With Nelson Piquet‘s crash at last year’s Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix established as intentional, I do hope we don’t start seeing every bump and scrape being over-scrutinising.

FIA stewards overreacted to recent events earlier in the season, when they suspended Renault from the European Grand Prix after Fernando Alonso’s wheel came off in Hungary. Happening the day after Felipe Massa’s freak accident, and a week after the tragic death of Henry Surtees, the stewards clearly wanted to come down hard on any sign of safety being endangered. But it was an overreaction, and the suspension was overturned on appeal.

Thankfully, first lap aside, serious crashes in Formula 1 are relatively rare, so I don’t think we’ll see much for stewards to over-scrutinise.

Could other championships see the negative press that’s been generated by this affair, and err too far on the side of caution? It’s touring car series where I think there’s most room for overreaction, because team orders can play a pretty significant role, and contact is no rare thing.

In the WTCC, Augusto Farfus is now BMW’s nominated title contender, so in the first Portugal race Andy Priaulx dropped out of the points from 4th, and Jorg Muller from 7th, just so Farfus could get a single point for 8th.

And in the BTCC, Team RAC drafted in Anthony Reid to boost the team to three cars, to aid Colin Turkington’s title hunt. That was to compete with VX Racing using Matt Neal and Andrew Jordan to help Fabrizio Giovanardi.

I’m not suggesting that a touring car driver would intentionally crash to help their team – partly because a lot of them have personal sponsors to think about.

But it’s quite conceivable that, for example, the BTCC title could be decided by an incident involving Turkington and a Vauxhall, or Giovanardi and a Team RAC BMW.

Incidents do, of course, need investigating. But in the wake of yesterday’s judgement, it’s important that the authorities keep some perspective, and don’t get completely paranoid.