Who Are F1 Stewards? Their Role, Powers & How Penalties Work
Every time a graphic on your screen says a car is "under investigation," it's these four people deciding what happens next — not the race director, not the team, and not the driver who's complaining about it on the radio. Here's who actually sits on an F1 stewards panel, what they can and can't do, and how the FIA changed their powers for 2026.
F1 Stewards by the Numbers
- 4 people: a standard race-weekend stewards panel — an FIA chairman, a second FIA steward, a steward nominated by the host nation's federation, and a rotating former F1 driver.
- 3 driver stewards: the 2026 pool rotating through that fourth seat — Vitantonio Liuzzi, Pedro Lamy and Derek Warwick.
- 12 points: the penalty-point threshold within any rolling 12 months that triggers a mandatory one-race suspension, per the FIA's licence-points system.
- 5s or 10s: the standard time-penalty range stewards apply for most on-track offences, per the FIA's own 2026 penalty guidelines.
- Up to €100,000: the maximum fine in the FIA's 2026 penalty guidelines, reserved for an intentional false declaration on a scrutineering form.
- Article 14.1.2: the new 2026 rule letting stewards re-examine their own decision on their own initiative if significant new evidence turns up.
Stewards vs. Race Director vs. Marshals
Fans often lump these three together because they all show up on the same broadcast graphics, but they're three completely different jobs with almost no overlap in authority.
| Role | Who | What They Actually Control |
|---|---|---|
| Race Director | Rui Marques (2026) | Runs the live session — start procedure, safety car deployment, red flags. Refers incidents to stewards, but casts no vote on penalties. |
| Stewards | 4-person rotating panel | Judicially independent. Investigate incidents after the fact using telemetry, footage and radio audio, then decide penalties. No role in running the session itself. |
| Marshals | Volunteer trackside crews | Report what they see — flags, stopped cars, debris. Pure "eyes and ears"; they don't judge or penalize anyone. |
Our F1 marshals guide covers that trackside layer in full — marshals feed the raw information upward, but by the time a penalty actually gets handed out, it's the stewards' call alone.
How the Penalty Process Actually Works
An "under investigation" graphic means the race director has referred an incident to the stewards — or the stewards flagged it themselves. From there they pull onboard footage, telemetry, GPS traces and team-radio audio, hear from the drivers and teams involved, and issue a written decision, usually within the same session or shortly after the race. Per the FIA's own 2026 Formula 1 Penalty Guidelines, the toolkit looks like this:
| Penalty | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Reprimand | A formal written mark with no immediate time or grid cost, but it accumulates — three reprimands (at least two for driving offences) in a season triggers a mandatory 10-place grid penalty. |
| Time Penalty (5s/10s) | Added to race time or served during a pit stop. A baseline "causing a collision" offence starts at 10 seconds, reducible to 5 with mitigating circumstances. |
| Drive-Through | Driver must enter the pit lane, drive through at the speed limit, and rejoin without stopping — costs roughly 18-25 seconds depending on the circuit's pit lane length. |
| Stop-and-Go (10s) | Driver stops in their own pit box for 10 seconds with no work permitted, a heavier real-world cost than a drive-through. |
| Grid Penalty | Positions dropped at the next race. A collision judged deliberate or reckless carries a baseline of 10+ places. |
| Fine | Financial penalty, most often issued to the team. FIA 2026 guidelines list ranges from a few thousand euros for procedural breaches up to €100,000 for a false scrutineering declaration. |
| Disqualification | Reserved for the most serious breaches — ignoring a black flag or running an illegal car/tyre combination is a mandatory DSQ, regardless of finishing position. |
Penalty points sit alongside all of this as a separate ledger, covered in full in our F1 penalty points guide — they don't replace a race penalty, they stack on top of it, and 12 points within 12 months means an automatic one-race ban.
