'Stewards - take the time to make your decisions, just don’t get them wrong'

There have been some pretty long waits for stewards’ decisions that I can recall. Sebastian Vettel getting disqualified from qualifying long after midnight in Abu Dhabi in 2012 springs to mind, or when the stewards were trying to decide whether Max Verstappen should be penalised for his overtaking manoeuvre on Charles Leclerc in Austria in 2019.

In fact, Austria has been the scene of quite a few waits, including the late call to drop Lewis Hamilton three places on the grid last year for failing to respect a single waved yellow flag in qualifying, after the 360-degree onboard camera that had emerged overnight showed the flag was visible, even if Hamilton had not seen it himself.

That one came so late that I was looking down on the grid out of the media centre window, and could see the Mercedes mechanics – who had provisionally positioned themselves in second place before the pit lane opened – picking up their equipment and walking down to P5, informing all the other car crews to shift up one.

But recently, the waits seem to have become even longer. When Hamilton’s car failed scrutineering in Brazil, hours of waiting turned into an overnight delay, with Verstappen summoned the following morning as well. It wasn’t until after FP2 that the decision was finally handed down, close to 24 hours later.

Then there was the right to review request from Mercedes into the battle between Verstappen and Hamilton, that was submitted on Tuesday afternoon, heard on Thursday and once again featured a call to wait overnight before announcing the outcome.

And it was that example that started tongues wagging about whether there could be something else that is being considered whenever there is an investigation at the moment.

In the world of Netflix coverage and booming popularity in Formula 1 that is fuelled by off-track drama, when the stewards conveniently release a decision midway through the 30-minute slot that features both Toto Wolff and Christian Horner together in an FIA press conference, cynicism abounds.

“It could be that the FIA decided it was more entertaining to wait, or there could be a more mundane answer”

The press conference was being taken live by Sky Sports – because it’s now seen as a TV show – and it couldn’t have been planned much better to have the warring team principals deliver opposing views for 20 minutes before being able to get their live reaction to the verdict.

Accusations that decisions are being drawn out for dramatic purposes only grew when the summons for Verstappen failing to respect double waved yellows was published. The document appeared at 20:37 local time, following a qualifying session that had ended just over two and a half hours earlier. And instead of a quick summons, it was scheduled for 13:00 the following day.