Sadness

I didn’t see the race. Reviewing over and over again the “accident”, the news is that I didn’t see any manoeuvre to be investigated. Vettel, in a condition of poor control, had simply defended his position with a soft manoeuvre. No concrete risk of any kind. You can make a technical analysis and say that this is another mistake of Sebastian who, compared to Hamilton, doesn’t emerge properly as the winner…

This time, however, the error hadn’t caused him the loss of the position, like some other times in the past, in favour of Hamilton, to whom it had never happened otherwise, and he had won the race undoubtedly. A crystal-clear win as a result of a finally very good Ferrari week-end. That in a normal world but the one of today unfortunately is not.

The penalization inflicted to Vettel cries out for vengeance, especially in absence of fight for the championship already awarded to Mercedes after a number of record-breaking doubles, and is a watershed, all the more because it was imposed in the home of Gilles.

After this episode, the Formula 1 of greats is definitively dead and buried. It’s no longer the same sport – now only the name remains. In these times it’s no longer permitted to court a woman without risking to be arrested, it’s no longer permitted to have the presence of grid girls on Formula 1 tracks (as if this could help to improve the condition of woman), it’s no longer permitted to express your opinion if it’s not in line with the mainstream without risking the lynching, it’s no longer permitted to use freely the chosen terminology because it offends minorities, it’s no longer permitted to use sports cars on roads given the speed limits which have reached totally ridiculous levels and, from now on, it’s no longer permitted to race cars not even on a Formula 1 track.

Yes, because the Formula 1 of conga lines, eternal safety cars, overtakings at the pits, tires that degrade, Halo, simulators without tests, mobile wings, homologated and soulless circuits, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn cars it’s not Formula 1 anymore and it’s no longer even a sport because there’s no competition, by now forbidden.

In the Pirro-Formula 1 on track overtakings, except maybe with trails on the straight, are officially banned. Because a driver is not allowed to defend the position i.e. the decision about who has to win is not up to him anymore but to others on his behalf.

In Formula 1 of the remote controls and of the very few champions (Hamilton and Verstappen, full stop) from today even the winner is decided on paper. So much for those who, for so many years, are dead on track for overtaking or for a corner one tenth faster and that made legend the sport which is now just to make money for who runs it.

And then there are endless meetings of lawmakers who pretend to make interest go back by introducing who knows what when it would be enough for a 16 year-old boy to understand what should be done to make our beloved F1 go back.

Club President
Valerio Palmigiano

Opinions of others

“Very very embarrassing. No joy in watching this race, two champions driving brilliantly, will end in a false result.” “What’s Seb supposed to do? Crazy, the car stepped out. At that point he was a passenger.” Nigel Mansell

“I think the function of the stewards is to penalize flagrantly unsafe moves not honest mistakes as result of hard racing. What happened at Canada GP is not acceptable at this level of our great sport.” Mario Andretti

“Any of the stewards ever raced at the front in F1? Didn’t watch the race... have now seen the “incident”. Mental penalty.” Mark Webber

“It’s crazy you can’t race anymore... racing gone soft... wrong, wrong, wrong.” Johnny Herbert

“My observation on Vettel re-joining: his helmet moved to look into mirror only after steering correction! That he slid that far is laws of physics. No space for Lewis is name of game with street tracks. What happened to “let them race”? Was it sketchy? Yes! A penalty? Not in my view.” Alex Wurz

"For me, it's a racing incident. You can't just stop the car and stay off the circuit." Jenson Button

“F1, that is the worst decision you have ever made.” Casey Stoner

"Good thing I also had a lot of testimonies of solidarity by drivers even of Formula 1 and people of races. It hurts, however, that great ex-drivers like Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell said what they said. The world has changed, races have changed. A thousand battles for security have been made and race behaviour is not excluded from this, actually. As a fan and enthusiast of races and Ferrari in particular way I’m sorry that the race ended like this. As you can understand, it’s not easy to make decisions like these but the sporting integrity must be above everything else.” Emanuele Pirro

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