Too little, too late? FIA change announced after Piastri and Sainz penalties

The latest version of F1's Concorde Agreement has been signed, with some changes about the way the series will be governed going forward.

F1, the FIA and all 11 teams have signed the 2026 Concorde Governance Agreement, which sets out how the next five seasons of F1 will be governed.

Amid the agreement, according to Autosport, comes a desire for permanent, professional race stewards at each race on the calendar.

At the moment, stewards change race on race, and a lot of the tracks are volunteer-led in terms of how the race weekend is shaped with marshals, stewards and other services.

However, following his controversial penalty at the Dutch Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz called for permanent, professional stewards to be implemented by the FIA and Formula One Management (FOM).

On top of this, Oscar Piastri's penalty given to him at the Brazilian Grand Prix was one of five incidents discussed at a driver's meeting in Qatar, where all 20 drivers met for discussions with the FIA and F1's bosses.

While no changes were made for the remaining two races of 2025, it appears that the new Concorde Agreement sets out potential future changes to how the sport is governed.

According to the above publication, both FOM and the 11 teams will pay more money to the FIA through a restructuring of the F1 entry fees, which the FIA will re-invest in the governance side of the series, including stewarding, marshalling and other services.

Newly re-elected president of the FIA Mohammed Ben Sulayem said of the new agreement: "This agreement allows us to continue modernising our regulatory, technological, and operational capabilities, including supporting our race directors, officials, and the thousands of volunteers whose expertise underpin every race.

"We are ensuring that Formula 1 remains at the forefront of technological innovation, setting new standards in global sport."

What is the Concorde Agreement?

The Concorde agreement is a document that is agreed upon and signed by the FIA, F1 teams and FOM that sets out the next five years in the series and how it will be run by the sport's bosses.

It also dictates how commercial interests will be shared, and it's how TV revenues and prize money for each position in the constructors' championship are shared between the teams too.

The first ever Concorde Agreement was signed in 1981, and since then there have been eight more, with all of the details kept secret.

Is it too little, too late?

With Piastri only losing out on the championship by 13 points, it could be argued that the penalty that he was given in Brazil was crucial to his failure to wrap up the title.

Piastri was slapped with a 10-second time penalty by race stewards for causing a collision when he, Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc all went into Turn 1 three abreast.

Despite losing out the most from the incident with an early DNF, Leclerc suggested that the penalty given to Piastri was harsh, and that Antonelli should have shouldered some of the blame.

While these incidents throughout 2025 would have been frustrating for drivers, FOM and the FIA cannot go back and re-govern previous races, so adapting and implementing changes for future years is absolutely the correct way to go about this.

Having professional, permanent stewards who all adhere to one set of guidelines should lead to more consistency in decision-making processes, and limit the number of incidents that are either too harshly or too leniently punished.

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