The F1 thread

PC_Dave

Nitefly said:

Renault stripped of their points from Japan:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/50161967

Not surprised really - apparently in direct contravention of article 27.1 of the regulations around driver aides.

boogieman

Nitefly said:

Renault stripped of their points from Japan:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/50161967

Banned from taking part in Mexico too, unless they win an appeal. 

Cols

boogieman said:

Nitefly said:

Renault stripped of their points from Japan:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/50161967

Banned from taking part in Mexico too, unless they win an appeal. 

I haven’t seen anything about a Mexico ban.  The only reason I could see for this would be if they were unable to remove it from the cars before the race weekend.

Guitar_Slinger

Fretwired said:

Breaking: Just read Hamilton has an issue with Petronus. 

Hardly surprising - even Harry Potter took a few goes to get it right. 

boogieman

Cols said:

boogieman said:

Nitefly said:

Renault stripped of their points from Japan:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/50161967

Banned from taking part in Mexico too, unless they win an appeal. 

I haven’t seen anything about a Mexico ban.  The only reason I could see for this would be if they were unable to remove it from the cars before the race weekend.

Yeah sorry, my bad. I saw a link to an article that said they were banned from the next GP and assumed it was Mexico. Turned out to be an older post and it was Japan. 

Fretwired

Guitar_Slinger said:

Fretwired said:

Breaking: Just read Hamilton has an issue with Petronus. 

Hardly surprising - even Harry Potter took a few goes to get it right. 

:-)

Hamilton might need help from Harry Potter this weekend. It would be good to see Max and Charles go wheel to wheel for a change.

Fretwired

Poor old Max ..should have kept his mouth shut. Three place grid penalty leaves Ferrari on pole.

skullfunkerry

Fretwired said:

Poor old Max ..should have kept his mouth shut. Three place grid penalty leaves Ferrari on pole.

He totally deserved that though. Keeping your foot down when you don't know what's round the corner is just plain stupid - think back to Fernando Alonso hitting the wreckage of Mark Webber's Jaguar in Brazil

Cols

I’m afraid that not being allowed to stay on a hot lap through an accident zone is pretty entry level stuff.  

Keeping the foot down in qualifying while you can see someone ahead is busy having an accident is a dick move.

Fretwired

Cols said:

I’m afraid that not being allowed to stay on a hot lap through an accident zone is pretty entry level stuff.  

Keeping the foot down in qualifying while you can see someone ahead is busy having an accident is a dick move.

I agree ..I was being sarcastic ... why didn't the stewards pick it up? It was only when Max admitted it that they acted.
 

prowla

He'd really got no excuse; it someone had gone off there, then who knows if he might've had the same issue; his team should've told him.

He does seem to have an excessive "someone else's problem" attitude, but I guess all top sportspeople have to be quite egocentric.

skullfunkerry

I've just watched the highlights on Ch4 and they showed the press conference clip before the race. Max was unbelievable: he said "I think we (i.e. the drivers) know best" and when asked about safety sighed and said "do we really have to go back to safety again?". You could sense the disbelief in the room. He just didn't care: his response was basically "Fine, delete the lap time, my second best was still good enough for pole".

It's a shame: he's a great driver, he doesn't need to play so dirty

prowla

So, Hamilton/Merc won the race, but the headlines seem to be "yeah, but he hasn't won the title yet".

I haven't watched it yet, as it was on too late, but I might skim through it this evening.

thumpingrug

It was a good race.  Brave strategy to keep Hamilton out there so long on the hard tires, and Lewis was clearly uncertain of this from his radio comments. Bottas also did incredibly well with a rebuilt car.   Lots of action and overtaking down the field (though aided significantly by DRS).   Max deserved the penalty for being a bit of a twat.    With Lewis now only needing 3 points on Valtteri it starts to look realistic that he could do it at the next race.  

