Who can ever forget famous sporting moments that have ended in the hands of the officials? I think of the Aussie Cricket Team on the Ashes tour burning through reviews to dismiss a rampant Ben Stokes, only to have no reviews left when they had an opportunity. On field umpiring throughout the NRL season is an easy topic to get your footy fans talking. Then there’s the VAR and its both over and under usage in Premier League football in England.

There’s even the Lowndes v Murphy incident from Winton in 2003. Neil Crompton openly voiced his displeasure in the penalty given to Murphy. An interesting, iconic and important point in motor racing at the time.

Phillip Island brought up another race that ended in its own points of drama. Penalties to Brady Meyers and Jake Burton took away from what was a battle on track that saw Jarred Filsell handed race victory on the night, before that was overturned later in the week. There’s a lot that wasn’t seen by the viewer, nor the commentators on the night (yeah I got this one wrong). The angles we saw on broadcast didn’t tell the entire picture, nor did they show the relevant pieces of information to the stewards that lead to the penalties. That's commentary, that’s life, and I wanted to pass on a sincere apology for leading you all astray.

As someone who has done an appreciable amount of stewarding within the sim racing platform over the last 4 years the educational discussions that go on about stewarding are amazing. Last week I sat down with Peter Baxter and Mike Koroleff and we went over Rule sets, Stewarding Process and Procedures and a fair chunk more. The most important part of that discussion was the growth of the rules, context to why certain rulings have come about and the level of changes they have gone through to arrive at their current iteration. Its been immense, there’s a lot of minor changes to cover off holes done over such a long time that we are now at a level of the rules that are very consistent, reasonable to drive to and give us a high product of racing.

If you have 2 hours its an amazing chat and I rate it as the best discussion I’ve had about the sport ever. 

But Scott, if that's the case how come we have ended up in a situation where we’ve seen race impacting penalties at the finish 2/2 rounds this season?

If you find yourself asking something close to this question at this point then that's awesome. You’re a fan, you’re passionate and you care about a good outcome for the sport that supports an extremely high level of racing with a good product to the viewer.

The reason we’ve landed in this position is because we’re in a sport governed by millimetres across hundreds of kilometres. The Sebring accident was a mixture of a small amount of netcode meets the slightest amount of mistakes. It was a line ball incident.

Phillip Island was much the same. Meyers made contact in the entry of the corner when space wasn’t required to be left. Burton got further through the corner and the rulings changed from entry space to apex and exit. Rules change slightly at this point.

The racing was so close and hotly contested that contact was made. Mild contact that ran Filsell wide in both cases, but not enough to be off the track. Meyer’s wasn’t entitled to the room, hence a 5s penalty for not being far enough up at turn in. Burton was entitled to room and it was a line ball incident.

If this was NRL we’d be debating if there was downward controlled pressure on the ball. Was there a blade of white line grass touching the ball in the in-goal area. How long do you want to review it for?

If this was cricket, its easy, it was 100% an Umpire’s Call on the “struck in front of the stumps” and the “going on to hit stumps” sections of the DRS review. What was the call on field as its going to have to go to that. The entire cricketing world has opinions on the Umpire’s Call decision, but thats for another day and a different sporting world.

In the meantime I’ll be over here trying to come up with my best siren impression and see if I can get a few referee’s tricked into calling the game before the end.

COME ON REF, HE WAS HOLDING HIM SIR. THAT’S A CARD SURELY!!! IN THE BIN!!!

Whoops… Uh yeah… See you Wednesday night, hopefully this time the toes remain on the right side of the line!