Guenther Steiner suggested FIA chiefs have no idea how modern Formula 1 cars work as he launched an angry tirade about decisions that have gone against his Haas team this season.
At the Singapore Grand Prix, a black-and-orange flag was waved at Kevin Magnussen. It is one of the lesser-spotted flags used in F1, forcing a driver to pit so their team can sort out a problem on the car which is deemed to be endangering racers.
On this occasion, race control felt a loose front wing endplate, damaged in a first-lap collision with Max Verstappen, was a safety risk. Remarkably, it was the third time this season Magnussen has had a race ruined in such a way, and each time it was for a piece of carbon fibre hanging off the front wing of his VF-22.
Team boss Steiner has been critical about those decisions earlier in the season, which have cost the Dane the chance to compete for points. After the latest example, he is even more irritated given the team gave a visual demonstration to the FIA's technical delegate Jo Bauer the last time it happened, to show the part was in no danger of flying off the car.
"It's frustrating because it was perfectly safe to continue," he said. "If it was the first time, then you say you don't know. But in Hungary, we had the same scenario. The breakage was very, very similar. Our head of composites, he showed and explained what is happening, what cannot happen, what can happen, and they just didn't learn anything off of it.
"And again, for the third time, they gave us the black-and-orange flag. It's getting old. We showed it to Jo, who had someone with him – they didn't say their name – but they are the technical department which then has to report back to the race director what is safe and what's not, if they know what they are looking at, and obviously they don't. So it's nothing to do with the stewards, it's race control, it's the race director who throws the flags, not the stewards."
Steiner went on to call for changes to be made at the FIA, as he feels those currently running the show lack the technical knowledge needed to make decisions that can prove so costly to teams. "We showed in Hungary that you can stand on the part and it doesn't fall off," he continued.
"It maybe flaps around, and then we bring him in because we lose performance. But it doesn't fall off, and that's what we showed, and this one wouldn't have fallen off. There are materials in there that can do a lot more than they think they can do, and they're intentionally in there. They're not there by chance.
"I'm trying hard, but at some stage, we need to have people who understand how these cars are built. We are not in the '80s anymore."
