Five ways the FIA can fix stewarding for the F1 2025 season

The stewards have been put under the spotlight of late and the time has come for the FIA to consider making some changes.

Johnny Herbert’s frequent interviews have raised the question of professionalism with stewards but there are plenty of other areas that have room for improvement…

How the FIA can fix F1’s stewarding problem

Stop talking to media through betting sites

Right off the bat, I will say I am actually a fan of stewards publicly giving their reasons for making decisions and think all sports would benefit with this level of transparency.

But there is a right way of doing things.

Right now, Herbert is allowed to speak through betting-funded websites which seems a very murky area when it comes to someone in an official capacity.

An alternative would be to have a media session after a race (logistically this would be tough to do the day of so could be done via video the following day) or the FIA could take an approach like Mercedes do and release their own debrief of a race.

I will say that the reasoning on the documents released is very thorough but of the millions of people who watch F1, how many are going to the FIA website to read through them? Very few I would wager.

If those decisions were explained clearly in person or on video, it would make understanding why stewards came to a decision much clearer.

Make stewards permanent members of staff

For me, the biggest issue with stewarding is how unprofessional it currently is. This is not to say the people doing the stewarding are unprofessional, but rather the system itself.

Right now, being an F1 stewards is not a full-time job which is in contrast to almost every other sport on the planet.

In football for example, the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) employ the referees meaning there is at least an attempt to be consistent across matches.

F1 does have a pool of stewards they choose to use but they are all doing it part-time and few, if any, will do every race in a season.

What this inevitably leads to is inconsistency. Not because a steward is openly biased towards a team or a driver, but simply because everyone will have a slightly different opinion. One steward may look at Max Verstappen and Lando Norris’ Austria clash and think it was a racing incident, one may see it as a penalty to Verstappen etc.

By having the same four people at every race, you at least eliminate that area of inconsistency.

Pay them properly

Another issue that needs solving is paying the stewards. Right now, they get a few hundred quid to give up their weekend whereas a Premier League referee has a salary of between £38,500 and £42,000.

Football is a wealthier sport than F1 but Max Verstappen alone paid the FIA €1.2 million in superlicense fees in 2023.

The FIA says they spend fine money on grassroots motorsport but can some not be set aside for some of the most important people in the sporting body’s biggest series?

By paying so little, you also put a limit on who will agree to do it. Jenson Button, for example could make a good steward, but why would he give up a lucrative Sky gig that pays exponentially more?

Which brings us onto the next point…

More on the FIA’s role in F1

FIA explained: What does it stand for and how does it govern F1?

FIA steward explains how money is main cause behind inconsistent decisions

Get the best team possible

Meaning no disrespect to Johnny Herbert but he last raced in 2000. Formula 1 has changed massively since then and the stewarding team should have someone with experience of driving modern cars.

Of course Herbert will say he has the same instincts as those in the sport now but the cars are quicker, heavier and more technologically advanced. A driver in the car these days will have a better knowledge of someone who drove a fair while ago.

Herbert is, of course, not the only steward and Garry Connelly is another with motorsport experience, but that was in rally primarily.

The FIA needs to encourage sone young blood to get involved and they do not have to be of world champion quality. Someone who has driven recently can give a better insight into modern F1.

The stewarding panel should be a range of expertise which is why it is good that they have people with backgrounds in marshalling, law, circuit design and other areas but the team could still be refined.

Stop making their lives unnecessarily difficult

The final fix would be to stop making the stewards’ job even harder.

A steward should be focused on making decisions that could save lives in the future, not on whether or not Verstappen said a bad word.

The swearing incident is not the only time the FIA has pushed rules onto the stewards. In 2022, they were told to enforce a rule about not wearing jewellery and have even had to police drivers’ underwear.

Deciding race-defining decisions in a high-pressured situation is hard enough as it is, so why make it even harder but forcing them to stick to rules that in the grand scheme of things, have no real impact.

Common sense should prevail.

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