Ted Kravitz hits back at Wolff and Stella in ‘all so boring’ FIA response

Between Andrea Stella calling out “inappropriate stewards” and Toto Wolff sticking his “oar in”, Sky F1 reporter Ted Kravitz says criticism of the stewards is “all so boring” as the rules are the rules.

And they are rules that the teams and drivers agreed to.

Ted Kravitz: Latest F1 stewards’ ‘kerfuffle’ is ‘boring’

Lando Norris and George Russell were both hit with five-second penalties at the United States Grand Prix. Norris’ was for leaving the track and gaining an advantage in battle with Max Verstappen, while Russell was penalised for forcing Valtteri Bottas off the track.

Neither drivers’ team boss was impressed.

McLaren team principal Stella called Norris’s penalty for passing Verstappen off the track “inappropriate because both cars went off track, so both cars gained an advantage”.

He said the stewards had “interfered with a beautiful piece of motorsport.”

Meanwhile, Wolff, called Russell’s penalty a “bit of biased decision-making” and later told the media including PlanetF1.com: “We need to try to understand whether there are certain patterns in stewarding decisions, and whether that correlates to some of the situations.

“Everybody’s racing hard, but for me the decision against George was inexplicable.”

But according to Kravitz, the drivers involved have only themselves to blame as they not only know the regulations, but “agreed” to them.

“Lando overtook by going off the track,” he said in his post-race Sky F1 Notebook show, “and Lando picked up the five-second penalty because that’s the way the rules are.

“You’re always going to get a five-second penalty for that because that’s the rule. These are the rules that have been agreed to. You might not like the rules.

“As I said at the time on air, it’s such a shame it had to end that way and that’s basically McLaren’s point as well, although they say it’s a shame because they came out the bad side of it. But as a neutral observer watching it, a great piece of motor racing.

“To quote Andrea Stella, does it have to end with a stewards’ five-second penalty? Can they not just fight it out again? And that was Lando’s point, and where I think Lando will be most frustrated: he should have just let Max go and then have a go, let him pass again and then have another go, so it can be clean.

“Then we don’t have to get into all this kerfuffle with the stewards again. It’s all so boring, the steward stuff.

“Of course, we’ve got Andrea Stella saying it’s inappropriate stewarding and we’ve got Toto Wolff putting his oar in because he wasn’t happy about George’s penalty as well.

“These rules are agreed to by the teams and the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association. They’ve made these rules.”

More on Lando Norris’ United States GP penalty

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And while he does feel these days penalties are handed too easily, again he says that’s because the teams decided on those rules.

“And alright, you can argue all day long about whether you only have to cough these days to get a five-second penalty,” he added.

“All the stewards are acting and enacting and enforcing the rules that the teams have all agreed to and the drivers have signed up to.”

In the midst of it all there’s Wolff talking “correlations” and “certain patterns in stewarding decisions” and wanting FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to get involved.

Kravitz admits he was a bit perplexed by it all as the stewards are just doing their jobs.

“There’s us in the middle trying to figure it all out,” he said. “I’m not asking for sympathy, I’m just hoping you understand when I get to a day like today how we have to decode what we were being told.

“That Toto interview when he was talking about all of this stuff, I was figuring out in my head: ‘What’s he saying here?’

“If I don’t understand it, what chance does anybody else have an understanding it?

“But in the end, it’s not stewards fault, because they’re just acting on the rules that have been written for them. And if a driver literally goes off track and gains position, that’s breaking the rule.

“If you break the rule, you’ve got a penalty. What’s the penalty? It’s five seconds.”

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