The Formula One race stewards have come under fire for making some seemingly controversial decisions this season.

One of the most debated incidents was when Sebastian Vettel crossed the finish line first at the Canadian Grand Prix, but he was demoted to second place after the stewards gave him a five-second time penalty for an “unsafe return to the race track.” Vettel had cut across the grass and then sliced back onto the track in front of Lewis Hamilton, who was declared the winner after the penalty was applied.

Some fans were so enraged they threatened physical harm to Emanuele Pirro, the driver representative on the panel of four stewards for that weekend.

The stewards were doing things exactly according to “the book,” which states the three primary possible penalties for an “unsafe return to the race track” are a five- or 10-second time penalty, or a drive through the pits penalty.

Controversy on such rulings is nothing new.

“There has been a lot of talk about stewarding for the last 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,” said Garry Connelly, one of the FIA’s senior stewards. “I think that no matter what decision we take, half the fans will always say we were right and half the fans will always say we were wrong. Part of it is the communication problem — we need to communicate better the reasons for our decisions, and we are constantly trying to do that. I believe that we’ve been very consistent in recent years.”

The Stewards

The FIA has a standard system for all F-1 races that consists of a panel of four stewards. There is the chairman of the stewards, one of four that rotate through the season. The second person is one drawn from a pool of experienced stewards. Next, there is a steward from the country hosting the event, and, finally, there is a former or current race car driver.

At this year’s Canadian Grand Prix, the chairman of the stewards was Gerd Ennser, a lawyer, former racer and F-1 steward since 2010 — and, incidentally, a German who did not show any favoritism to fellow countryman Vettel. The other stewards were Mathieu Remmerie, a graduate of the global pathway for FIA stewards’ program; Mike Kaerne, a Canadian with many years of being a steward in North American racing; and Pirro, a five-time Le Mans winner.

The other three chairmen of the stewards are American Tim Mayer, Australian Garry Connelly and Singapore’s Nish Shetty.

Mayer, son of the late Teddy Mayer who was involved with McLaren for many years, organized Indy car races internationally from 1992 to ’98. He was also CART’s senior VP for racing operations and the COO of IMSA. Currently, he is the U.S. FIA Delegate responsible for world championship events in the U.S.

Connelly has been involved in motorsports since the late 1960s. A longtime rally competitor, he was responsible for bringing the World Rally Championship to Australia in 1988. He has been an FIA steward and FIA observer since 1989, covering the WRC, World Touring Car Championship and F-1.

Shetty heads the Clifford Chance Litigation & Dispute Resolution team in Asia. He is also a Judge of Appeal of the FIA International Court of Appeal in Paris; Chairman of the Disciplinary Commission of the Singapore Motorsports Ass’n; and a member of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration.

Among those who represent the “second” steward position are: Remmerie; Felix Holter, a member of the FIA’s International Stewards Panel, and a steward in the World Touring Car Championship and in Germany’s DTM and Formula 4 series; and Paolo Longoni, who has nearly 30 year’s racing experience and is a steward for the Porsche Supercup, Ferrari Challenge and F-2 series.

The core panel of drivers includes 1985 Indy 500 victor Danny Sullivan, Pirro, Derek Warwick, Tom Kristensen and Mika Salo. Other drivers who sometimes take up the role include Yannick Dalmas, Vitantonio Liuzzi and world champions Alan Jones and Nigel Mansell.

While they get their travel expenses, the stewards are not paid and work on a voluntary basis.

Working separately but together with the stewards in the control tower are the FIA’s new race director Michael Masi and his group. Masi took over the post after F-1 veteran Charlie Whiting died just before the first race of the season. When Masi or one of his team spots a possible infraction by a driver, they investigate it further. They then decide if it should be forwarded to the stewards for further action.

The stewards, however, can also decide independently if they want to review an incident.

Those working in the control tower have access to far more data and TV footage than seen by the fans, or even the media at the track. And that’s why sometimes what is seen on TV by the fans doesn’t correlate to a stewards’ decision.

Click below to keep reading.

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Chase Elliott isn’t showing any outward signs of concern, despite being guaranteed to start at the rear of the field for Sunday’s First Data 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

A spectacular engine failure, complete with a trailing smoke plume and streaks of fire out of the back of the car, punctuated Elliott’s opening practice attempt and ended it just five minutes and five laps in.

That left the No. 9 Mountain Dew Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 team scrambling to install a backup engine prior to Saturday afternoon’s final practice session, which began at noon ET.

They successfully did so, and the lack of earlier laps and fresh engine didn’t appear to hinder Elliott at all, as he ended up sixth-quickest with a time of 19.835 seconds (95.468 mph) on the Happy Hour rundown.

