An open letter to the FIA and its technical stewards
As an official of multiple sports, I've noticed an alarming trend in recent years. We have events that are over and done, and after the fans are home they read in the news that the car they saw win & the drivers they saw stand on the podium have been disqualified for a technical infraction that had zero impact on the results of the race. A few examples include an LMP car DQ'd for having a few drops of another brand of otherwise equivalent fuel in their fuel cell. In a non-FIA, but "friend of ACO" series, a car given a 5 minute stop & hold penalty for refueling too fast although both the tank & car were 100% legal. The double-DQ at Silverstone last year screams of the same insignificance, although only an aerodynamicist (which I am not) would know for sure. And now not 1 but 2 cars, including a Le Mans class winner, disqualified for having the ability to carry an extra ounce of fuel.
A single ounce of fuel? Over an 8 mile lap? even adding those ounces together for an entire race doesn't give the car enough extra fuel to make an on track advantage! It's a slight calibration error. By the car's team or by the FIA stewards we'll never know. And a second penalty to the same car for refuelling time being off by an amount smaller than the margin of error due to reaction time of a human pressing a stopwatch button is equally petty.
These types of penalties are not only outside the spirit of sport & fair competition, they're a slap in the face to fans and participants alike. The pompous arrogance required of a sports official to even suggest enforcement of an exclusion for something which offers zero advantage is an embarrassment to the profession of sports officiating and a disgrace to officials around the world.
To the people in charge at the FIA, if you care about the health of your sport, you'll see to it that these people are replaced before they go on another chest-thumping power trip!
--a concerned fan, and a potential former fan