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The municipality of Rome pays 6 million euros every year in compensation for one of the chronic ills that afflicts the capital: potholes. The municipality of Las Vegas, on the other hand, pays nothing but – on the contrary – profits because instead of compensating the unfortunate people, it fines them. This must be the logic that moved the FIA to apply the regulation to the letter and therefore to penalize Sainz by ten positions on the starting grid for Sunday’s race, guilty of having changed the batteries on his car which crashed into a manhole, raised after the passage of Esteban Ocon’s Alpine.
Let’s rewind the tape. If you are superstitious perhaps you can find the explanation better than anyone else but Friday the 17th in Las Vegas was a real shame for all of F1. Of course, there was no shortage of big names in show business constantly on the catwalk, spectacular LEDs and loud music: undoubtedly a sparkling, ultra-modern setting that can only do Formula 1 some good. But the manhole covers exploding like champagne corks and the ridiculous activity on the track (delays and repairs, postponements and finally an acceptable series of test laps) transformed the day into a grueling marathon for teams, drivers and professionals. Everyone was forcibly kept in the paddock on the Strip until 6 in the morning and even beyond, on a weekend that would already be quite difficult considering being nine hours away from home.
The greatest shame, however, concerns the ten-place penalty at the start imposed on Carlos and Ferrari who, for what happened on the track, do not have (nor could have had) the slightest responsibility. It’s true, the rules are clear. And the regulation excludes force majeure events or exceptional cases, but this is something different. The world championship weekend in Nevada began under the banner of shortcomings and a barrage of errors. Make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes: we have also seen manholes and grates coming out of their location in the past at Silverstone and Spa, circuits with much greater motorsport experience than the organizers of Las Vegas. And Ferrari and Sainz did well to take this into account. But no penalty: we’re not there at all.
Carlos, with hindsight, could have even hurt himself due to that manhole he stumbled into at over 300 mph. The SF-23 came out smashed (look at the debris from the machine in these photos), with material damage amounting to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of euros. But up to this point we are in the norm of racing: they are dangerous, for men and for machines; and not always their fault, on the contrary. But how to justify the fact that Sainz and Ferrari (only victims) were penalized?
Someone will return to the topic we were talking about before: the regulations. The stewards apply them, and the penalty was inevitable. But then let’s change these regulations. Because not changing them, even while running, is simply idiotic.
Aristotle said “Even when laws are written they should never remain unchanged”. And when the extra-code irregularity (in this case: Carlos’ battery pack, which did not have any in reserve compared to the maximum permitted number of usable units in the season), when this discrepancy is so clearly unrelated to faults of the driver, of the team , of the suppliers, but is due to inaccuracies of others, then the exemption should be possible. Indeed: obligatory.
And now? Sainz is second at the end of the day of free practice, despite the stress of hours and hours spent waiting for the engineering and team miracle that Ferrari then created, allowing him to return to the track with a single-seater worthy of the name. And now, 9 in the morning on our European Saturday, he will face a qualifying which – hopefully – will guarantee him the sixth row at the start of a Grand Prix of great importance. Let’s think with what morals, with what clear and fresh mind the Spanish driver will be able to climb into the red cockpit to fight for pole position at crazy speeds close to the walls, given that in this first part of the weekend his Ferrari seems to be going very fast.
Yet, Sainz – like our title – behaved like a soldier. The penalty had given him a very understandable “unacceptable” in his first immediate declarations. Just as the same term, or a clear synonym, was pronounced by team principal Fred Vasseur in the same interviews on the drum. Then the official statement from the Cavallino was much less passionate: Carlos limited himself in his comments, as the team itself probably asked him to do to avoid positions of obvious controversy with the organiser, with the commissioners, with the FIA.
Let’s put it this way: Ferrari is fighting for second place in the 2023 Constructors’ World Championship, from which it is now separated by 20 points behind Mercedes. The difference between a second place in the world championship and a third is worth a few thousand dollars per kilo. Let’s say that in the end the placing is lost by Maranello by a handful of points, and that under the checkered flag in Las Vegas Carlos ends up, let’s say, fifth, rather than on the podium as a start much further up the grid could have allowed him, who will pay? for all of this?
“There are many laws when the state is very corrupt” said Publius Cornelius Tacitus. And if you are wondering why F1 is – very often – surreal, illogical and incomprehensible in its regulations, perhaps you will find the answer in reading the classics.
#Save #Private #Sainz #FormulaPassion.it