Massa wins and get 10 000 Euro fine
Valencia definitely provided a great race on Sunday with many teams still working out the best strategy to follow, we have to acknowledge the driving of Massa to effectively lead from the front and securing the win. Hamilton coming in second place was probably the best that Mclaren could have hoped for.
Raikkonen suffered behind many of his opponents, with a car that was faster than his rivals, but honestly even though his car failed (in spectacular fashion) He never looked like he was ever going to win the race.
Onto the controversy. 1) The knocking over of his fuel man (by Kimi) showed just how desperate Kimi was to make up the place on Kovaleinen. His lights were still red and yet he left the box! This is called panicking and not taking your cues from your team (who have delivered in the past!), do you really deserve the seat in the team? Maybe Ferrari are asking themselves the question.
2) Probably the one that I am most concerned about is the release of Massa, in an unsafe way. This may have caused and accident and is covered by the rules (as I suppose is that sanction). Simply put the Stewards did something rather unprecedented and elected to impose the penalty after the race. We all new that the moment they said this Ferrari would retain their first place (which I will say was deserved).
Rules are in place to give effect, in the main, to safety. Had a collision occurred and one of the drivers been severely injured there would have been a massive inquiry and Ferrari would have ended up i loosing points maybe getting left out of the rest of the season. Heaven knows this would have been worse than “spying” so the sanction one assumes would have been up there.
You must be consistent in applying rules and you must impose penalties that discourage this type of error. With respect to the FIA 10 000 Euro’s while a huge amount of cash is pocket change when compared to 10 work championship points! The precedent though has now been set.
Leave your pit box unsafely and you will get a 10 000 Euro fine, even if they causes a massive crash! You cannot temper rules to a situation you must have the guts to apply the rules regardless of who the team is!