Due to the engine change, Elliott will be forced to start at the rear of the field no matter where he ends up during Busch Pole Qualifying later on Saturday afternoon.

Just prior to strapping in for the afternoon session, Elliott met with the media and detailed what went wrong.

“We broke a motor there, five laps in, and it’s obviously and unfortunate way to start the day, for sure. But, it’s one of those things really that it kind of what it is at this point,” Elliott noted. “Getting some practice in the next session (quickly became) the most important thing for us.”

Despite recent engine issues at both Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway and now at Martinsville, Elliott isn’t stressing and doesn’t believe the two are related as he continues to pursue his first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.

“It’s hard to say for sure, but I don’t think they are related, based on what happened,” Elliott noted. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But anytime you have two engine problems in four weeks, that’s not good, for sure. I do know that we’ll do a diligent job of trying to figure out what the problem was and hope that we can find a problem.

“Sometimes with engine failures or with parts failures, in general, when you break something, the worst thing that can happen is you don’t know why or what broke,” he continued. “We just need to make sure we do a good job of trying to figure out what caused the failure … if we can find it. And I think if we can do that, I think we can correct it.”

As far as going into Sunday’s race, Elliott’s mindset is simple. Starting from the back or not, he wants to win the race and not have to worry about points moving him on to Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.

He already knows that earning points in the first stage will be unlikely, making the rest of the race even more important.

“I think just to keep things simple for us, we need to try to win,” Elliott said. “If you’re not in a position to win, you just have to get as many points as possible. I think that keeps things simple for you. I’m going to be trying to be as far forward as I can be at each particular moment and try to make the smartest decisions that I can throughout the day to get us there. Obviously stage points are important, but I’m going to try to get as far forward as I can and get the most points possible at any given point in time.

“Yeah, starting in the back will be unfortunate for that first stage, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

Elliott knows he’ll likely have to contend against his teammate, nine-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson, as well as perennial Martinsville contender Denny Hamlin if he wants to take home one of the track’s signature grandfather clock trophies, but he believes he can do that if the cards fall right Sunday.

“I think that people who always run well here are always going to be strong, and I think they’re going to be good here again this weekend,” he said. “If we can outrun those guys, we’ll probably have a shot to win.”

Christian Pulisic has scored his first three Premier League goals after being handed the start for Chelsea against Burnley on Saturday, helping to stake his team to a 4-0 lead with a hat trick.

The U.S. international was named in the starting XI after his impactful role off the substitutes' bench in Chelsea's 1-0 win over Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday.

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Pulisic had struggled for minutes since arriving at Stamford Bridge in the summer following his €64 million transfer from Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund, but he made his mark in the first half against Burnley.

Both of the 21-year old's goals came off stellar individual efforts following hard-charging runs from the midfield. The first was a left-footed shot after Pulisic had beat his defender in the penalty area and the second was an equally impressive finish, this time with his right foot and with the help of a deflection off Burnley defender Ben Mee.

The pair of goals staked Chelsea to a 2-0 lead at half-time as the Blues look to maintain their spot in the top four of the Premier League table.

Pulisic added his third early in the second half and Willain added another to give Chelsea a comfortable lead at Turf Moor.

The American becomes just the second player from the U.S. to score a hat trick in the Premier League, joining Clint Dempsey, who did it in 2012 for Fulham in a match against Newcastle.

As an added bonus, Pulisic scored a goal with his right foot, his left foot and from a header, making it a perfect hat trick to become the first Chelsea player to complete the feat since Didier Drogba did against Wigan in May 2010.

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard addressed Pulisic's lack of playing time earlier in October, saying he had to make "harsh" decisions in his liineup sometimes, but added his time would come.

Lampard said: "Sometimes I have to make harsh decisions and say something that I see can help their game but might not sound that nice because I want them to be the best, all of them. That's what I want them to be. That's part of the process.

"Christian Pulisic has a price tag. Ross Barkley is an international player. Mason Mount is an international player, Callum Hudson-Odoi just signed a new contract, Bayern Munich wanted to buy him last summer. He's an international player."

Faf du Plessis believes getting rid of the toss in Test cricket would help teams compete better when they travel away from home. The South Africa captain was speaking in the aftermath of his team's 3-0 whitewash at the hands of India.

Although South Africa had begun the series promisingly with two key batsmen - Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock - scoring centuries and showing that they could combat quality spinners in the subcontinent, things went downhill quickly. The second and third Tests were blowouts, and predictable for the pattern they followed.

