I do not know about you but I am getting heartily sick of the stewards ruining perfectly good races. The cry is for some consistency in their decisions but this misses the obvious point, so clearly demonstrated by Bourdais' penalty for Massa driving into him in the Fuji GP. There is consistency but only in this: the FIA are determined to penalize anyone who gets in the way of Ferrari winning their worthless championship yet again.
How else can one explain the series of ludicrous penalties handed out this season to keep Ferrari in the hunt? The bias is so blatant that they do not even attempt to justify it anymore. I will not argue over Bourdais' penalty - the incident was so clearly Massa's fault that it is not worth debating.
Instead, I want to look at the first corner incident since there is so much utter nonsense being bandied about regarding Hamilton's admitted error. Certainly, it was an error, an instance of leaving his braking too late, but to say that he forced Raikkonen off the track (for which, apparently, the penalty was given) is to ignore the video evidence available on Keith Collantine's F1 Fanatic blog.
As I did for the controversial Bus Stop incident at Spa between Hamilton and Raikkonen, I have taken screen shots at relevant points from the video. Hopefully this will cut down on silly arguments about who was ahead at what stage and at what point contact, if any, was made.
Immediately after the start, Raikkonen has taken the lead with Hamilton tucked in behind him. Kovalainen is to their right (our left), having made a start as good as Kimi's. No argument so far, I think.
A little further on and Raikkonen is moving to the outside, just as he did in Spa when Hamilton took the lead. Lewis pops out from behind him, forcing Kovalainen to move right as well; there was no danger of them touching, however, and Heikki has plenty of room. Interestingly, Hamilton is now going faster than Raikkonen, perhaps having picked up enough of a tow while tucked in behind.
They enter the braking zone wheel to wheel, except that Hamilton is now going considerably faster than Kimi. It is at this point that contact may have occurred, if there was any - from here on they are too far apart to touch each other. On the video, there does appear to be a slight bang of wheel to wheel, no more than we are accustomed to seeing in such close racing. It is certainly not enough to "force Kimi off the track" at any rate, even if we decide arbitrarily that Hamilton was at fault.
Hamilton has misjudged his braking distance and speed and he enters the corner with tires smoking as he tries to slow sufficiently. Raikkonen is now slightly behind and, since Lewis has the inside line, he has no option but to go for the wide line through the corner. Unlike Massa, he knows that, when a car is inside you for the corner, you cannot just turn into it and have it magically disappear.
Hamilton has been unable to brake sufficiently for the corner and is now heading for the run off area. Ideally, Kimi would like to turn in now to zip past Lewis while the Brit goes farming; but there is the small problem of Kovalainen following immediately behind Hamilton and he now forces Kimi to the outside of the track. Lewis is in no position to force anyone anywhere - he is ahead but about to sample the run off area.
Kovalainen has also outbraked himself and is on a course for the run off. There may have been contact between him and Kimi at this point but only here can Kimi claim to have been forced off the track. Had cars not been inside him, he would have been able to turn in - but that is true of almost every overtaking maneuver in F1. Give up the inside line and, in nine cases out of ten, you have lost the corner.
We know all the arguments about first corner incidents not being penalized because they are inevitable with so many cars trying to grab an advantage at the start. That is far too flimsy a point for the FIA to consider, however. Precedent counts for nothing in their world, as so ably shown at McLaren's appeal against the Spa penalty.
But the video shows that it was not Hamilton who forced Raikkonen off the circuit; he was too far ahead by that stage to have any influence on the Finn's line through the corner. It was Kovalainen who prevented Kimi from taking the outside line and, if a penalty had to be doled out at all, Heikki should have been the recipient.
My conclusion has to be that the stewards picked on Hamilton because he is the one endangering a Ferrari championship this year. One must presume that they have the video evidence and used it to come to their decision; but I must also presume that they were not interested in Kovalainen's role in the incident. The agenda was to find a way to handicap Hamilton.
At Monza, it was reported that all the drivers felt that Hamilton's penalty at Spa was fair, if a bit harsh. Now that Bourdais has been so unjustly penalized for daring to race with a Ferrari, perhaps they might think again and wonder when their turn will come. Not that it matters, of course. It has long been apparent that this year's championship is little more than a farce.