As Romain
Grosjean’s out of control car careered into Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari at
the start of last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, I have to say the last thing
that came to mind was a race ban for any party. My initial instincts (aside
from worrying about a possible injury to Alonso) were that this was a racing
incident, and this was confirmed by subsequent replays. Sure, Grosjean moved
across the track in front of Lewis Hamilton, but he made only one move and
appeared to allow Hamilton
a car’s width between the wall and his own car. Admittedly Hamilton had to take to the grass to avoid
initial contact, but could have chosen to back out of the contretemps rather
than piling into the side of Grosjean’s car.
While I am certainly not blaming Hamilton in any way, it is
clear that the crash was not entirely Grosjean’s fault and was largely borne
out of a confused start (with Pastor Maldonado setting off very early and Kamui Kobayashi
doing the opposite) and exacerbated by the congested grid at the tight Spa
circuit. In past years commentators often spoke about a first-corner crash at
Spa in inevitable, ‘when not if’ terms, and indeed there was an incident last
year when Bruno Senna barged into Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso, removing it
from the race (interestingly only a drive-through penalty was applied to Senna
in that case).
So there appears little justification for Grosjean to have
been given the draconian sentence of a race ban, always the ultimate punishment
for a racing driver – witness Ayrton Senna’s acute distress at being removed
from his Toleman seat at Monza in 1984. The stewards gave the justification
for the penalty as “an extremely serious breach of the regulations which… eliminated leading championship contenders from the race”.
Frankly this is ridiculous
reasoning – it was pure chance that Alonso was wiped out in the crash. Equally, a
car other than Hamilton’s McLaren could easily have been alongside Grosjean and
acted as a launch pad for the Lotus. And exactly what “regulations” were breached in the incident
remains unclear – perhaps the unofficial but widely known clause ‘thou shalt
not in any way disadvantage the great and noble Ferrari team’ had something to
do with it. But ‘Ferrari International Assistance’ (FIA) has certainly got its way by
preventing the hapless Frenchman from repeating the trick on Tifosi home turf.
There’s been a lot of talk that this is the first race ban
since Michael Schumacher’s in 1994 for the still-unfathomable act of passing
Damon Hill on the parade lap at Silverstone and later ignoring a black flag.
Schumacher was indeed the last driver to actually serve a race ban, not
counting Jacques Villeneuve’s exclusion from the 1997 Jpanese Grand Prix after
racing under appeal, or Yuji Ide who lost his superlicence in 2006 –
effectively an indefinite ban.
But the last incident to lead to a ban actually
took place at the following race, the
German Grand Prix of 1994. This incident was in many ways similar to
Sunday’s – it happened off the start line and front-running drivers (Hill in
that case) were involved. Interestingly no action was taken over a separate
crash which took out both Minardis, a Sauber and a Lotus – the “championship
contenders” clause being invoked again? But Mika Hakkinen was banned from the
following race for his part in the ‘main’ incident.
This was seen at the time
as a bit of a knee-jerk reaction only a few races after the awful events of
Imola. Interestingly, like Grosjean this season, the talented Finn had also
been involved in (and blamed for) a first corner accident in Monaco as well as
several other collisions – in Hakkinen’s case the effect of being involved in
multiple incidents already that season counted against him and it may well have
done in Grosjean’s case. The oft-quoted figure is seven first-lap tangles
in twelve races for the Frenchman, but most of them were pretty minor and
hardly his fault (particularly Barcelona and Silverstone). At least things
worked out for Mika in the end with two world titles - a promising omen.
Incidentally, Michael Schumacher really should have been the
last driver to be banned from a race, after
his vicious chop on Rubens Barrichello at the 2010 Hungarian Grand Prix. And
quite how Maldonado (who blatantly took out the innocent Pedro de la
Rosa at the start in Monaco this year, amongst his numerous other indiscretions)
has escaped a race ban thus far in his chequered F1 career is unclear. The lack
of consistency in the punishments handed out to each driver is disappointing in
the extreme.
On a related note, one man’s
misfortune is another’s opportunity, and Jerome
D’Ambrosio steps into the Lotus cockpit this weekend as Grosjean’s stand-in.
As it happens, a number of drivers have substituted for others at Monza in recent years
with various degrees of success. Marc Gene shone for Williams in 2003, claiming
5th, while Giancarlo Fisichella struggled in 2009 in the Ferrari vacated by
Luca Badoer (and initially the injured Felipe Massa), with Tonio Liuzzi in turn
filling in for Fisichella at Force India.
The life of a stand-in is
not always a happy one – Gene himself was dropped by Williams during a second
stint as a substitute race driver in 2004, Hakkinen’s 1994 replacement
Phillippe Alliot didn’t impress, and the less said about Badoer the better. All
these drivers, like D’Ambrosio, had only ever driven for tail-end teams prior to
their temporary promotions, and found the going tough when put in a top-six
worthy car. With limited testing in 2012 D’Ambrosio will inevitably struggle to
some extent, but here’s hoping the consistent Belgian can do himself justice. And it's worth remembering that a certain Sebastian Vettel's F1 career started when he took Robert Kubica's place at BMW Sauber for one race in 2007.
All these similarities from different Formula 1 eras invoke
the oft-spoken adage (especially in F1 circles) that ‘the more things change,
the more they stay the same’. Given the consistencies running through the
sport’s history (which often appears to be repeating itself) it surely isn’t
too much to ask for the governing body to be consistent when dishing out
punishments also…
