The FIA ​​will be “more professional” thanks to its new department

The FIA ​​has assured that the establishment of a new officials training department will enable even more professionalism in the future.

Last September, the federation announced the creation of an officials department to allow the body to better train them for the competitions it manages. Led by the experienced Matteo Perini, appointed manager of sports officials, its aim will be to supervise the next generation of officials and ensure the constitution of a larger group for the future, while the FIA ​​has recognized that it has currently from a shallow reservoir, whether among marshals or race directors for example.

For Nikolas Tombazis, single-seater manager at the FIA, this department will lead to a “more professional body” not relying as much on volunteers, which will make it possible in particular to work better after the competition weekends, whether in the analysis of the decisions taken or in the appeals that can be filed following them .

“It's probably becoming a little unfair to expect people to do it willingly, and yet that's the case today.”Tombazis told Motorsport.com. “We want to move to a more professional body in the future. It's not about excluding volunteers, but about having an entity that can spend Monday morning after a race analyzing every decision, making sure that it was taken correctly, to see what could be improved, etc.”

“This system will be combined with a more capable remote center, where greater control will be exercised for a whole series of offenses, and it will all be connected. That's the overall objective. Ultimately, [le département des officiels] will bring together more people available to do it and give them more time to spend on analysis and so on. To be clear, this will not take anything away from the group we currently have, who are very experienced and have been officiating for 20 years.”

While Tombazis insists on the idea that the decisions of F1 stewards are generally more consistent than what is claimed, he emphasizes that the governing body must increase the number of officials in its pool in order to ensure regular renewal. of the next generation. “There is already a very successful program of marshals and race directors, which has existed for several years”he explained.

“Around 30 people have been selected by national sporting authorities, sponsored by certain people and supported through the program in different regions. These people are moving up the ranks and may end up in Formula 1, rallying or Formula E in the future . So I think it's been going pretty well for a while.”

“That said, we also have the feeling that we have to go even further. There has to be a real department that takes care of these matters. We have the impression that in Formula 1, there are a lot of comments on the consistency of the marshals I hasten to add that an analysis was also carried out by the teams, which indicated that the marshals are in fact very consistent.

“However, these are people who have a high level of expertise, but we don’t have as many as we would like, neither available nor trained.”

With Filip Cleeren