"Every Test match, they bat first, they score 500, they declare when it's dark, they get three wickets when it's dark and when day three starts, you're under pressure," du Plessis said. "It was like copy and paste in every Test match."

ALSO READ: India fast bowlers revel in toss advantage

Playing India in India is among the most difficult challenges in Test cricket at the moment. They have lost only one of their last 33 matches at home and there was a moment at the start of the series in Visakhapatnam, when the coin landed against him and du Plessis smiled in resigned fashion, as if he knew what was about to happen.

In the last three years in India - that's 10 Tests - only three times has a team come back from losing the toss to win the game. India has done it twice and Afghanistan once, against fellow Test newbies, Ireland. Even saving the game is hard with only two draws, and one of them - the Sri Lanka Test in Kolkata in 2017 - had heavy rain all but ruining an entire day's play.

The practice of doing away with the toss was trialled in the English county circuit, where the visiting team got the chance to choose what they wanted to do at the start of the game. The idea came into being as a way to ensure home teams did not roll out pitches that stacked the odds in their own favour. Pakistan bought into it this Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season and India, too, have been looking into the matter. Earlier this year at a conclave attended by domestic captains and coaches, one of the topics discussed was getting rid of the toss.

Plenty of the South African players made it clear that none of the pitches they played on were loaded in one way or another against them, including du Plessis. But he still liked the idea of abandoning the toss altogether. "[If it is removed] then away teams have a better chance. In South Africa, I don't mind that. We bat on green tops anyway."

Experienced duo Shemaine Campbelle and Chedean Nation will return to West Indies' squad for next month's first two ODIs against India, accompanied by two new faces.

Medium-pacers Aaliyah Alleyne and Shawnisha Hector were called up to West Indies' 14-strong main squad for the first time on Saturday, with Hector having been reserve before, after impressing selectors during a training camp. They join Campbelle and Nation, who missed the recent tour of Australia through injury.

Ann Browne-John, lead selector of West Indies' Women's and Girls' Panel, said: "The selection panel chose a good balance of youth and experience when assembling this squad."

The first two fixtures in the three-match series against India will be played at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua on November 1 and 3, followed by another at the same ground on November 6. The teams will then play five T20Is from November 9, two in St Lucia and three in Guyana.

Deandra Dottin, one of the side's batting mainstays who missed the tours of England and Ireland and Australia due to a shoulder injury, was also absent from the squad to face India.

West Indies: Stafanie Taylor (capt.), Anisa Mohammed, Aaliyah Alleyne, Afy Fletcher, Britney Cooper, Chedean Nation, Chinelle Henry, Stacy-Ann King, Kyshona Knight, Natasha McLean, Shabika Gajnabi, Shawnisha Hector, Shemaine Campbelle, Sheneta Grimmond

Multiple-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion Demian Maia choked out Olympian and two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion Ben Askren in the third round of their UFC Fight Night main event Saturday in Kallang, Singapore.

By doing so, he laid claim to being the best grappler in mixed-martial arts.

"Myself and he, we are the best grapplers in the game," said the 41-year-old Maia (28-9). "And now, maybe today they can do that belt. You know, they're going to do [it] for Masvidal and Nate. They could do the Best Grappler now."

The UFC is already at work designing a novelty belt for next week's main event at Madison Square Garden, where the promotion is planning to declare the winner between Jorge Masvidal and Nate Diaz as the "BMF champion."

Saturday's fight didn't start out with any of that grappling prowess on display. The first two rounds were contested mostly with both fighters on their feet, showing stiff, awkward stand-up skills one might expect from grappling specialists.

The plodding attack of Askren (19-2, 1 NC), a former Bellator and ONE champion who joined the UFC last year, produced the better shots early, as evidenced by the redness covering Maia's face.

But Maia started coming on as Round 2 wore on. When Askren took him to the canvas with under two minutes to go in the round, the Brazilian quickly reversed position and threatened a submission.

It was a sign of what was to come.

The finish came after Maia again reversed position on the canvas in the third round. He seized full mount position and slickly turned it into back control, where he sunk in a rear-naked choke that elicited a single tap from Askren at 3:54 of the round.

It was a shockingly efficient finish against a high-level wrestler such as Askren, who lost his second straight after going unbeaten in his first 20 career fights.

"I was overconfident," said Askren, a 35-year-old fighting out of Milwaukee. "I guess there's a reason he's the best grappler in the division -- possibly in MMA -- ever."

Maia, who won his third straight bout and has 14 career submissions, said he next would like to face veteran Diego Sanchez, "who has been calling me out for years. ... If people like [that fight], I can do."

