The FIA says its new officials department will lead to a “more professional” governing body after Formula 1 teams and drivers called for improved officiating.
Last September, the governing body announced its plans to introduce the department to professionalise officiating and help train up-and-coming officials across all of its motor-racing categories.
Matteo Perini, who was appointed Sport Officials Manager at the FIA, will lead the department and help to provide training for the next generation of officials and ensure there is a bigger talent pool for the federation to work with.
The FIA recognises that it doesn’t have as many training race stewards, race directors and other officials as it would like to have.
Calls for full-time stewards in F1 were sparked after several incidents over the past couple of years, including criticism from Red Bull and McLaren over the multiple clashes involving Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis plans to predominantly rely less on volunteers and have more scope to analyse matters away from race weekends.
“It’s probably getting a bit unfair to just rely on people to do it out of their good heart, and that’s what we have now,” Tombazis told Motorsport.com.
“We want to go to a more professional body in the future.
“That’s not to exclude volunteers, but it’s to have a body that can spend the Monday morning after a race analysing every single decision, making sure it was reached correctly, seeing what could be improved, etc.
“That will be combined with a more powerful remote centre, where more monitoring will take place for [a] range of offences, and all of that will be linked together.
“That’s the general target.”
FIA hopes to have ‘wider pool’ of stewards to select from
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem also caught a lot of heat last season for firing long-time steward Tim Mayer, F1 race director Niels Wittich and respected Singaporean official Janette Tan.
The short notice of the sackings meant stand-in race director, Rui Marques, had to handle a busy schedule at the Qatar and Abu Dhabi Grand Prixs – taking charge of the F1 and Formula 2 races.
This unfortunate scenario is unlikely to happen again according to Tombazis as the FIA expects to have more officials on hand in the future.
“Ultimately, [the officials department] will bring up a wider pool of people available to do it, and will provide that they will have more time to spend on analysing everything and so on,” Tombazis added.
“Just to be clear, that’s without taking anything away from the group we have now, which is very experienced and has been serving for 20 years.”
Despite the introduction of a new department, Tombazis clarified that the FIA does have a steward and race director programme in place already.
“There’s already a high-performance steward programme and race director programme, which has been going on for a couple of years,” he explained.
“And there have been around 30 people who’ve been selected from national sporting authorities and sponsored by certain people and helped through the program from different regions.
“These people move onto the ladder and ultimately could end up in Formula 1 or rallying or Formula E in the future.
“So, I think that is going on reasonably okay for a number of years.
“That said, there’s also the feeling that it must step even further. It must be a proper department that leads these matters.”
Tombazis feels F1 stewards’ decision-making is ‘pretty consistent’
The 56-year-old went on to express how he thinks the FIA is harshly treated and there has been a lot of consistency with the stewarding despite widespread criticism from the F1 paddock.
“We feel that in Formula 1 we get quite a lot of comments about the consistency of stewards,” Tombazis said.
“I would hasten to add that analysis was also done even by teams, that has indicated that the stewards are actually pretty consistent.
“However, they are people who definitely have a huge level of expertise, but we don’t have as many as we would like available or trained up.”
This week, Ben Sulayem introduced an updated version of its sporting code with guidelines for infractions committed under Article 12 – particularly concerning misconduct in his attempt to clamp down on swearing and other sporting code violations.
Penalty guidelines could result in F1 drivers collecting fines of up to 120,000 euros as well as championship points deductions and even suspensions.
The Grand Prix Drivers Association (GPDA) is believed to be upset with the actions of the FIA president but has not yet given its response.
READ MORE: F1 drivers at risk of fines and points deductions for swearing under new FIA guidelines
