Flying to the Olympic Village in Sochi, Russia, to be a Formula One steward has a glamorous ring to it. Trekking through Istanbul at midnight, but then looking for my luggage in the Sochi airport at 3 a.m. sure took the shine off it.

I was one of just under 30 FIA officials charged with working the Russian F1 weekend—hopefully without controversy. The FIA started using former F1 drivers to add additional input during rule-infraction decision making. A small pool of us includes: Derek Warwick (past driver with Renault), Danny Sullivan (Tyrrell), Emerson Fittipaldi (two-time world champion, Lotus and McLaren), Nigel Mansell (Williams past world champion), Alan Jones (past Williams world champion), Emanuele Pirro (Benetton), Tom Kristensen (nine-time Le Mans winner), Mika Salo (Ferrari), Martin Donnelly (Lotus) and Allan McNish (Toyota).

I’m not really sure how I became an F1 steward. My last year competing in F1 was with Williams in 1982. I then took an 11-year hiatus from the F1 paddock before returning as an ESPN television analyst.

I stayed connected to F1 and even jumped into the middle of trying to convince Bernie Ecclestone to air F1 on Speedvision. I suppose I have a bit of an in because race director Charlie Whiting was a mechanic on the first Formula One car I ever raced—the Hesketh 308 at Silverstone in 1978. Charlie is very much the boss of all race-weekend activities. He heads up all driver and team-manager meetings. He sticks his head into the steward’s office regularly to make sure things are running smoothly.

There are four stewards at every race. There is the chief steward (in Russia, it was Paul Gutjahr from Switzerland), the international steward (Dr. Enzo Spano from Venezuela), the national steward (Vasily Skryl) and the driver steward (myself). The FIA started using former drivers like myself in 2010.

Kimi Räikkönen and Valtteri Bottas on-track

A fully functional stewards office has to be built at every Grand Prix. An all-encompassing communications network is made by 14 members of the German Riedel Solutions Specialists company. This is the stewards’ connection to the heart of the event.

“You are not the police—you are the judges” was clearly explained to us.

Stewards have an enormous amount of information available to assist their decision making. To help facilitate the process, in addition to the world TV feed everyone sees, we have almost instant-recall access to 44 additional track cameras, 10 extra pit cameras, five additional pit-lane cameras and cameras in every garage during parc fermé conditions.

Additionally, we have access and 10 channels of telemetry for every car and all car radio traffic. We can see everything from speed to steering to g-forces to brake pressures to where a driver shifts gears. There is nowhere for drivers to hide any aspect of their performance. And sometimes there is no way to corroborate their excuses. Next year, the plan is to have live cameras in all garages at all times to monitor almost every aspect of activity.

This is Big Brother on steroids.

Our first official assignment was to attend the team-manager meeting (4 p.m. on Thursday), where the most recent race was discussed. Any new issues get discussed as quickly as possible, as everyone is anxious to get back to their “real” jobs.

Friday on-track was fairly routine, as the only decision was to give Valtteri Bottas a reprimand for crossing the pit-lane entrance line when he entered the pits on his first lap (a reprimand is not a big deal until a driver accumulates three in a season, then a three-place grid penalty is automatically applied). The precedent for the Bottas penalty had already been set when Nico Hülkenberg was given a reprimand for doing the same thing in Austria. I’m sure both Bottas and his boss, Frank Williams, were suitably irritated, but part of the stewards’ job is consistency. That’s where the first insight came into the teams’ behavior toward infractions.

Amazingly, it appears a paddock subculture has developed whereby the teams have taken on an unofficial steward’s role, although I don’t think they realize it. After the Bottas “over the white line” incident, we were informed that another team had insisted he receive a penalty. Teams that receive penalties have become unrepentant watchdogs to make sure every other team committing a similar offense is punished accordingly.

Now, it might be fair to say many think F1 has too many regulations and too many penalties. Ironically, the system the teams sometimes deride is actually one fueled internally by the teams themselves. Every regulation is written in as much detail as possible, so as there is no gray area for misinterpretation.

The rest of our weekend was without significant incident until the race’s last lap. We were prepared for a multiple-angle video playback of turn two after the start (there’s usually an incident there), and when Hülkenberg spun by himself, the resulting chaos was ruled a racing incident.

The later Kimi Räikkönen/Bottas incident, however, immediately sent us into video-replay mode. Now, there are two sides to every story, and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. Räikkönen tried to join his teammate Sebastian Vettel on the podium, but it all went wrong in turn four, with contact sending Bottas into the wall. Räikkönen had damage but was able to finish the race fifth.

In these situations, the stewards are obliged to call each driver and team manager to the stewards’ office in order to review the incident.

Kimi was not happy with the outcome. He officially moved from fifth to eighth in the standings as soon as our last signatures were placed on the official result sheet. When the paperwork was entered into the three-ring binder, it was presented to Charlie, who officially closed out the weekend by providing all F1 race stewards and FIA president Jean Todt with an email copy of the weekend’s decisions.

By the time the lights were turned off in Russia, the next stewards’ office in Austin, Texas, was already in the construction stages, where the same procedures start

all over again.

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