go penalty, which Benetton later claimed to have misunderstood, despite it being described as such in the race broadcast.
As Benetton failed to bring Schumacher in to serve his penalty, he was shown the black flag. This prompted an argument in the pits between the officials and Benetton which led to Schumacher serving the original penalty and racing on to finish second.
The FIA was deeply unimpressed with all of this and subsequently enforced Schumacher’s disqualification and banned him from the next two races. They added a half-million dollar fine for Benetton and suspended the superlicence of clerk of the course Pierre Aumonier for the handling of the incident.
The decision had huge implications for the championship. Before his disqualification, Schumacher’s lead stood at 32 points. The decision cut it to 26 – and meant Hill had two Schumacher-free races to take a 20-point bite out of his deficit, which he duly did. Another controversial incident awaited at the end of the season, though the stewards did not rule on that.
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2: Masi’s unprecedented call tips title fight, 2021
The 2021 world championship came to an explosively controversial conclusion in the final laps of the season at Yas Marina. The Safety Car appeared late in the race as Hamilton led, on course for the title, pursued by Verstappen.
The Mercedes driver wasn’t far enough ahead to pit for replacement tyres, but Verstappen was able to. However as the final laps ticked down race director Michael Masi initially decided there would not be time to hold a restart.
Under fierce lobbying from Red Bull, Masi relented, and took the unprecedented decision to only allow the lapped cars between the championship leaders to rejoin the lead lap. This was a clear contradiction of past practice and Masi’s own words 12 months earlier.
“This is getting manipulated man,” said Hamilton on his radio, while Verstappen took the lead and the title on the last lap. Mercedes quickly launched two protests, one of which pointed out Masi had failed to follow the rules governing the restart.
The stewards rejected Mercedes’ claims and upheld the race result confirming Verstappen as champion. But three months later the FIA admitted Masi had made a mistake; by then, he had already been fired as F1 race director.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has been scathing of Masi’s actions, accusing him of costing Hamilton a record-breaking eighth world championship. “There is one lunatic who can basically destroy the record of the greatest champion of all time,” he said last month.
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1: Senna’s disqualification makes Prost champion, 1989
The greater controversy of the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix was not the question of whether Alain Prost intended to take out Ayrton Senna when the pair collided at the chicane while disputing the lead. The real scandal was the stewards’ subsequent decision to disqualify Senna from the race, which ultimately decided that year’s world championship.
Following the notorious collision between the pair, Prost quickly jumped out of his car while Senna tried to continue. He rejoined via the escape road at the exit of the chicane. There could be no question of him gaining an advantage by doing so, as he lost a considerable amount of time and had to pit to replace a damaged front wing.
However in their subsequent hearing the stewards told Senna he should have turned around in order to rejoin the track. He pointed out this would have put him at risk of being hit head-on by another car, and is forbidden by the rules. Moreover, other drivers that year had used escape roads at other circuits to rejoin the track in the same way without penalty, including Prost at Imola.
Senna won the Suzuka race ‘on the road’ ahead of Alessandro Nannini and the two Williams drivers. The decision to disqualify Senna was taken hurriedly enough that Senna was not allowed to participate in the podium ceremony.
When McLaren brought a protest against the decision the FISA (now FIA) brought a list of other grievances against Senna. The driver suspected the interference of president Jean-Marie Balestre, “whether out of patriotism, friendship or for other reasons I prefer not to mention.”
Fortunately for the governing body, McLaren’s attempts to overturn the decision were rendered moot when Senna crashed out of the final race of the season at Adelaide. In blind spray on the back straight, he came across Martin Brundle driving at part-throttle and slammed into the back of the Brabham.
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Over to you
What other stewards’ decisions from past title fights stand out as particularly controversial? Does Piastri’s penalty deserve a place in this list? Have your say in the comments.
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