Cols

It looks like Max wrongly believed that the only potential impact of ignoring yellow flags would be to have the lap he was on deleted, which would’ve still left him on pole.  I suspect that, with that in mind, he thought that gleefully stating that he blasted through waved yellows fit rather well with his ‘I’m a bad boy racer, yeah’ persona.

The journalists evidently picked up on it as they returned to the topic to ask all three drivers their opinion, at which point Max doubled down with “I think we know what we are doing - otherwise we would not be driving an F1 car. It's qualifying and, yeah, you go for it.”  I doubt LeClerc sitting next to him was very impressed with Max’s ‘yellow flags, pfft’ outlook.

After admitting in front of a room full of journalists that he saw waved yellows and decided not to lift, the stewards had little option but to investigate.  No idea why they didn’t in the first place, but Max seems to enjoy a bit of a special status with regard to judgements about on-track behaviour, and gets away with things where other drivers would be penalised.  Possibly the massive Heineken hoardings around every track have something to do with it.

prowla

I think the stewards have got themselves into a bit of a pickle, because they've started saying/implying that the rules are not set in stone.

They really need to get themselves sorted out!

Fretwired

Good race .. shows that track psition is everything. I didn't realise that Hamilton's car was damaged - a big chunk of the floor came off after he clashed with Max.

And I may be cynical, but I wonder if Hamilton's constant bleating about his tyres is designed to feed false information to his rivals. He seems to do it a lot and often wins the race having wrong footed Ferrari - seemed to have happened again yesterday.

One good idea to spice things up - force teams to use all three compunds of tyre in a race.

boogieman

Fretwired said:

Good race .. shows that track psition is everything. I didn't realise that Hamilton's car was damaged - a big chunk of the floor came off after he clashed with Max.

And I may be cynical, but I wonder if Hamilton's constant bleating about his tyres is designed to feed false information to his rivals. He seems to do it a lot and often wins the race having wrong footed Ferrari - seemed to have happened again yesterday.

One good idea to spice things up - force teams to use all three compunds of tyre in a race.

Make them use full wets for five laps as well to make it even more interesting. 

stickyfiddle

Fretwired said:

Good race .. shows that track psition is everything. I didn't realise that Hamilton's car was damaged - a big chunk of the floor came off after he clashed with Max.

And I may be cynical, but I wonder if Hamilton's constant bleating about his tyres is designed to feed false information to his rivals. He seems to do it a lot and often wins the race having wrong footed Ferrari - seemed to have happened again yesterday.

One good idea to spice things up - force teams to use all three compunds of tyre in a race.

My dad went to a talk by an ex-Williams engineer a while back. He agreed with the theory that Ham & Bono use coded messages to say one thing about tyres while meaning another; e.g. “I’m starting to lose the rears” might mean “I can do 10 more laps at this pace” while “the fronts are overheating” might actually mean “we’re good for another 15”.

it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

skullfunkerry

Cols said:

It looks like Max wrongly believed that the only potential impact of ignoring yellow flags would be to have the lap he was on deleted, which would’ve still left him on pole.  I suspect that, with that in mind, he thought that gleefully stating that he blasted through waved yellows fit rather well with his ‘I’m a bad boy racer, yeah’ persona.

The journalists evidently picked up on it as they returned to the topic to ask all three drivers their opinion, at which point Max doubled down with “I think we know what we are doing - otherwise we would not be driving an F1 car. It's qualifying and, yeah, you go for it.”  I doubt LeClerc sitting next to him was very impressed with Max’s ‘yellow flags, pfft’ outlook.

After admitting in front of a room full of journalists that he saw waved yellows and decided not to lift, the stewards had little option but to investigate.  No idea why they didn’t in the first place, but Max seems to enjoy a bit of a special status with regard to judgements about on-track behaviour, and gets away with things where other drivers would be penalised.  Possibly the massive Heineken hoardings around every track have something to do with it.

It was kind of an amazing bit of TV, really. You could hear the room going silent around him as he was saying it...