Originally posted by TheHumanPromise
1) Lewis not only broke a rule violation(ignoring the red light), but in doing so, took out his championship rival. Had he simply passed the pitlane exit line and not hit anybody, he would have just been black flagged. There's not really a precedent for this to go by as its never happened before, but I think it was a justified penalty, and should definitely be the precedent should it happen again.
2) Well not gonna go into it in detail or anything, but the rule he was actually penalized for was there before. Its the steward's discretion to penalize for this. Not gonna argue whether it was justified or not, just wanted to clarify your inaccurate statement.
3) I tend to agree that he shouldn't have been penalized for his late braking into Turn 1 as the supposed 'contact' with Kimi isn't really visible to me. However, we cant automatically assume his race would have gone incident free had he not gotten the drive through. More likely, he would have been up against faster cars that are harder to pass. Maybe he would have gotten back in the points, maybe not. And I can agree on Bourdais' penalty, though that only gained Massa 1 point.
4) I disagree about Massa getting a penalty for the pitrelease in Valencia. For one, the 'dangerous pitbox exit' rule is there to stop people in pitlane from getting hurt, and since they were beyond all the pitboxes this wasn't an issue. Also, they never came close to contact as Massa seemed to know he was there right away. Plus, it would have been completely inconsistent to have given him a penalty for that considering we've seen that happen tons of times in the past without any penalties given for it.
That said, even if I were to give you that 20 point swing in Lewis' favor, you still have to consider that as a Driver's Championship, Massa would not be undeserving if he won it because he's lost more than 20 points due to circumstances out of his control. You could argue Ferrari dont deserve the WDC, though.
Stick to the facts.
1. Lewis was penalised for causing an avoidable accident, not for 'ignoring the red light'. Who he hit, and where he hit him are irrelevant and the judgement made no reference to the specifics of these. Your pondering of what would have happened are also irrelevent. Yes penalties have been given before but for DANGEROUS driving. In instances where the car crashes is out, that had always been seen as the penalty, self inflicted if you like. The race before Raikkonen did not get a penalty for crashing into the back of Sutil.
2. Totally untrue. Lewis was penalised for 'gaining an unfair advantage' according to a revision to the rule he broke which was that he overtook the car he had let repass before the next corner. This rule clarification was published at 19:00hrs - ie. AFTER the SPA GP. At the time of the incident, it was a common held belief in racing circles that you simply had to let the car repass and there was NO RULE in place about waiting a corner to reovertake. I think the clarification is a good one, but that's not the point, the point is it wasn't in place at 15:00hrs in Spa.
3. What might or might not have happened is obviously open to interpretation, I accept that.
4. This has happened 'tones of times without penalties'. I take it you don't watch much FIA sanctioned motor racing then.
5. The fact that Massa has been unlucky with retirements is part of the sport though and down to luck. FIA tampering with results is not. Massa was awesome in Hungary, for example, and really deserved that win, and to some extent deserves the championship. All I am doing here is putting forward a tongue in cheek arguement that without baised rulings Lewis would be Champion by now.
But equally, we can't change the rules (unless we are Max Mosley) so we are where we are.
I hope Kubica wins!
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about as much as you would be if I tried to claim Hamilton's first corner move was a good one. Fanboytastic.
