F1’s media and pundits are divided over Michael Schumacher’s late overtaking move on Fernando Alonso in Monaco.<\/p>\n
The stewards, including Schumacher’s former title nemesis Damon Hill, penalised the seven time world champion for illegally passing the Spaniard during a safety car period.<\/p>\n
But the safety car had actually pulled into the pits, prompting the message ‘track clear’ on the official monitors, and video evidence showed green flags and green lights.<\/p>\n
Former driver Marc Surer told the German news agency SID: “I think the stewards have made a mistake, because they had shown green (flags).”<\/p>\n
He insists there was at the very least no “clear” breach of the rules, given that the stewards took more than three hours to decide to impose the 20-second time penalty.<\/p>\n
The Italian press was less sympathetic.<\/p>\n
“Is he not 41 years old?” read an editorial in the Tuttosport newspaper.\u00a0 “He should know the rules by now.”<\/p>\n
Epsilon Euskadi boss Joan Villadelprat wrote in his El Pais column that Schumacher’s was a “monumental error”, but former German F1 driver Christian Danner said the mistake was the FIA’s for ordering that green flags be waved.<\/p>\n
Bild newspaper published a photo proving that Schumacher drove past a green light in the Rascasse corner prior to passing the Ferrari, even though Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali argues that the race ended “under yellow conditions”.<\/p>\n
But Alonso insists he was “immediately certain” that the Mercedes driver would be penalised.<\/p>\n
“That’s why I let him go,” the Spaniard told spox.com.<\/p>\n
“My team had told me that you can’t overtake.\u00a0 I had wanted to try to pass Lewis Hamilton but they told me I could not.”<\/p>\n
And Sebastien Buemi told the Swiss newspaper Blick that Toro Rosso ordered him to hold position.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised when the team told me not to attack Liuzzi, because there were green lights flashing everywhere!” he said.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" F1’s media and pundits are divided over Michael Schumacher’s late overtaking move on Fernando Alonso in Monaco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[1055,5262,149,93,5300,5261,5340,34,92],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5534,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions\/5534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}