Steiner says race control needs 'to do better' in 2023

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Haas F1 Team principal Guenther Steiner says he wants to see better decisions being made by Formula 1 race control in 2023, after what he considers a number of 'nonsense' calls that affected his team's campaign last year.

Michael Masi was replaced as race director before the start of last season as a result of the controversial title-deciding race of the 2021 Abu Dhabi finale. Race control operations were also completely revamped and restructured.

But Steiner says that there were still too many mistakes taking place last year, and that more must be done to make things fairer during Grand Prix weekends.

Read also: Tombazis acknowledges FIA 'overreacted' with black-and-orange flag

"There is still a lot of work to be done in my opinion," Steiner told Motorsport.com. "It's not like everything is sorted now. I think in race control - there is a lot of margin to do better.

"We saw in the last races there were some decisions taken which I think need to be addressed," he added.

Steiner was still smarting from the way that race control showed Kevin Magnussen black-and-orange flags to Kevin Magnussen on several occasions during 2022, forcing the Dane to pit for repairs for relatively minor damage.

Other drivers seemed not to be affected in the same way, and the FIA has since acknowledged that race control had 'overreacted' to an issue involving Yuki Tsunoda early in season in Baku.

Steiner said that the team had "got affected badly" by race control's tougher approach, citing black-and-orange flags as "complete nonsense".

"We got penalised and then they changed the rules," Steiner complained. "Nobody else ever got penalised, and the rule was changed."

The team made a point by protesting the result of the United States Grand Prix, in which Fernando Alonso was allowed to continue despite damage to his Alpine. The FIA subsequently revised its approach as a result.

"It was on principle," Steiner explained about the protest. "Your system is flawed because the rules are not the same for everybody, and I think how it was handled from race control was not good."

The FIA has continued to make changes to race control, dropping the rotation of two race directors and overhauling the F1 management structure with Steve Nielsen appointed in the new role of sporing director.

Niels Wittich will now be the main race director to ensure consistency in 2023, although FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has suggested that multiple officials will be sharing the role over the course of the 23 races.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.