OK, time for a reality check before we all drown in a sea of biased patriotism. There now follows my take on what happened at the Belgian GP.
I have to agree that it does appear that most FIA decisions benefit Ferrari. However, if you think about it, most of the times McLaren are penalised, Ferrari benefit because they're behind them on the track and are best-placed to benefit. As Ferrari and McLaren are very closely-matched it is only natural that any penalty against a McLaren in the lead is going to result in a Ferrari benefiting.
In this instance I believe that the stewards made a correct, if controversial decision based on the rules.
The rules state that if a driver gains a position by cutting a chicane he must not benefit from this action. Now ordinarily this means giving back the position to the car that was overtaken within a couple of corners. But "gaining an advantage" is not just restricted to cars gaining a position.
Having passed Raikkonen at the Bus Stop, Hamilton immediately gave the position back to him on the pit straight. The only problem was that he was still carrying momentum from having taken a straighter line at the Bus Stop and so was easily able to catch Raikkonen back up and jink inside him at La Source. Had he followed him through the Bus Stop normally there is no way he would have been overtaking Raikkonen at La Source (unless Raikkonen made a mistake, which he didn't).
Don't forget that the stewards would have requested the telemetry from McLaren and Ferrari so they could see what both cars were doing
The stewards have decided that Hamilton gained an advantage from cutting the chicane, that advantage being the extra speed he was able to use to pass Raikkonen at La Source. I know it's easy to say it now, but had Hamilton used his head and let Raikkonen stay ahead through La Source and had a run at him through Eau Rouge and up to Les Coombes, he would probably not have been penalised.
So although this decision benefits a "red car", unfortunately it's all above board in my eyes and Hamilton created a rod for his own back the moment he put his car up the outside of Raikkonen at the Bus Stop.
As we saw last year in China and Brazil, sometimes that boy is his own worst enemy ...
And in case anyone is thinking that 25 seconds is a bit of an arbitrary penalty to give Hamilton, merely to drop him far enough behind Ferrari in the championship, here is rule 16.3 of the FIA F1 Sporting Code 2008:
16.3 The stewards may impose any one of three penalties on any driver involved in an Incident :
a) A drive-through penalty. The driver must enter the pit lane and re-join the race without stopping ;
b) A ten second time penalty. The driver must enter the pit lane, stop at his pit for at least ten seconds and then re-join the race.
c) a drop of ten grid positions at the driver’s next Event.
However, should either of the penalties under a) and b) above be imposed during the last five laps, or after the end of a race ... 25 seconds will be added to the elapsed race time of the driver concerned.
