Jonathan Wheatley at odds with Christian Horner over FIA stewards

Sauber team principal Jonathan Wheatley has defended the FIA stewards following criticism from Red Bull boss Christian Horner at the F1 Spanish Grand Prix.

Horner took aim at the stewards after Max Verstappen was handed a 10-second penalty for causing a collision with George Russell as they battled for position following a late Safety Car restart in Sunday’s race at Barcelona.

Red Bull instructed Verstappen to hand the place back to Russell following a separate clash at Turn 1 and the Dutchman appeared to be obliging until he accelerated and drove into the side of the Mercedes driver at Turn 5.

The FIA’s official documents that were released after the race revealed the stewards deemed it was not necessary for Verstappen to give the place back because Russell had triggered the contact when he “momentarily lost control of the car” and forced his rival wide.

On Sunday evening, Horner told media including Crash.net that he believes more instant judgements from the race director would prevent teams having to “second-guess” the decisions of stewards.

Asked if the decision to ask Verstappen to cede position to Russell proved a mistake in hindsight, Horner replied: “Yes, but I think that’s where it would be nice, as the referee, as the race director, to either say play on or you need to give it back.

"I think it's very hard for the team, subjectively, to try and make that call because you're going on historical precedence. You're looking at what you have in front of you, and you're trying to pre-empt what the stewards and the race director are thinking.

"So I think it would be beneficial to the teams, in that instance, for the race director to make that call and say you either give it back or you get a penalty, rather than having to try and second-guess what the stewards are going to do."

FIA stewards backed by Horner’s ex-colleague

However, Wheatley, who previously worked alongside Horner as Red Bull’s sporting director, defended the FIA’s stewarding procedures in F1.

“I’ve taken an awful lot of time over the 19 years that I was a sporting director and working with the FIA to try to really understand the pressures they have in race control, walk a mile in their shoes as well,” Wheatley said.

“It’s not always the case that that’s the only incident they have to look at. There’s a lot sometimes, especially after a first lap. I don’t know the specifics of what Christian wanted to talk about.

“I didn’t really follow his race as much as I followed ours. But, like I say, I’ve spent a long time trying to understand the pressures in race control and trying to understand whether I’m going to get an answer or not.”

Wheatley added: “The teams always have the option to do that themselves. The teams have the option to read the situation and do it themselves and teams are really professional.

“They’ll be given recommendations, I’m sure, up and down the pitlane. We had a really good look at what happened in Turn 1. If we’d been in any doubt, we might have handled the situation differently but we were very confident of where we were.

“I think I’ve gone on record before saying that stewarding has come on enormously recently. I think the FIA are doing a really good job with that. But it’s a work in progress.”