Champions back former drivers as stewards

Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso back the idea of recruiting former drivers to help with stewarding at F1 races.

The Ferrari driver and world champion Kimi Raikkonen has backed the call for former drivers to help with stewarding in the sport.

SHANGHAI // Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso, who have won the last three world titles between them, have backed the idea of recruiting former drivers to help with stewarding at Formula One races. A raft of penalties handed out at the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend were the latest in a string of decisions which have led to calls for an overhaul of the officiating in the sport. The Renault driver Alonso and Raikkonen of the Ferrari team, speaking at a news conference on Thursday before this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, said the most important improvement would be consistent punishments for the same infringements.

"I think it's a good idea to have an ex-driver to help them (the stewards) because sometimes the decisions they make, it's difficult to know from the outside if you have never driven a Formula One car," said the Spaniard Alonso, the 2005 and 2006 world champion. "What would help for the drivers would be a consistency in the penalties ? if one time you do something and you get penalised, it is not possible that the next time you do the same thing you get no penalty.

"We ask for a little bit more consistency with the penalties even if they are very harsh or not." The world champion Raikkonen said that whatever the stewarding system, you could never rid the sport of debate over whether overtaking moves justified punishment or not. "There are always many different views of the same incidents so there is always going to be talk about penalties," the Finn said. "It would make everybody happy if every time you got the same decision. Maybe if you had an old driver, they would have some respect so maybe people wouldn't complain so much."

Championship rivals Lewis Hamilton of McLaren and the Ferrari driver Felipe Massa were both handed drive-through penalties at Fuji last weekend. Toro Rosso's French driver Sebastien Bourdais collected a post-race 25 second penalty that demoted him from sixth to 10th. The idea of former drivers playing a role has been raised before and is likely to get short shrift from the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA).

The FIA President Max Mosley described the idea last month as "pretty good rubbish". "You'd be pushed to find a driver who hadn't got a really big connection with one or more teams," he said. "But apart from that, I think they are the last people who would be suitable. "What you need are calm, independent judges who look at all the facts and then take a decision. You don't need any specialist knowledge, you just need to know the rules."

*Reuters