The FIA, governing body for motorsports, appoint stewards at every race around the calendar, their job being to make impartial decisions of events that occur on the grid and throughout the race. Essentially, they play the role of 'racing Gods'. Their decision this weekend cost Sebastian Vettel the race win with a highly controversial 5 second penalty. But was this fair?
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve always throws up one hell of a race, this years was no different, with Vettel's first pole this season and a shuffling of Grid positions further back, round seven looked set to be a thriller of a race. Every driver was driving to the limit, which was evident from team radio messages being distorted due to the lack of breath.
As such, it was only a matter of time before a driver pushed too far, as was the case for Sebastian Vettel. After being chased down lap after lap by Hamilton, Vettel pushed just a fraction too far and ended up taking the grassier route back to the track. Unfortunately, due to dirty tyres Vettel lacked complete control of his SF90 and therefore didn't manage to leave a sufficient enough gap between him and the wall, a cars width, which forced Lewis to lift off and could therefore be classed as unsafe.
However, this incident is not uncommon in Formula 1 and was even done by the five time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, himself in Monaco in 2016 against Daniel Ricciardo. Yet, in this instance, Hamilton was not penalised... So what determines a penalty, especially when the sport is thriving for such close hard racing?
Vettel's penalty seemed extremely harsh and not only robbed Ferrari and Sebastian of the race win, but it also robbed the fans of pure motor racing, proper wheel to wheel racing. So what is to be done?
Ferrari already intend to appeal against Vettel's penalty which will launch an investigation into the stewarding and their decision. Mattia Binotto began his interviews with, "We won today." Which clearly shows Ferrari's mentality and beliefs on the whole ordeal.
Sebastian was also far from shy with his feelings, the German was seen switching the number 1 and number 2 boards in Parc Ferme after the race finished with Lewis' car positioned in second place, as a clear indication of his feelings, which resulted in a huge applause from the crowds. Adding to this, in the post race press conference Sebastian commented on the issue stating, "for me what happened on track was just part of racing... Nowadays we all sound a bit like lawyers, with our radio. We have an official language but it's wrong. But this is not the sport I fell in love with." He continued to say, "We (Hamilton) share great respect, we've both achieved so much in this sport. But for me that was racing."
So has Canada's controversy sparked up bigger issues than expected? Are fans becoming disillusioned and uninterested with these harsher penalties? Should we just leave them to race on track or is politics a necessity?
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