FIA Handbook

This handbook is a guide to all certified stewards which will allow them to come to fair and appropriate conclusions on racing incidents. As with any guide, it is a tool which will give some consistency to handing out penalties. As this is only a guide, there may be occasions where penalties are different from the guide All decisions will have reasoning to back them up and any driver should question decisions if they do not understand or feel that conclusions are unfair.

Steward Obligations
1.1 Stewards should always act in an unbiased manor. If a steward has some bias towards a certain incident, he should state this before giving his evidence.

1.2 Stewards should never hand out penalties for their own personal gain, a breach of this will result in a steward losing his stewards certificate.

1.3 All decisions will be based upon a majority. This means that if two stewards agree on the outcome and there are three stewards present, they will have the majority to move forward with the decided decision/penalty

1.4 Stewards cannot and must not have any say on their own incidents

1.5 All stewards will be honest and fair to come to appropriate conclusions


Stewards Notice
In the following part of the handbook, you will have a guide to incidents and their respective actions. It is important to say that these guidelines will show the maximum penalty that can be given to a driver, but it is of the stewards discretion as to whether a more lenient approach can be used.
For example, a deliberate DNF will get you 3 points on your license, but those 3 points mean that a driver will miss the next race. In this case it may be his first offence of this nature and you may therefore elect to give him a final warning so that the driver can compete in the next race.
Alternatively, it is the second time that this driver has committed the offence and therefore you elect to give the driver the full punishment. You could also choose to give 1 point of 2 points if it is felt as sufficient, but the guidelines ensure that there will be no more than 3 points handed out.




All of the above can be in conjunction with one another. For example, if someone causes a first corner accident that results in a DNF of another driver, he could receive a total of 6 points. Whilst stewards can give out penalties in conjunction, each incident should be taken with perspective and stewards therefore have a duty to issues points appropriately. Drivers can appeal points and in this instance, more people will be invited to review the incidents and the points issued.

Penalty Tracker
There is of course a penalty tracker to show who received penalties and at which races for reference. Drivers penalty points will be accumulated throughout the season, so stewards should have the penalty tracker to hand when taking part in a meeting. The amount of penalties accumulated will lead to further penalties such as qualifying and race bans. At the end of each season, penalties will be removed.

* After receiving 3 points, you will be given a warning.

* After recieving 6 points you will be given a 10 second time penalty added on to your next race.

* After 9 points, you will recieve a ban in which you must not enter the track for any reason during qualifying.

* After reaching 12 points, you will be issued with a racing ban. The driver at this stage does have the right to appeal, which I will follow up on shortly.

* After 15 points you will be asked to talk to a head steward about your continuous actions on track and your position in the league will reach a review stage.

Appealing a race ban:
I want to make it clear that appealing a race ban is unlikely to result in a decision being overturned. In some cases, it may be deemed that penalties handed out prior to this point were deemed slightly harsh and that a race ban isn’t appropriate and for such reason it will be overturned by the head stewards. Your penalty points will be changed accordingly.

If the head stewards find no reason to change the decision, but ‘x’ driver states that he believes he has been treated unfairly, we will continue on to the final stage of appeal. This stage will open up to the community in which other drivers can vote on the ban being upheld or withdrawn with a simple yes or no poll. For a ban to be overturned at this point, there will require a majority vote of 51% to be in favour of the driver. Should a driver be successful at this stage, he will move to one point below a race ban and cannot appeal the process again during the season, so please bare that in mind.

I hope this will encourage fair practice from all stewards and from the community. A driver has been given every opportunity to have his race ban overturned and therefore no single person or panel is responsible; this is the responsibility of all members and follows the community led gaming mantra.


Choosing Stewards for a Race
The FIA panel will be as open as possible to everyone in the league. For each race, there will be one head steward (one of the admins) and two stewards that will be rotated for each race and allocated by the following process.

Firstly, anyone who wishes to be a steward for a race will be able to apply for a steward pass. A successful application will be granted if the driver has consistently been clean during races, shows excellent knowledge of rules, has no disciplinary issues and does not show bias to/for other drivers. Once you have had a successful application, you will not have to apply again unless you have had your steward pass reviewed at a later day for some of the issues discussed above.

Assuming you hold a steward pass, drivers will be able to apply weekly to steward races and they will be allocated on a rotation basis so as many people get the chance to be a steward as possible.

In simplified terms, apply for a steward pass (only needed once), apply to be a steward for upcoming race, wait for stewards to be allocated by admin prior to race weekend.