Brundle claims ‘one or two’ drivers considered walking out of FIA standards summit in Qatar
The annual drivers’ standards summit with the FIA landed in Qatar — and not everyone was thrilled to be there. Martin Brundle says “one or two” drivers considered walking out of the room, even as Oscar Piastri and George Russell described the meeting as “very productive.”
All 20 drivers met the stewards for the customary Driving Standards Review, a session that’s meant to keep the grey areas of racing, well, less grey. It hasn’t felt that way lately. The room inevitably circled back to recent flashpoints, including Oscar Piastri’s 10-second penalty from Brazil — a call GPDA director Carlos Sainz labelled “unacceptable” — and the broader sense that some decisions have drifted too far from racing intuition.
The FIA, for its part, tried to steady the ship. In a post-meeting note, it stressed the Driving Standards Guidelines are “a living document,” and, crucially, “guidelines, not regulations.” The governing body also pointed to data from the past three seasons that it says shows greater consistency in stewarding when the guidelines are used, aided by team-supplied analysis.
Brundle, though, sensed the divide. “I spoke to one or two people who thought about walking out of that meeting,” the Sky F1 commentator said. “Weren’t happy about it. Just thought it was a bit of a waste of time.”
He wasn’t loading a flamethrower, more reminding everyone what officiating in F1 really is: part science, part art, endlessly subjective. “There always will be room for improvement with refereeing,” Brundle said. “In the end, it’s subjective. It’s a matter of opinion on a lot of these things. I think the stewards do, fundamentally, a good job in a very challenging and pressurised situation where they’ve got to make a decision in the next few laps, and certainly before the end of the Grand Prix, so fans, ideally, can go home knowing what the result is.”
And when it’s technical, like McLaren’s Las Vegas issue, you can’t exactly crawl under a car mid-race. That, too, was part of the subtext: some things can’t be adjudicated in real time; others demand feel.
Not everyone left bristling. Piastri was upbeat. “I think it was very productive,” the McLaren driver said. “It’s good to always give our direct feedback to the stewards. Tidying up a few things. Whenever you try and put any kind of guidelines or wording around going racing, there’s always going to be gaps somewhere. It’s impossible to cover everything. So… some ideas and opinions on how we can close some of those gaps was good.”
Russell, who alongside Sainz is a GPDA director, echoed that — and pushed for stewarding that trusts racing instincts over legalese. “From the incidents that were shown, all of the drivers agreed what the penalty either should have been or lack of penalty,” the Mercedes driver said. “If you put these guidelines in place, they absolutely have to be guidelines. Every track is different. Every overtake is different. Every circumstance is different.”
Then the line that will probably be quoted for a while: “Sometimes you’ve got to use that racing knowledge… and the stewards… sometimes have to judge it based on the common sense of racing, as opposed to exactly what a guideline says. Otherwise, you may as well have a lawyer dishing out the penalties.”
That’s the tightrope. The FIA wants consistency, teams crave predictability, drivers want room to race. Put all three in one room and you’ll inevitably hear the same argument: codify too much and you freeze wheel-to-wheel combat; codify too little and you get chaos. The Qatar meeting didn’t solve that paradox, but it did underline where the drivers want the compass pointing — toward context, intent and racing nous guiding the rulebook rather than the other way around.
As Brundle noted, ask 20 drivers for a view and you’ll get 20 different answers. The only consensus, for now, is that the conversation isn’t over. And with the season grinding through its flyaways, the decisions made in the next few laps — and the next few meetings — will keep shaping how hard, how fair, and how free they race on Sundays.