Star pass-rusher Jason Pierre-Paul, who hasn't played since suffering a broken neck in an auto accident this offseason, has been activated from the reserve/non-football Injury list by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the team announced Saturday.

Pierre-Paul suffered the injury when his Ferrari spun out of control on a South Florida freeway and hit a median May 2. Police determined that rain was a factor.

After participating in one-on-one drills with offensive linemen last week, he joined teammates for his first squad practice Tuesday and then practiced in pads Wednesday.

"It felt great. It's been a long journey," Pierre-Paul said Tuesday. "I've still got a lot going on, but it's been great being with my teammates. ... I feel good."

The Buccaneers play at the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.

Pierre-Paul, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, has 71 career sacks, 14 forced fumbles, 8 fumble recoveries and 2 interceptions during his 10 NFL seasons.

ESPN's Jenna Lane contributed to this report.

Christian Pulisic has scored his first three Premier League goals after being handed the start for Chelsea against Burnley on Saturday, helping to stake his team to a 4-0 lead with a hat trick.

The U.S. international was named in the starting XI after his impactful role off the substitutes' bench in Chelsea's 1-0 win over Ajax in the Champions League on Wednesday.

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Pulisic had struggled for minutes since arriving at Stamford Bridge in the summer following his €64 million transfer from Bundesliga side Borussia Dortmund, but he made his mark in the first half against Burnley.

Both of the 21-year old's goals came off stellar individual efforts following hard-charging runs from the midfield. The first was a left-footed shot after Pulisic had beat his defender in the penalty area and the second was an equally impressive finish, this time with his right foot and with the help of a deflection off Burnley defender Ben Mee.

The pair of goals staked Chelsea to a 2-0 lead at half-time as the Blues look to maintain their spot in the top four of the Premier League table.

Pulisic added his third early in the second half and Willain added another to give Chelsea a comfortable lead at Turf Moor.

The American becomes just the second player from the U.S. to score a hat trick in the Premier League, joining Clint Dempsey, who did it in 2012 for Fulham in a match against Newcastle.

As an added bonus, Pulisic scored a goal with his right foot, his left foot and from a header, making it a perfect hat trick to become the first Chelsea player to complete the feat since Didier Drogba did against Wigan in May 2010.

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard addressed Pulisic's lack of playing time earlier in October, saying he had to make "harsh" decisions in his liineup sometimes, but added his time would come.

Lampard said: "Sometimes I have to make harsh decisions and say something that I see can help their game but might not sound that nice because I want them to be the best, all of them. That's what I want them to be. That's part of the process.

"Christian Pulisic has a price tag. Ross Barkley is an international player. Mason Mount is an international player, Callum Hudson-Odoi just signed a new contract, Bayern Munich wanted to buy him last summer. He's an international player."

Kevin Pelton's NBA mailbag is back, featuring your questions on an experiment using a single free throw attempt for all points, Russell Westbrook's shooting numbers, the best way to enforce 3-point shooting fouls and how scoring relates to win projections.

You can tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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We'd expect fewer points per FTA then, right, since players are more likely to miss their first? Or do you expect the added value of the shot will generate 2nd-shot like focus?

— Manzell dot Beezy (@ManzellBeezy) September 26, 2019

This question stems from the discussion about the NBA experimenting with a single free throw for all points this season in the G League, as first reported last month by my colleague Zach Lowe. It's well established that this change would diminish scoring because players are historically more likely to make the second free throw of a trip to the line than the first one, but I wanted to dig deeper on how much that might matter.

With the help of ESPN Stats & Information research, I went through every free throw shot in the league during the 2018-19 regular season. As expected, players did shoot better on the second attempt (78.9%) than the first (73.6%). To explore further, I treated players' shooting on the first of two attempts as their "base" free throw percentage and then used this to get what we'd expect them to shoot on a variety of different attempts. (This adjustment is necessary because three-shot fouls and technical free throws typically go to better shooters.) That yields the following results for types of free throws attempted at least 100 times last season.

(To answer one question before you ask it: There are slightly fewer second free throws than first ones because of lane violations that wipe out the second attempt.)

Looking over all these free throws, the value of repetition is clear. I recall theorizing that players shot worse on technical free throws than overall because the circumstances were different without any other players on the line, but it turns out this isn't the case at all. They shoot worse simply because technicals are typically the first free throw taken. (I separated out cases where the same player shot multiple consecutive free throws, a tiny sample but one on which they did shoot better on the second attempt.) It's also intriguing that players actually shot worse last season on the third free throw on a 3-point foul than the second, which certainly might be noise in the data.

