What was your initial reaction we you received the call about the role of Chairman of Stewards?
Pleasantly surprised. Very surprised actually. I have been working as a steward with the FIA for a few years now. I’m on the FIA World Touring Car Championship Commission and also work as a driver advisor for two races a year. This year I was at the Salzburg Ring and Moscow.
And you’ll be on hand in Bueno Aires as well.
Bueno Aires, London and perhaps Berlin.
Tell us a little bit about the role. Does it differ much from your ‘traditional’ motor sport event?
It doesn’t really. Like any panel you have a chairman of stewards. My normal role in Australia is that of a Race Director; which is more of an operational role as opposed to a judicial role.
In Beijing we had a case of quite a few drivers exceeding their energy allocation. Even the teams themselves claimed they were confused as to how that occurred or how to even combat the situation. How involved do you get in those technical matters?
Well the way we would be involved, is by a report from the Formula E Technical Delegate and we’d respond to that. If regulations have been broken we have to apply penalties. That penalty can be anything from a reprimand up to exclusion from the event or exclusion from future events.
Does driver onus play a part of that given the technology is in its infancy stage?
It is. Ultimately the entrant of the team is responsible for any technical issues.
When it’s a driving issue of course the
driver owns the responsibility. But it’s the driver that works for the competitor and it’s the competitor that enters the event.
Sausage kerbs have been a feature of a number of incidents. Most notably Nick Heidfeld’s in Beijing, but Bruno Senna and Matthew Brabham have had their races effectively ended with broken suspension. Has there been much talk about a possible alternative?
There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it, but your have to have these deterrents in place to keep the drivers on the track. The positive thing about a street circuit is that generally the walls are the limiting factor. Say at turn 1 at Putrajaya, which is a right-left chicane; there are opportunities to overuse or even shorten the track. Obviously you have to enforce penalties, if someone’s gaining an advantage from that.
Could cones be an alternative?
You wouldn’t put a cone there, because the first thing that would happen is that someone would hit it and it would move across the track. I think the traditional ways of appropriately designed kerbs work all over the world. The issues you have coming to a circuit for the first time is you place kerbs where you think they’ll be used; where corners tighten and there’s an advantage to be gained. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
Do you get much of a chance to inspect the track before the event?
Well the FIA appoints a track inspector, which is Carlos Bertram. That’s Carlos’s job really along with the Race Director Pierre Delettre. Our role is more traditional if you look at in terms of a Magistrate. That’s more our role. Ultimately there are other experts and they need to own that responsibility.
Do they ever seek advice?
Sometimes yes.
This weekend in Putrajaya there’s a very quick turnaround between qualifying and the race which saw quite a bit of overheating of batteries. Karun Chandhok was quite vocal about the teams needing more time to prepare.
This issue here with time of course is that you have to start the race early, which makes sense. You saw last night the storm we had in the afternoon, so we needed to move the race time ahead to try and avoid that. That’s just one of the challenges.