Rosberg Penalty Has Haas Calling For Rules Clarification

After Formula 1 drivers’ championship leader Nico Rosberg was assessed a 10-second time penalty in Sunday’s British Grand Prix for illegal radio transmissions, Haas principal Guenther Steiner said the FIA should make more clear what the rules exactly are.

More from Formula One

Rosberg finished second in the aforementioned grand prix; while he still stayed on the podium, the penalty resulted in his being demoted to a finishing position of P3.

The German received two radio messages during the closing stages of the race, one of which was related to chassis issues he was experiencing, the other because of a faulty gearbox. His Mercedes counterparts on the pitwall instructed Rosberg to avoid seventh gear, which the FIA deemed a violation of its rules that say a driver must be made to navigate his car “alone and unaided.”

Red Bull principal Christian Horner was among the first to speak publicly on the matter immediately following the race, referring to the rules as “rubbish” and saying a time penalty would do nothing but provide teams with the opportunity to take creative advantage if it only meant losing seconds.

Now Steiner has joined in the criticism of the rules, saying there needs to be further clarification.

“Absolutely, and we all just want that for the benefit of the sport, not to do anything wrong. It would not be nice to be penalized 10 seconds and to say ‘Actually I didn’t do anything’, and you cannot put in a protest because you have no leg to stand on. It’s not black and white this rule.”

As it stands, Steiner says teams are at a loss of what’s permissible and prohibited from the pitwall.

“The biggest difficulty is making a judgment on what is legal and what’s not. The line is not clear. How you can write a clear line on what you say, if you talk in a code, if somebody suggests what you say was a code and it wasn’t?

“It comes down to the pitwall and asking ‘Can we say this?’ I don’t really know if we can say this, but I think you can. It’s the uncertainty. We need to define it better, but how easy that is, I wouldn’t like to write that rule because how long is a piece of string?

“It’s not easy to control. But not talking like it was suggested is not good because [too many radio messages] takes something away from the fans in my opinion. If the team cannot influence the strategy, and it’s just down to the driver, it’s not really fair, I would say. It’s part of the sport. But telling them how to start is also not right. The car becomes a PlayStation car in saying, you do this, you do this, get to this value. It’s a fine line.”

As the rules are currently written, messages can only be relayed to the driver in the instance of preventing imminent failure of the car or for safety reasons — Mercedes had originally said the instructions were given to prevent the former, but the team ultimately dropped their plans to appeal the ruling.

Because of that very reason, Steiner thinks the vague description of the circumstances make the rule almost impossible to interpret, and make it even more difficult to assert a proper punishment for Rosberg on Sunday.

“With Rosberg, he had a problem with the gearbox and they told him not to go in that gear. In the end I could say that could be dangerous going into that gear because all of a sudden you are in neutral and you fly off. That’s what I think. The definition of it is difficult, to rule on what is right and what is wrong.”

Home/Formula One