DAVID EVANS

“Are we returning to a penalty culture?”

Enough now. Enough. I’d got so much to write about in this column. These words were supposed to be about M-sport’s Ross Sutherland leading his team in the overnight resurrection of Gaurav Gill’s Ford Fiesta R5, which had hit the deck so hard in Monte Baranta it broke the eight-millimetre steel sumpguard into three pieces; a first for a Ford Fiesta R5.

Then there was the whole Sardinia ‘should we stay or should we go’ debate and the glaringly obvious topic of Citroen’s first start without Kris Meeke as an employee.

There was no shortage of opinion on that particular point, but it was Saturday’s press release from the French firm that brought the absence of Meeke into sharp focus.

‘Mads Ostberg now in contention for fourth place’ was the way into the description of a mediocre performance. Never with Meeke onboard would such tedium have landed in inboxes around the world.

But no. I’m not going to be talking about any of that. Instead, we’re back on the whole protest-appealprotest-counter-protest thing.

First it was Hyundai on M-sport in Mexico, then it was the other way around in Portugal and last Sunday the Cumbrians found themselves back in the stewards’ room after an honest mistake on behalf of Julien Ingrassia was dealt with by the letter of the law.

Now, I’m in no way suggesting Hyundai had a hand in directing or encouraging the Rally Italy organisers to take a look at the rulebook before they hauled the defending champions before them, but there’s bad blood in the service park right now. As a brief aside, I’m a bit mystified by the stewards’ decision which doesn’t appear to reveal precisely which rule was broken at the cost of €10,000 (£8,790) and the suspended loss of points. Another brief aside: that wasn’t a bad event for the FIA with Hyundai hit with a similar fine for a steering rack and subframe anomaly on Nicolas Ciamin’s i20 R5.

The recent penalties have centred on drivers hitting barriers after they’d been told not to. Ingrassia’s mistake couldn’t be more human. Personally, I don’t think he deserved even a wrap over the knuckles. What concerns me is the potential for a movement back towards a penalty-searching culture. Remember the bad old days? Remember Subaru being taken to task for not having mud flaps?

Let’s not go there. Then I won’t have to go here and I’ll be able to talk about other stuff.

While I am here and just before I’m done with this, I’d like to say I found the promotion and parading of Ingrassia’s mistake live on television all rather distasteful. Getting the marshal to hold the timecard up in front of the camera and then tweeting a screenshot… really? I am – and always will be – a news man, always ready and willing to dig down and find the story. This one was a bit salacious. In the heat of the second fiercest battle of his entire career, Julien forgot something. Admittedly, it was something quite important. But he forgot something.

And from here on in, the message is quite clear: if one of your rivals drops a timecard, pencil, handkerchief or cough sweet, whatever you do, don’t pick it up and return it. Clear case of outside assistance there, my friend.

Nonsense. Stop it.