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1980 Formula 1 world champion Alan Jones admits he is currently "disillusioned" with the sport, which is steering him away from stewarding duties.
Jones hasn't been a steward at a race since 2018, with the decisions and investigations of the stewards being one of the bigger talking points this season.
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Jones admits he "wholeheartedly disagrees" with the direction the sport is taking and some of the decisions the stewards make.
“At the end of the day I’m a little bit, shall we say, disillusioned with Formula 1 at the moment to the extent where I’m seriously thinking of relinquishing my stewardship,” Jones told Speedcafe.com.
“I wholeheartedly disagree with a lot of the ways or the directions that they’re going, and obviously you can’t shit-can them or criticise them if you’re an employee of them, so if I’m an FIA steward, I can hardly turn around and get stuck into them.
“They hand out a book, which is the steward’s book and page five, paragraph three, line four says that if the battery lead falls off, this is the penalty that will be handed out,” he demonstrated.
“The steward should be there to have a certain amount of discretion, and at the end of the day, why have an ex-driver in the steward’s room if you can’t say to them, ‘No, I honestly believe that was a racing accident’, or whatever?
“I don’t think that it should all be down to a manual.”
Jones is also critical of the way drivers are penalised when they have mechanical faults, believing the team should be punished, rather than the driver.
"If you have a mechanical problem, I think the manufacturer should be the one that suffers and is penalised,” Jones stated.
“Don’t forget they derive a lot of their money from the share of the TV stake, and what percentage of that share is dependent on how many points they’ve got in the championship.
“So if they’ve got points taken away from them for infringing the silly mechanical rules, well so be it. They’re the ones who suffer, not the driver, and more importantly, not the spectator who’s paid to go and see the race.”
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calle.itw
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Hm, if I recall correctly, he won't be a steward I'll miss per se. but I definitely agree on his stance on mechanical issues. There were a whole bunch of mindblowing regulations set in place during the late-Ecclestone era, like that token token-system, the stupidly low amount of PU allocations or... [Read more]