izzy wrote: ↑17 Mar 2022, 12:24
Red Rock Mutley wrote: ↑17 Mar 2022, 11:56
Not quite. It closes a minor inconsistency in the rules that Red Bull argued in the Steward's hearing. The thrust of their argument is left intact. However, the Race Director doesn't use that point in his argument. And, the main grounds for the Stewards upholding his decision is based on his general power of “overriding authority" to control the use of the safety car. That remains unchanged.
All the other ambiguities in the rules remain intact. Presumably, a consensus formed around preserving the flexibility as a necessity to deal with the uncertain nature of safety car deployment. I think that's a common-sense approach....provided they tighten up their internal procedures.
Yes, they haven't changed anything really have they. "Any car" means exactly the same as "all cars" in that context. They can't change 15.3 without admitting the stewards totally faked their dodgy interpretation of it and were wrong.
And that's the key.
Even if they want to pretend that technically, he was able to do what he did (which is bs, and a cover up attempt) Peter Bayer came out in an interview and conceded that Mercedes could succeeded in voiding the whole result in the courts.
Even so, its clear to me that the FIA don't agree with his decision making to justify the way he used the rules to execute a 1 lap shoot out unfairly. It would've been within the bounds of acceptable if he had brought in the safety car without asking cars to overtake from lap 56 or 57. and allowed the current track scenario to finish under green.
He went too far orchestrating which cars he would apply the regulation to. He didn't need to do that to finish under green. Manufacturing Max vs Lewis for 1 lap was a step too far. It is clear for normal people to see that his judgement became clouded after he succumbed to pressure and lobbying from teams.
Boiling it down to this, the bigger changes they made were to the RD rather than the regulations. One can argue they think the regulations are okay, and that the problem was Masi and the stewards using them inappropriately in AD and that's why he's gone and the regs have stayed the same.. Must be why Peter Bayer is conceding legally in a court, Mercedes had too strong a case and would rip to shreds their arguments those stewards presented to them in their protest dismissal.