A Stewards Decision That Decided a Race: Canada 2019
The clearest example of stewards deciding a result outright, rather than just adding a footnote, is the 2019 Canadian Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel led from pole and crossed the line first, but on lap 48 he ran wide at Turn 4, rejoined the track, and forced Lewis Hamilton toward the wall in the process. The stewards ruled it an unsafe rejoin and handed Vettel a 5-second time penalty, which dropped him to second and handed Hamilton the win — even though Vettel had finished roughly 1.3 seconds ahead on the road. Vettel accused race control of "stealing" the result on live TV, and Ferrari's petition for a review was rejected because the stewards found no significant new evidence. It remains one of the most-cited controversial calls precisely because nobody crashed and no car was damaged — a clean penalty applied to the driver who crossed the line first, deciding the race entirely on paper.
That's a genuinely different situation from the better-known 2021 Abu Dhabi finale, which is worth a quick clarification: the late safety-car restart that decided that title was a race director's call, not a stewards decision from scratch. Mercedes protested it to the stewards afterward, and the stewards dismissed the protest, ruling the race director had overriding authority over the restart procedure — so stewards were involved, but only in upholding someone else's decision, not making the original one. The FIA's own post-season review called it "human error" and the race director was removed from the role.
2026 Update: Stewards Can Now Reopen Their Own Decisions
Starting in 2026, a new rule — Article 14.1.2 — lets stewards re-examine one of their own past decisions on their own initiative if they discover a genuinely new and significant piece of evidence, without needing a team to formally petition for a review first. Per Motorsport Week's direct reporting, the FIA introduced this specifically because of what happened at the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix: Carlos Sainz collided with Liam Lawson and was given a 10-second penalty plus 2 penalty points. Williams later obtained onboard footage from Lawson's car that hadn't been available to the stewards at the time, petitioned for a review, and the stewards accepted it met the threshold for new evidence — rescinding Sainz's penalty points, though the time penalty he'd already served in the race stood. The 2026 rule change means that kind of correction no longer has to wait for a competitor to formally ask for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between F1 stewards and the race director?
The race director (Rui Marques as of 2026) runs the live session in real time — starting the race, deploying the safety car, showing red flags. Stewards are a separate, judicially independent panel who investigate incidents the race director refers to them (or self-initiate) and decide penalties after the fact. The race director has no vote on penalties; the stewards have no control over running the session.
How many penalty points before an F1 driver gets banned?
12 penalty points within any rolling 12-month period triggers a mandatory one-race suspension. Points themselves expire automatically after 12 months, and once a driver serves the ban, their points total resets to zero. Kevin Magnussen's 2024 season remains the clearest real example of the system playing out.
Who are the F1 driver stewards in 2026?
The 2026 driver-steward pool is Vitantonio Liuzzi, Pedro Lamy and Derek Warwick, rotating race to race as the fourth panel member alongside an FIA chairman, an FIA steward and a steward from the host nation's federation. Enrique Bernoldi filled in as a one-off substitute in 2025, and Johnny Herbert was dropped from the pool after the FIA ruled his media pundit work incompatible with stewarding.
Can F1 stewards change their mind after handing down a penalty?
As of 2026, yes, under a new rule (Article 14.1.2) that lets stewards re-examine their own decision if a genuinely new and significant piece of evidence turns up, without waiting for a competitor to formally petition. The rule was introduced directly because of the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix, where Williams obtained new onboard footage that got Carlos Sainz's penalty points for a collision with Liam Lawson rescinded, though the time penalty he'd already served stood.
The Bottom Line
Stewards are the one part of race weekend that never shows up on a team radio call, but almost every penalty a fan argues about traces back to this same four-person panel — an FIA chairman, an FIA steward, a national steward, and a rotating ex-driver working through onboard footage and telemetry after the fact. Our drive-through penalty guide and track limits guide both cover specific penalties from this same toolkit in more depth, and our penalty points guide explains the separate ledger that can end a driver's race weekend entirely once it reaches 12. The harshest sanction the stewards can hand down isn't a points penalty at all — our F1 disqualification guide covers the technical breaches and rare championship-level exclusions that throw a result out completely. For the team behind the drivers making the radio calls the stewards end up reviewing, see our F1 race engineer explainer. And for the person whose real-time calls the stewards get involved in reviewing rather than making themselves, see our F1 race director explainer.