East Londoner wrote:What was the given reason for Montoya's penalty in the 2002 Malaysian Grand Prix? Truly one of the worst stewarding decisions I've ever seen.
How much of Ferrari's demolition job on the rest of the field that season was down to the sheer incompetence of the other 10 teams? Because we had Williams who wasted a shitload of pole positions, McLaren with that unreliable wreck that was the MP4-17, plus Renault and Sauber who were underwhelming and unreliable. Then we had Jordan, Jaguar and BAR, whose 2002 cars were absolute dogs, Toyota who wasted countless millions in return for two measly points, Minardi who were never real contenders anyway, and Arrows who closed up shop during midseason.
I don't think that a proper explanation was ever given for that penalty - you know that it was a bad decision when Schumacher was criticising the decision despite being a beneficiary of it.
As for the question of other teams wasting their potential, McLaren were hit by the fact that Ilmor were still struggling to make up the ground they lost after beryllium alloys were banned a few years earlier which showed up in the number of engine failures that the team had over the course of the year.
Williams did have the advantage of sheer power thanks to BMW - that power, added to the fact that the Michelin tyres were generally agreed to have much better performance over a single lap, partially explains why Williams were relatively successful in qualifying that year. However, that power from BMW did come at a price - the F2002 was less powerful, but made up for that with better fuel consumption and a lighter engine, which, coupled to the slightly weaker aerodynamics package of the FW24, explains why Williams tended to slip backwards in race trim.
Most of the other teams down the grid were either in a position where they didn't have the resources to compete with the top three teams (Jordan, Sauber, Arrows, Minardi), underdeveloped (Renault, with the wide angle V10 proving to be a technical dead end, or Toyota, who had only just entered the sport at the time) or underpowered (BAR). Then, of course, there was the mismanagement at Jaguar that needs no further comment...
Thanks for the recap!
(Tony Jardine, 1988)
