Brawn wants clarification on the curfew rule
Following the implementation of a curfew for F1 team personnel, no personnel can be present within a circuit's premises during a defined period under penalty of sanctions. Due to this rule, several teams lost a joker this weekend in Singapore after people linked to marketing arrived earlier than expected.
Following the reduction in the number of people allowed over a race weekend and to limit the working hours of F1 personnel, the FIA has decided to implement a curfew for the teams. However, each team has four jokers for the season before being actually sanctioned. And this weekend, four teams saw one of their jokers disappear as staff arrived too early in the track area.
It started with Toro Rosso, with team director Franz Tost arriving too early on Friday, which cost the team a joker. Today, it’s the Mercedes GP, Red Bull Racing, and Marussia Virgin Racing teams that lost a joker because marketing staff were present within the Marina Bay circuit grounds during the “forbidden” period. The Mercedes team used its first joker, Virgin its second, and Red Bull its third, with only five races left to go.
And Ross Brawn, the team director, is satisfied with this rule, but he does not understand why people associated with marketing are considered by the FIA as being associated with the operations on the single-seaters.
I think there is a bit of confusion that we need to clarify. From a team perspective, we have 47 people, which includes engineers and people working on the cars, and the reason for implementing a curfew was to ensure that this team, once reduced in number, does not work too many hours, Ross Brawn told Autosport.
« We do not want a situation where these people work for 48 hours because, if you reduce the team size and do not change the workload, then you work more hours. I think the curfew is working well. Everyone thought it applied to those 47 people, who are on a list that everyone knows. »
«In our case, several of the people managing marketing and commercial aspects arrived to meet guests at 3:30 PM instead of 4:00 PM and they broke the curfew, so this is something we need to discuss with the FIA. I can’t see a reason to implement a curfew for marketing staff. It’s something we need to arrange; I think it’s a misunderstanding», added Brawn.
Update: The FIA has finally decided to return the lost joker to the Red Bull Racing, Mercedes GP, and Marussia Virgin Racing teams after reviewing their claims. The FIA concluded that the personnel from these three teams who had breached the curfew were not related to the operations on the single-seater car and therefore there was no reason to withdraw a joker from them.
