The first lap first corner collision caused by Romain Grosjean in the just concluded Spa-Francorchamps race in Belgium will remain fresh in our minds for a long time. One could see the extent of the carnage with the number of carbon fibre and expensive F1 parts flying and laying around the track after the crash, giving the safety car 5 free laps around Eau Rouge.
But moving on from that, the stewards awarded Grosjean a one race ban which means he'll miss the exciting drive around Monza which in my opinion is a ban well deserved considering his exploits this season thus far.
Perhaps the worrying thing about the ban is the reason used as a basis for giving the ban.
Saying the stewards regard the incident as an extremely serious breach of the regulations which had the potential to cause injury to others is quite a good enough an explanation but i dont seem to understand why this next line had to come in: “It eliminated leading championship contenders from the race."
Now this could imply that had if the likes of Alonso and Hamilton were not affected, the ban could be softened. And this automatically means that had the crash affected the back-markers, Grosjean would have gotten away with a warning or probably a drive through penalty in Monza.
Another implication could be if Alonso and Hamilton weren't major title contenders, what would the penalty be like? Or if Alonso were to have caused the crash, what penalty would he get? The questions would keep rolling and we wouldn't get answers. This is a way of saying penalties are issued based on who you are and who was affected.
I think the stewards and the FIA should mind the languge they use when communicating and try to issue blanket punishments to whoever faults and whoever is faulted. Issuing penalties based on "who you are and who you offended" is a way of causing friction in the sport which may not show right now but will surely pile up and hunt the sport at a future date.
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