If players shoot the way they do on the first of two attempts, we'd expect shooting a single free throw for all points to reduce the value of a two-shot foul from 1.52 points per play to 1.47 and a three-shot foul from 2.55 points per play to 2.4 points per play. Overall, this would reduce scoring efficiency by about 0.5 points per 100 possessions once we factor in additional offensive rebounds -- probably not a noticeable difference to the naked eye, but a real one nonetheless.

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"I had a realization after listening to a story about James Harden and how getting fouled on a 3-pointer is now the most valuable shot in basketball. Right now the free throw average is about 75% for the NBA so a foul on a 2-point shot is worth ~1.5 points, but ~2.25 for a 3-pointer! This difference incentivizes one of everyone's biggest complaints about the NBA -- flailing appendages on 3-point attempts. It seems to me that giving only two foul shots on a 3-pointer is fair and would reduce the incentive to draw fouls." - Michael Lutter

Taking up a similar topic, my analysis of the first question shows this back-of-the-envelope calculation undervalues a three-shot foul in practice because players fouled in the act of shooting 3s are naturally better 3-point shooters. The actual 2.55 points per play on three-shot fouls is equivalent to shooting 85% on a 3-point attempt and an impossible 127% on a 2-point attempt.

The tricky line to walk on shooting fouls is we want them to be at least valuable enough to keep defenses from exploiting them by fouling intentionally without making them so valuable that offenses desperately seek them. We've probably hit the latter extreme with three-shot fouls. Could we return to two free throws for a shooting foul beyond the arc -- the rule from the introduction of the 3-point line through 1993-94 -- without going too far in the opposite direction?

I think the answer is yes. A shooting foul on a 3 would still be worth about 1.7 points on average, equivalent to making 56% of 3-pointers. According to Second Spectrum tracking, that's still way better than what the average player shot last season on the easiest possible 3-pointers -- uncontested catch-and-shoot attempts from the corner, hit 43.1% of the time. As long as we went back to three shots on a 3-point shooting foul in the final two minutes to prevent teams from fouling intentionally when up by three, I'd endorse this rule change.

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#peltonmailbag What do you project Westbrook to shoot from the line this year? Going from .845 to .656 in 2 seasons seems unprecedented.

— Moneyball16 (@Moneyball16) August 29, 2019

Staying on the free throw theme ... the short answer here is my SCHOENE projection system forecast 73.5% shooting from Westbrook, about what he shot two seasons ago (73.7%) and also close to the average of his previous three seasons (74.6%).

Now the long answer. Westbrook's decline isn't really unprecedented. Among players who have shot at least 100 free throw attempts two seasons apart since the ABA-NBA merger, the 18.9% difference between his 2016-17 and 2018-19 accuracy ranks just 15th largest. What is unusual is Westbrook doing so while attempting so many free throws. If we increase the sample to at least 400 attempts both seasons, only Tim Duncan from 2001-02 through 2003-04 (79.9% to 59.9%) has fallen off more since the merger.

History suggests some level of regression to the mean is likely. Returning to the larger sample of players who shot at least 100 free throws in Year 1, Year 3 and Year 4, that group saw their free throw percentages improve by an average of 9.5%. Add that to what Westbrook shot last season and you get 75.1%, again in the same ballpark as SCHOENE's projection. Odds are Westbrook will be a worse foul shooter than he was through 2016-17 (when he hit at least 80% of his free throws in all but one of his NBA campaigns) but a substantially better one than last season.

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"Is one point per game still thought of as worth 2.7 wins?" - David Locke

The Utah Jazz's radio broadcaster is referring to a rule of thumb that I believe John Hollinger of the Athletic popularized that each extra point per game in differential will typically translate to 2.7 wins over a full season. This formula gets used less frequently than Pythagorean wins, which is a more accurate predictor of win percentage at the extremes because it takes into account the total points scored per game in addition to differential. The difference in predictive accuracy is marginal, however, and having a value of one point per game in terms of wins is useful conceptually.

As it turns out, 2.7 wins might overstate the value of one point per game of differential now that games are higher scoring. Looking year by year at the relationship between differential and record, one point per game has indeed been worth 2.7 wins on average over the past two and a half decades (prorating the two lockout-shortened seasons to 82 games). But the last time it reached this mark was 2014-15, and last season's 2.4 wins per additional point was the lowest mark in that span.

Rationally, the more total points scored, the less important one additional point will be, and there's a linear -- albeit imperfect -- relationship between leaguewide points per game and the value of a point. Based on that, you'd expect an additional point per game to be worth about 2.5 wins given last season's scoring average. So I'd go with that as a value for now.