Guenther Steiner wants Formula One to have a professional group of FIA stewards for every race after labelling Nico Hulkenberg’s Monaco penalty “completely wrong”.
Hulkenberg got a five-second penalty for an aggressive overtake on Logan Sargeant, after lunging up the inside of the Williams rookie at the Mirabeau corner on Lap 1.
Replays of the incident show Sargeant moving to the left to avoid Hulkenberg on the inside but do not show the two cars making contact.
Haas boss Steiner is still upset by the decision.
When asked what the penalty was for, Steiner said: “Good question!
“I’m trying to find out because nobody can explain it to me! I mean I was just doing emails at the moment and trying to look at pictures and I think there was no collision.”
F1 penalties are decided by a rotating panel of FIA stewards who decide driver penalties at every event.
Critics of this system have said it leads to inconsistency in decisions.
In a long rant during a media session ahead of Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, Steiner said he is still seeking clarification on the contact the Monaco stewards penalised his driver for.
“I just looked at the picture and Nico comes from the inside and is in front basically, dives into the corner, but I can’t see a collision,” he said. “A collision is touching, no? That’s what the definition is.
“We’re still trying to find out, I’m still arguing it. Not arguing it but trying to get it explained because I think it was completely wrong. It’s Lap 1, there was no collision, and what should we make, a parade? Because it’s Monte Carlo, if you don’t do this… [you don’t get past].
“There are other people running into each other during the race and they get a black and white flag [instead of a penalty]. So I think it’s very inconsistent. Then we look at the accident in Miami between de Vries and Norris in Lap 1 and that was no collision, it’s like guys… If a collision is because you attack somebody and he reacts to it, it’s like, why would we get a penalty for that? When you want to overtake somebody obviously you try to push somebody to make a mistake so you can overtake, so that would be illegal as well.
“I think the decision, for me, I still don’t understand it. I was told from the video you can see a collision. I looked at numerous pictures and I cannot see a collision. Somebody wants to tell me there is a collision, they have difficulty showing it.
“No, there is no collision. How can you be sure of a collision? And if you don’t know if it is one or not, what is it then? Innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until I prove innocent. That is how a law works in my opinion.”
Steiner said one way to stop similar decisions going forward would be a panel of recurring stewards at every grand prix, pointing out how unusual F1’s current system is compared to other sports.
“Every professional sport has got professionals being referees and stuff like this. It’s like, F1 is one of the biggest sports in the world and we still have laymen deciding on the fate of people that invest millions in their careers.
“It’s always a discussion because there’s no consistency. I don’t want to blame any particular person on this, but if they’re not all there all the time then this is just like a job every… It’s not even a job because in a job you can get sacked, because you get paid, and if you do a bad job you get sacked. You cannot get sacked because you do not get paid. I think we need to step it up.
“I think it’s now time. We’ve been discussing this for years and years and we always go back to this. Every other sport has professional referees, American racing, NASCAR, IndyCar, how many times do you hear problems with the stewards or with the race director’s decisions? Very rarely. Very rarely. But they are doing it completely differently, there are full-time people working there. I’m always saying innocent until proven guilty, not that I have to prove that I was innocent, because that doesn’t work for me, that’s not how I look at life.”