{"id":25516,"date":"2024-10-21T09:05:30","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T13:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=25516"},"modified":"2024-10-21T09:13:01","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T13:13:01","slug":"toto-wolff-points-towards-biased-decision-making-from-stewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/10\/21\/toto-wolff-points-towards-biased-decision-making-from-stewards\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff points towards &#8220;biased decision-making&#8221; from stewards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes struggled immensely for pace at the US GP, with their latest upgrades failing to deliver. Not long after <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/10\/18\/hamilton-responds-to-red-bull-device-theyve-done-a-better-job\/\" target=\"_self\">Hamilton<\/a> spun out in the early stages of Sunday&#8217;s race, George Russell receiving a penalty for &#8216;forcing another driver off track&#8217;. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/08\/26\/toto-wolff-pushes-for-williams-to-sign-mick-schumacher\/\" target=\"_self\">Toto Wolff<\/a>, the stewards showed signs of bias in their penalty decisions.<\/p>\n<h2>Wolff unhappy with the FIA after controversial COTA penalties<\/h2>\n<p>The US GP was another difficult race for Mercedes, who failed to build upon their encouraging pace in Sprint qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>After fighting at the very front on Friday, the W15 went backwards as the weekend progressed. However, there was another issue that dominated the conversation at the Texan circuit.<\/p>\n<p>Several penalties were awarded throughout the race for forcing other drivers off track. The most controversial of these sanctions was awarded to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/10\/20\/lando-norris-its-not-the-case-mclaren-have-been-fastest-in-2024\/\" target=\"_self\">Lando Norris<\/a> after overtaking <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/10\/17\/verstappen-oscar-piastri-doesnt-deserve-to-be-number-2-driver\/\" target=\"_self\">Max Verstappen<\/a> for 3rd place.<\/p>\n<p>As both drivers compete for the Championship, this duel has understandably become a huge talking points.<\/p>\n<h4>Suggestions of &#8220;biased decision-making&#8221;<\/h4>\n<p>Toto Wolff is obviously no stranger to being on the receiving end of penalties from the stewards. Speaking to George Russell in the cool-down lap, the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/10\/11\/f1-news-mercedes-to-bring-significant-updates-to-us-gp\/\" target=\"_self\">Mercedes<\/a> team principal answered Russell&#8217;s question about Verstappen&#8217;s first lap move on Norris:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;He [Verstappen] didn&#8217;t get a penalty. And at the end, Lando got a penalty for being forced off and overtaking on the outside. I guess it is a bit biased decision-making.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"84aEFw1BTVdOSE_hPRIajQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2178506168\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'84aEFw1BTVdOSE_hPRIajQ',sig:'GNsYwekanspZj5DaEBhYh_A70B6A4w2P7dK3njSnSpM=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2178506168',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Wolff later gave his thoughts on the FIA&#8217;s decisions in a post-race interview:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;It is inconsistent,&#8221; he told Sky Sports. &#8220;With Valtteri [who Russell was penalised for overtaking], it wasn&#8217;t even a race.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;We saw a few of those incidents [in the Sprint] that were exactly the same and weren&#8217;t penalised when racing for positions, real positions actually. <\/em><em>So receiving that penalty is completely odd and bizarre.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I think we know why, but I can&#8217;t say that on television.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Inevitably, incidents such as these are bound to dominate F1 news headlines. This is especially true in the context of Verstappen and Norris fighting for this year&#8217;s title.<\/p>\n<p>The penalties awarded at Sunday&#8217;s US GP were, generally speaking, quite unusual. It is not typical that drivers are given time penalties so frequently when making overtakes &#8211; particularly in the absence of contact.<\/p>\n<p>Over the coming days, drivers and teams will look for clarity on the rules of engagement in wheel-to-wheel duels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes struggled immensely for pace at the US GP, with their latest upgrades failing to deliver. Not long after Hamilton spun out in the early stages of Sunday&#8217;s race, George Russell receiving a penalty for &#8216;forcing another driver off track&#8217;. According to Toto Wolff, the stewards showed signs of bias in their penalty decisions. Wolff [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":25518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2220,68,465,121,825],"class_list":["post-25516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2024-formula-1-season","tag-f1","tag-f1-news","tag-mercedes","tag-toto-wolff"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}