{"id":899145,"date":"2026-09-20T17:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899145\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T17:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T17:48:10","slug":"ex-ferrari-f1-guru-proposes-introduction-of-augmented-steward-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899145\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Ferrari F1 guru proposes introduction of ‘augmented steward group’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Ferrari Formula 1<\/a> engineer Rob Smedley suggested an \u2018augmented steward group\u2019 to speed up decisions during F1 Grands Prix.<\/p>\n

F1 has recently had its fair share of criticism over \u2018inconsistent\u2019 stewarding by teams, drivers, and fans alike. From Lewis Hamilton\u2019s comments about his penalties during the Hungarian GP<\/a> to the controversy over Pierre Gasly\u2019s reinstated Monaco GP podium, which was later taken again, the decisions have drawn harsh criticism. <\/p>\n

Former Ferrari and Williams engineer Rob Smedley argued that F1 should add an \u2018augmented steward group\u2019 to speed up decisions during races. He also suggested saving post-race investigations for more \u2018complex\u2019 incidents, while making smaller decisions in-race.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou watch some of these \u2018[Incident] will be investigated after the race\u2019 [messages], and you just think this is fairly obvious,\u201d Smedley said on the High Performance Racing podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, the reason why they do this, if you go behind the scenes, is because all the stewards are super busy with the race, right? You can\u2019t stop the race and say, \u2018Let the stewards decide.\u2019 But there could be an augmented steward group that is able to process these much faster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s after the race, you should still have the possibility to be investigated after the race, but only for really complex stuff. It should just get processed through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LandoStewarding decisions in F1 have been met with criticism<\/p>\n

\u2018Right the wrong\u2019 and decisions post race<\/p>\n

Smedley\u2019s argument is that the FIA stewards cannot currently process every incident as it happens during races because they lack the capacity. If they introduced a dedicated group of stewards to process in-race incidents, there would be less need to investigate smaller incidents after the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get rid of it altogether, just as much as you can\u2019t get rid of the result being provisional straight after the race to do exactly what Otmar [Szafnauer] said, which is to right the wrong that could have happened if there\u2019s been a breach of regulation and it hasn\u2019t been noticed. Then you\u2019ve got to put that right after the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been tons of those, right? Too much plank wear, rear wings at the wrong height, slot gap too open, too closed, whatever it is, underweight, all of those things. You\u2019ve got to take into account,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a technical sport, and because of that, you can only arbitrate on the technicalities of the sport after the race because you\u2019ve got to measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this were to be introduced, it might also reduce the amount of inconsistency in the decisions.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Max Verstappen reveals he \u2018seriously considered\u2019 quitting F1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ferrari Formula 1 engineer Rob Smedley suggested an \u2018augmented steward group\u2019 to speed up decisions during F1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,826,813,816,467756,85],"class_list":["post-899145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-smedley","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}