myownalias wrote:Right, time for my two cents; I believe the ban to be completely OTT; when you consider that Maldonado has taking sideswipes at two different drivers in the past 12 months, Perez in Monaco 2012 and Hamilton in Spa 2011 and gotten off incredibly lightly for a 'red mist' retaliative offence; on top of several other incidents for which he was blamed for the stewards, where's his ban? Grosjean certainly didn't intend to cause his own retirement or the retirement of three others, an error of judgement at best.
I'd agree that Maldonado should have been banned for both of the incidents you've cited, but also don't think that the punishment for Grosjean is over the top and can expain my resonaing very simply.
For any ordinary crime a court has to establish two vital ingredients -
mens rea (the metal element or thought process) and
actus reus (that the criminal act was completed, or that a serious attempt was made to complete the crime even if for whatever reason it wasn't followed through).
The actus reus is very simple to describe relating to these offences with Grosjean and Maldonado as in all scenarios there was contact resulting in either a serious or not so serious incident - either way there was some result meaning that it is more than 'attempt'.
The mens rea isn't actually that difficult to describe here either on thinking about it. This can be satisfied, in general, through two main possibilities -
intention to cause the outcome, or
reckless conduct that causes the outcome. In Maldonado's cases there was an intention to cause a collision - however minor and therefore both mens rea and actus reus are satisfied, the crime is complete and should be punished as a result. So in my mind he should have been banned - unfortunately we cannot go back in time and retrospectively do what should have been done then.
But that shouldn't prevent the right thing being done this time on its own merits.
Now, to decide if the recklessness of Grosjean's conduct was enough as to allow the 'crime' to be deemed complete, what a court would usually look to is
foreseeability - i.e. is it foreseeable that by making a massive swing across the track when there are 24 cars in a 200m stretch that contact and therefore potential injury could be caused by making a reckless move of that nature. And the answer is
very simple -
yes. i.e. this is
more than just an error of judgement.
So the Grosjean move also satisfies both elements and the 'crime' is complete in exactly the same way as Maldonado.
This is common practice as it is perfectly possible for someone to commit murder, or assault etc. 'recklessly', and not just through intentional acts, and can be compared like for like in a case like this.
So yes - the ban is fair and just and should stand.
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- By hass25
(all joking aside, that could have been very bad indeed for Alonso.)