How the FIA use 30 people to help stewards police drivers at F1 races

Photo: © IMAGO

FIA

The FIA use 30 people to help stewards police drivers at F1 races, this is how

How the FIA make decisions during F1 weekends

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Sunday 5 April 2026 10:57 Updated: 11:30

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An F1 race weekend rarely goes by without hearing something from the FIA's stewards, but what actually goes on behind the scenes of the governing body?

The FIA often come under scrutiny from the public after the race, whether it's a penalty decision they have taken umbrage with or a misunderstanding of the processes the FIA go through.

F1's governing body have, in recent years, launched an initiative to protect the wellbeing of their stewards and personnel in the face of online abuse and harassment, reminding us that behind every decision are humans just trying to do their jobs.

Article continues under video

Never has that reminder been more stark than in their recent video, where the FIA took fans inside their race operations with the help of their sporting director Tim Malyon.

At one stage, he revealed just how many people are working for the FIA during race weekends to ensure that the running goes smoothly.

The FIA's operations are split between race control at the track and the remote operations centre in Geneva, who are both connected to the stewards at the track.

Malyon explained: "In race control, you will often see 25-30 people. We have the remote operations centre, which is flexible depending on the race. At some races the demands of the track are a little bit more complicated, but that will be between four and eight people all crunching the numbers and the data and feeding that through to us in race control.

"The stewards panel is a little bit smaller and that is regulated, and will be three or four stewards. In the stewards room, they have a dedicated data analyst to support them with filtering through the large amount of data they get when it comes to understanding what happened during an incident."

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How the FIA make decisions

The FIA also outlined how decisions are made, breaking down the process into steps.

First, data arrives at their race management platform which will either be identified by a human or an automated system, often done in the remote operation centre in Geneva.

There, they will identify the incident, gather all the relevant pieces of information about the incident and form an incident report, which is then entered into the race management system.

Next, at race control, personnel will then analyse the incident from various angles, before a decision is then made over whether there is a possible infringement.

If it is believed there is a possible infringement, the package of data gathered will be flagged and then moved along to the race stewards, who then undertake the decision making process.

Malyon also confirmed that the FIA have upwards of 150 video channels, all the radio from drivers and teams, car positions and timing data to put together a picture of what has occurred out on track.

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