Former engineer urges F1 to introduce "augmented" stewarding group to speed up decisions

Former Ferrari and Williams race engineer Rob Smedley has proposed that Formula 1 introduce an "augmented" stewarding group to accelerate in-race decisions and prevent straightforward incidents from dragging on beyond the chequered flag.

During an appearance on the High Performance Racing podcast alongside broadcaster Jake Humphrey and former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer, Smedley explained that the current FIA stewards simply lack the bandwidth to process every clash live without pausing the race.

"You watch some of these '[Incident] will be investigated after the race' [messages], and you just think this is fairly obvious," Smedley explained.

"Now, 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't stop the race and say, 'Let the stewards decide.' But there could be an augmented steward group that is able to process these much faster.

"When it's 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. 

Race start

Photo by: Eric Le Galliot

"You can get rid of it altogether, just as much as you can't get rid of the result being provisional straight after the race to do exactly what Otmar said, which is to right the wrong that could have happened if there's been a breach of regulation and it hasn't been noticed. Then you've got to put that right after the race."

He added: "There's 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've got to take into account.

"It is a technical sport, and because of that, you can only arbitrate on the technicalities of the sport after the race because you've got to measure."