Stewards told to be lenient

In a 'secret' meeting over the winter, it was agreed that stewards should impose less penalties in 2013 in order to spice up the action.

That is the claim on Tuesday of Germany's Auto Motor und Sport, reporting that the meeting with FIA president Jean Todt was attended by drivers including world champion Sebastian Vettel, team managers, Charlie Whiting and stewards.

"Has it been noticed?" wrote correspondent Michael Schmidt. "The drivers are being punished much less."

He said the outcome of the pre-season meeting was that stewards should be more lenient when it comes to applying penalties for on-track scraps, in order to entice the drivers to take more risks in the heat of exciting wheel-to-wheel battles.

Schmidt said it is undeniable that there have been "surprisingly few" drive through and grid penalties so far in 2013 as the result of obvious incidents.

"It has made the racing better," he wrote.

"You can feel that the drivers have more confidence. Rarely have we seen as much die-hard, wheel-to-wheel battles as we saw in Bahrain," added Schmidt.

Source; motorsport.com

I think, on balance, I'm happy with that.

There have been some ridiculous penalties handed out over the last few seasons.

That said, I wonder if there will be any change to their stance on off-track overtaking. The general tendency seemed to be to punish trivial mistakes / transgressions while ignoring more serious ones.

dyrewolfe wrote:I think, on balance, I'm happy with that.

There have been some ridiculous penalties handed out over the last few seasons.

That said, I wonder if there will be any change to their stance on off-track overtaking. The general tendency seemed to be to punish trivial mistakes / transgressions while ignoring more serious ones.

Agreed, said it all really.

In recent years, it has been ridiculous... that's not to say that some occasions a punishment was justified, but most of the time it was a surprise that a penalty got handed out... which restricted the racing as drivers were scared of being penalised.

Does this mean Codemasters will sort out their rediculous penalties on their F1 game for so much as nudging another car?

SteveG wrote:Does this mean Codemasters will sort out their rediculous penalties on their F1 game for so much as nudging another car?

i bl00dy hope so. i fell victim to this over the weekend

Meh.

I got black-flagged for driving the wrong way around the circuit once (Suzuka, I think). There was just something deeply satisfying about ramming other cars head-on, watching bits fly off left, right and centre.

Think I may be playing the wrong game...

It's great fun doing that it's how i came up with my idea to improve F1 by going around the wrong way so can alternate of a seasonly basis

You boys xbox or Ps3?

I've got F1 2012 for the PC...bit behind the times. I don't think there's a PC version for this season.

That's because it doesn't come out until September

PS3 here. We need to get a league set up.

id whoop all your asses although im on xbox

If your interested in a racing league can show you a place where they have a few for ps3

go ahead

PS3 and a Logitech G27 wheel with paddle gears for me
Great stuff.

Pros - car handling and force feed back is better than 2011 where the backend was too loose
cons - fuel and tyre scaling was removed in 2012
- not enough feedback from engineer - especially on fuel which can't monitor when using cockpit view

There was a thread started about this game somewhere.

I use the LOgitech driving force wheel. Which is great and is less than £100. (or was).

I feel 2012 is let down by the weather dynamics, which dont work correctly. e.g. soaking wet track and AI cars can stay out on slicks. Yet if you switch to inters or wets, you cant stay on the track! :-/

Also, too much of a gap between difficulty levels.

Hopefully this will be sorted in 2013.