26/10/2017
NEWS STORY
In a special media presentation in Mexico following last week's controversial decision to penalise Max Verstappen for his last lap pass on Kimi Raikkonen, the Briton defended stewarding and in particular the decision in Austin.
"The accusations of inconsistency are pretty much without foundation," Whiting told reporters. "The only time a driver gained a clear advantage he was penalised.
"The point is the stewards felt he had gained an advantage, had shortened the track, clearly he was off the track, and he passed another car," he added.
Referring to the whole minefield that is track limits, he said: "We have to try to take a practical approach to this, there is an element of wanting to let the drivers race. It is only when it is absolutely clear that the stewards need to get involved."
The Briton was at pains to make clear that though other drivers had exceeded the track limits in Austin only Verstappen actually gained an advantage.
"We can look at a particular lap time, look across, look at that mini sector time and then you can see whether or not the driver gained an advantage," he explained. "We do that whenever we see any of those excursions off the track, particularly at Turn 19.
"We did that during qualifying and we saw nothing that gave us any cause for concern," he revealed. "We can do that during a race as well.
"Leaving the track is not an offence in itself," he insisted, "but if a driver does so he must rejoin the track safety and without gaining any lasting advantage. Those words are really important in this case. There were a number of occasions when drivers left the track during the race and practice that were not formally looked at by stewards purely because no lasting advantage was gained.
"The point here really is that the stewards felt he had gained an advantage," he added. "He had shortened the track and clearly he was off track and he passed another driver at the same time. So for them the decision was quite simple technically, but emotionally it was not so easy because the decision had to be made quite quickly."
Looking ahead, and no doubt aware that this weekend's track has had its controversial moments, he said: "It would be far better if we could come up with something, a system, a procedure, or features that were absolutely unambiguous about whether it was faster, or not.
"The way to do that is to use very big kerbs," he continued, "but of course they are unacceptable really. We have gone away from gravel now for years now, which has given rise to the kerbs that we have now. There is also the complexity of a track trying to cater for all types or cars and bikes and things like that. At COTA they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the two can coexist.
"My personal belief is that if you take what is a zero tolerance approach then you will be forever reporting drivers," he admitted, "because they will do it multiple times during the race and you have to monitor every corner of every lap for every driver to a very high precision. With great respect to other formulae, we don't need that in F1. We would be confronted by various videos after the race that people have taken or acquired from somewhere that showed he didn't go off... it was still on white line.
"We would have all these discussions and there would be a line outside the stewards office waiting to discuss whether or not they should be penalised. I don't think F1 needs that. If that is what the Strategy Group really want, and they want to develop rules to say that, then so be it. We will police it. But we don't have that rule at the moment."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Mexico, here.