The FIA has announced that its newly established Officials Department will drive a “more professional” approach to stewarding in motorsport, aiming to address long-standing concerns about consistency and decision-making.
The initiative reflects the FIA’s acknowledgment of the need to expand its talent pool of trained officials, including race stewards and directors, while building a pathway for the next generation of professionals.
Traditionally, Formula 1 stewards have largely been volunteers. The new department, headed by experienced steward Matteo Perini, will focus on training the next generation of officials and creating a larger pool of qualified personnel.
A Shift Toward Professionalism
This shift towards a professionalized stewarding body is expected to bring several benefits.
“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.
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“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 range of offences, and all of that will be linked together. That’s the general target.”
Benefits of a Larger Pool
The FIA acknowledges the experience of the current stewarding group. However, a larger pool of qualified officials would provide several advantages.
- Wider Availability: A larger pool of stewards would ensure a steady supply of officials for various racing series overseen by the FIA.
- More Time for Analysis: Dedicated stewards would have more time to analyze past decisions, identify areas for improvement, and refine stewarding practices.
“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,” added tombazis.
“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.”
Existing Steward Training Programs
The FIA has already established training programs for stewards and race directors. These programs, running for a few years now, have identified promising individuals from national sporting authorities.
“There’s already a high-performance steward programme and race director programme, which has been going on for a couple of years,” Tombazis 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.”
Addressing the Consistency Debate
While acknowledging the effectiveness of these existing programs, Tombazis highlights the need for further development.
“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.
“We feel that in Formula 1 we get quite a lot of comments about the consistency of stewards. 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.”
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