The F1 Thread

[Mark Connolly]

12 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

 

Nico does not give a single f**k. It's glorious

[superwell87]

The tears and seethe continues. The comments on the BBC website are brilliant and are worth a laugh. And are also predictable. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

[Hammerafc]

The tears and seethe continues. The comments on the BBC website are brilliant and are worth a laugh. And are also predictable. 

One article about Honda winning their first title since 1991 was followed up by could this be the start of a Honda dominence obviously forgetting that it was Hondas last race in F1.

[JamesP_81]

47 minutes ago, superwell87 said:

The tears and seethe continues. The comments on the BBC website are brilliant and are worth a laugh. And are also predictable. 

Just had a quick look , holy sh*t there is some amount of seethe going on there ! 

[Hammerafc]

I think if Mercedes looked at the incidents today mirrored they would have had no issues. Would Mercedes have expected the FIA to act after the first lap incident if it had been reversed = Yes. Would Mercedes expected the lapped cars to get out of the way before the last lap if Hamilton had been in 2nd = Yes. Motor racing certainly isn't the fairest sport but over the whole season these things go both ways for the teams. It's not just 1 race.

[IainMorton]

20 minutes ago, Hammerafc said:

I think if Mercedes looked at the incidents today mirrored they would have had no issues. Would Mercedes have expected the FIA to act after the first lap incident if it had been reversed = Yes. Would Mercedes expected the lapped cars to get out of the way before the last lap if Hamilton had been in 2nd = Yes. Motor racing certainly isn't the fairest sport but over the whole season these things go both ways for the teams. It's not just 1 race.

I don’t think the problem is letting the lapped cars past but the rules state that once lapped cars are past the leader then the safety car returns to the pits at the end of the following lap, not half a lap later like what happened today. Basically they changed the rules so they could have one final lap of racing, which should have ended under SC conditions as per the rules.

Edited December 12, 2021 by IainMorton

[parsforlife]

Mercades coming at this with Leslie Deans vibs.

Take your medicine.

[Hammerafc]

That is the standard operating procedure but the race director has control of the safety car situation and can vary this if required. This is a big issue with F1 as you get all this lobbying by teams throughout the race such as Mercedes lobbying for no safety car earlier in the race. Both teams had wanted the championship decided on the track and the Director facilitated that. If reversed I'm sure both teams would have had the opposite argument. Its certainly not the first time this kind of situation has happened.

[garybs]

Glorious

[jimmy boo]

Glorious

Most entertaining

[IainMorton]

Soon…

[peasy23]

Eddie Jordan was on breakfast tv this morning. He was asked about all the radio chat between team principals and Masi, and said that in his day Charlie Whiting would have told him to bugger off and do his own job, and let him get on with his. The way it should be imo.

He also thinks it was wrong that Hamilton wasn't told to give Max the place back on lap 1 as he clearly gained an advantage.

[Jinky67]

Michael Masi is turning F1 into a reality Netflix show. The decision he made yesterday to allow some lapped cars to pass didn’t make it more exciting it made the outcome inevitable as there was no way Hamilton would be able to defend.

Hamilton didn’t deserve to lose the WDC in this way especially considering he had a 11 second lead prior the SC and Verstappen also doesn’t deserve his title being overshadowed in the manner it is.

The integrity of F1 is in tatters after this season, can see Mercedes going all the way to CAS 

 

[V.Aye.R]

52 minutes ago, Jinky67 said:

Michael Masi is turning F1 into a reality Netflix show. The decision he made yesterday to allow some lapped cars to pass didn’t make it more exciting it made the outcome inevitable as there was no way Hamilton would be able to defend.

Hamilton didn’t deserve to lose the WDC in this way especially considering he had a 11 second lead prior the SC and Verstappen also doesn’t deserve his title being overshadowed in the manner it is.

The integrity of F1 is in tatters after this season, can see Mercedes going all the way to CAS 

 

Hi Lewis, safe flight home mate. 

[V.Aye.R]

Regardless of how you see the events yesterday, it was the biggest and most exciting season I can remember since I started watching in 1998. The race was pretty much gone for RB but they rolled the dice and got a 6.

Was a free to air race and got a lot of attention. I was getting texts coming in from people who don't watch it asking questions etc. 

If that season long battle finished behind a safety car then it would have been unforgivable. 

Mercedes influence on the sport worries me. Toto Wolff comes across like a jumped up bully imo. People also forget some of the stuff that went on in the past (Schumacher getting pushed out of gravel traps etc). All the seethe is very typical of the entitled little Englander mentality that you see across other sports. Button and Hill (the former being quite a lucky champion imo) were absolutely rattled and Rosberg was grinning ear to ear. Great to see. 

Yesterday was a mixture of RB tactics paying off, some luck and hard racing which any genuine F1 fan has been starved of for years.

If Mercedes spit the dummy  when the Arbitration falls through and threaten to walk away then good riddance imo. They've had a lot of fortunate moments this season and arguably Verstappen should have had this in the bag a few races ago. 

[Jinky67]

19 minutes ago, V.Aye.R said:

Hi Lewis, safe flight home mate. 

I’m not a Mercedes fan mate nor do I particularly like Lewis Hamilton however I’ve been a F1 fan for 35 years and what I saw yesterday was embarrassing for the sport. When you start changing or applying your own interpretation of the rules to influence the outcome of a race for entertainment value you can’t really consider yourself a sport especially when that interpretation loads the dice for someone who was never actually in the race for 57 out of the 58 laps.

 

[scottsdad]

Having thought about this, Mercedes made two bad calls that ultimately did it. Twice Verstappen dove into the puts (under VSC then again under SC) for brand new tyres. Mercedes left Hamilton out on old Hards, which even he was questioning. They did not cover the threat. 

On the Safety Car, did Wolff expect the race to finish behind the SC? Certainly many drivers came in for new tyres so there was an expectation that the race would restart. Normal procedures meant that cars unlapped themselves - so what was Wolff thinking? Mercedes have themselves to blame as much as the race director. 

The race management was a shambles though. Lap 1, Hamilton was given a huge advantage. And at the end the flip-flopping of decision making was just wrong.

The seethe is relentless - I watched BBC Breakfast this morning and Dan Walker was talking about how it was "farcical". The narrative is certainly that Lewis woz robbed by the race director. A few folk asking how a 12 second lead could be wiped out by an "unfair" safety car...well yes, that's what happens when a full SC is deployed.

[vikingTON]

If Hamilton and Mercedes didn't want to be at a tyre disadvantage from a safety car restart, they could have stopped for tyres. They didn't though.

It's nobody else's fault then that a combination of gubbins rubber and crap driving (Hamilton relying on their beloved DRS overtake button on the straight) saw them blow the title. Perez kept a faster Hamilton behind for a full lap. Hamilton barely managed the first sector. 

[codfish]

Obviously far easier for Red Bull to gamble in the circumstances, but they deserve credit for making the most of the situation yesterday - generally speaking, they trump Mercedes when it comes to strategy. Pretty sure they were ready to do the opposite of what Hamilton did at the VSC and the Safety Car to get track position.

Not sure what Mercedes hope to achieve by appealing either - unless they get Verstappen done for a safety car infringement, there can’t be grounds to amend the classification. If the referee makes a bad decision, the beneficiary can’t be retrospectively punished.