Hamilton Penalty Was NOT FAIR! | Peter Windsor Reacts

You said that Lewis Hamilton shouldn't have got a penalty. No, the conventional wisdom of the zeitgeist is that. I mean, they said that they were going to give him a 10 second, but because it was the first lap, they reduced it to five seconds owing to how chaotic lap one can be. I interpreted that incident not dissimilar to Silverstone 2021. And then the rules say something. If you can keep the car under control, then we can absolve you of culpability owing to the cheeky snap over steer instance. Ultimately, Lewis ran into George a little bit. So I thought the five seconds was fair. You think he shouldn't have got one a racing incident? Yeah, they should have penalized the the writers of the regulations for coming up with a 26 formula, causing a ridiculous speed differentials on the straight, which led to the bottleneck going into Lake Com. Of course, you know, you put two Formula One cars alongside one another at Lake Com, particularly front runners. There's always going to be a drama. But you make sure that you've got a category of racing, a formula which allows the drivers to do what they want to do on the straight with slipstreaming. And as they're approaching the corner, they can all basically be grown men and get a feel for how to drive through Lake Com. And if it's Micka Hakkinen against Michael Schumacher and it's towards the end of the race and there's a Ricardo Zonta there, then, yeah, OK, let them have a go. Most drivers would know the pitfalls of Lake Com. I mean, obviously, George was braking pretty late to make up for the ridiculous speed differential. But again, you know, that's it's the speed differential that caused that accident. And that's and that's why Lewis should have been completely absolved from that, in my opinion, because there were three into one and three into one does not go. But it's not the fault of the drivers. It wasn't the fault of Lewis trying to do anything particularly outrageous. Or indeed, George, it was all to do with the speed differential drama. Can I ask you a question, Peter, under the aegis of consistency or a lack thereof, how did Lewis get a five second penalty for coming together incidentally? I mean, I don't think there was any malice in there with George on lap one. How did he get a five second for that and shall not get a penalty for his move on Oscar Piastri? Inconsistency, there's no other way to describe it. And what can you say if they don't always get it right? That to me, again, you know, I love looking much further than the detail. And that is that this whole regulation of what you should do or not do in a corner is absurd. And they should get rid of it completely and allow the drivers to be drivers. I just don't see the point of it. And and it's all got totally out of control. And it's being judged by what? I'm not going to say they're not professionals because that's not the right way to describe them. It's being judged by third parties who are not there in the instant looking from camera angles, trying to make a decision based on gray wording in the rulebook, which is ridiculous in the middle of a Grand Prix with 12 other things they've got to adjudicate behind them. So there's a pressure thing as well. And it's completely wrong. You know, you just get on with it and go racing. And if there's something really crazy, the drivers will sort it out. Let the GPDA do their own thing with a driver. That's much more. You think Riccardo Petrezzi improved after Monza 78? Yes, he did. Because the drivers all said, no, that was wrong. And he was a better driver for it. And that's what needs to happen. The drivers, the GPDA should be in charge of that stuff, not the FIA. And I think this is where Formula One, you know, again, I haven't watched much of the World Cup, but I did watch a bit of the final yesterday. And I can see how everything that's happening in football sort of bleeds into Formula One. They do it, so we better do it. So they have all these penalties and the guys blowing whistles everywhere. And the guys on the sidelines seem to have as much power as the referee in the middle, which is crazy. And in my opinion, and and they're doing that in Formula One. Oh, I got a penalty for this penalty for that rule for this rule for that. And it's all they're not thinking through the differences between the sports. Formula One is a very different sport from football. And we shouldn't have all these crazy rules trying to define how a racing driver performs under heavy braking into a corner and what road he's going to use. And right now, it tends to favor the driver who's on the outside of a corner, generally speaking. And that's crazy as well, because the guy on the inside owns the corner. And that's always been the case and always will be the case in reality. And if he wants to use all the road, let him do it. And yet they don't do it. Oh, I've got to have two side by side. It looks great on TV. That's where it's all. So it's completely gone wrong. So I don't give the stewards a hard time for the inconsistency, really, because I think they have an impossible job. All I would say is that I don't know how many drivers out there lured into thinking that because the rules are there and providing they drive within the rules, it's going to be OK. And they stop then thinking about the difference between trying to pass Charles Leclerc or, say, Lando Norris. Charles always going to give you a hard time. He's always going to shut the gate. He's always going to do something unexpected. Lando Norris isn't. He's very easy to read. You know, but how many drivers these days, younger drivers start thinking that way in terms of the other drivers on the grid? They don't. They just think, oh, the rule book covers all this. Everybody's got to be the same. And it's wrong because they're not. Every driver is different. Every driver is a human being. And Charles Leclerc will always be a tough bastard to pass. Always. Yeah. You know, it'll never go away regardless of what the rule book does. So if Oscar doesn't know that by now and he just wants to finish the race with the car in perfect condition, nobody touching it, then he's never going to learn it. You know, if you see Charles there, like exactly what Kimi Antonelli did. Well, this is Charles Leclerc. I've got to be very careful here. If that was Lewis, you know, he wouldn't have had to have been so circumspect. You've got to. So I'm not answering your question, but you're talking to a guy who, you know, I just don't believe in all these rules that we have for what what is correct and what is incorrect in a corner. I mean, I just wish if you're going to have them, though, Peter, at least you institute them in a way that's true and fair and consistent across. Exactly. But but one does not lead to the other. The reason we can't have the consistency is a reason not to have them. It's no good saying, oh, this is the rule. How are we going to enforce it? You say, well, we've got this enforcement system. What are the rules that would work within the system that we have? Let's not make them too draconian, because there's no way this group of stewards and driver representative are going to be able to make decisions down to that fine detail. Let's not do that. And but we will come up with a general rule, which is that if you T-bone somebody without breaking, you lose your license, you know, stuff like that. Or you break to somebody on the street or you move on the street without looking in your mirrors, you'll be banned for life, whatever. You know, or you hit a safety car. You've been banned for 12 months, all of good stuff that you would easily write into a rule book. But but to start getting down into tiny detail of who's where, who's got oversteer, who hasn't, I mean, it's just pathetic. You can't do that. And there's no there's no group in the world that can correctly police that over a full Formula One season with total consistency. I wish they listened to you, Peter. But again, well, I was just thinking, and the reason people probably people know Windsor, what does he know about it? Well, the point is that I'm speaking absolutely contrary to the way, say, football is governed with all its rules and regulations. And because I'm saying that, it sounds very odd because a lot of people like football. I've I've just put my foot into a football match last night and I was shocked at all the rules and regulations and whistleblowers there were. And I just thought, well, that's why Formula One is the way it is. They're copying the football stuff all the time. And it's it's completely out of control. They need to go the other way. So it all needs to be on safety, not who's right or who's wrong. And there's not enough done. Here you go. Here's a not enough done about about drivers who move over on the straight and cause problems, given the speed differentials we now have in Formula One. Believe me, it's still something that could be a major, major drama in Formula One that could be a major shunt because of this. And there's not enough. There's far more rules around what you can do going into a corner than there are about speed differentials and how you handle them on a straight. It's a very good show. Very bear in mind also that there's no runoff area on a straight either. And you're always going to hit something solid.