F1/ Formula E/ Motorsport Thread

Sure. Also at the end of a premier league season, let's turn the 90th minute of the final game into Danger Time, where the first goal scorer wins the title and the first to concede gets relegated, irrespective of position. Think of the conversations among the neutrals.

 

I haven't bought tickets for next year's British GP yet, I really need to think hard about spending the thick end of a grand on this "sport".

 

As a more casual, neutral follower of the sport, it was certainly an exciting, if a little unsatisfactory, end to the season.

Genuine and valid complaints on both sides all season and the stewards have been less than consistent.

I probably favoured Hamilton today and if he'd had a bit more luck he would have easily won that. But the cautious approach of his team to pitting and the introduction of the safety car worked against him.

He may be pushing the safety rules, to say the least, but I don't think anyone can deny that, over the whole season, Max deserves the title, especially as I think the Mercedes is probably the better car (as reflected in the constructors championship).

 

Don't understand this analogy
Has Hamilton been relegated to F2 ?

 

No but hopefully Latifi has.

 

I think they should have pitted him under the VSC. But if they’d pitted under the full safety car they’d have been behind Max, which seems like an unnecessary risk especially when he’s clearly going to get his elbows out in defence. And that being the case if Hamilton had pitted under the VSC he’d have still been on not quite as worn hards up against Max on new softs. I reckon the outcome would have been the same.

 

Had MV not pitted when the main safety car happened, wouldn’t he have been ahead of the backmarkers? He’d have had fresher hard tyres as well in that scenario.

 

He was already behind the 5 when the safety car came out. He was just about the lap the first of them when Latifi crashed I think. Hamilton has already cleared them in the previous few laps. Max had a big gap back to Perez, who obviously wasn’t going to overtake anyway, and so had a free stop. And while his fresher hards might have given him an advantage over Hamilton’s if he’d stayed out, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as pronounced as the advantage he got from being on fresh softs.

 

I think it was a perfectly satisfactory end to the season.

 

What a sport. The race director can orchestrate the result in any way he sees fit. F1 is just pointless.

Wont bother watching it in future.

 

In reality there was no way out of it for the FIA. There’s no way to unwind what happened in the penultimate lap and so the result was always going to stand. Mercedes were right to protest it though and hopefully the rules are made clearer in the future so this cannot happen again.

 

Well that's that then, brilliant season and great finalee, looking forward to next year under the new regulations.

 

Farcical

 

Pretty much the first F1 race I have seen for years - and can now understand why. A sport up its own backside with rules that make no sense

 

Isn't this essentially what you’ve been arguing about football for a good few years?

You’ll be back. We always come back.

 

No mention in the FIA response about the reasoning and justification behind the decision that was made.

Contravening two rules because it would be a shame to finish the championship under a safety car seems a little bit of a stretch to me.

In extreme situations I can understand why the race director can exercise powers to bend the rules. That wasn’t an extreme situation though. It was a bastardisation of the race result and unduly influenced a DWC result

Masi (or any future RDs) shouldn’t have carte Blanche to mould the race to what they feel is the most entertaining outcome. Work within the framework of the rules like the competitors have to. Don’t just push them aside in some sort of misguided attempt to make the racing better.

masi has to go. He’d lost the respect of the team principles long before this race and this has just proven he isn’t up to the job.

Also get some independent oversight of the FIA into place as no officials are ever capable of policing themselves.

f**king hell

 

There is a good parallel, but my axe in football is against bent referees.

I just hate cheating, bending the rules or just making things up as in this case. Sport has to be built on fairness. Where rules are upheld so the best man/team wins.

You cannot have a major sport like F1 resting on the whim of one man. It’s crazy that he has discretion to do whatever he likes. That can lead to corruption. Maybe Masi is honest but weak, maybe Red Bull paid him off, who knows. The F1 system allows that to happen and has to stop if it is to have any credibility.

 

Race director broke the rules, Hamilton is the true champion in the eyes of fair minded people, he was literally robbed of the title. Looking forward to watching George Russell wipe the floor with everyone next season though.

 

Mercedes are taking this to the court of arbitration. Good for them. For the sake of the sport this farcical result cannot be allowed to stand.

 

Would be interested to see why appeal was dismissed... We wanted them to race doesn't cut it

 

I think they’re basically relying on the wide discretion given to the race director in the rules to manage a safety car period as he sees fit.

 

Masi had three options.

1) Allow all cars to pass, ending the race under safety car which would have caused as much furore as there was definitely a way to allow racing time.

2) Continue but with the others between Hamilton and Verstappen and Hamilton probably wins.

3) What he ended up doing, leaving Verstappen with a chance.

In hindsight, it should have been option 2 but it's far better than option 1. We wanted to see racing and we got racing. I have no complaints over what happened and it adds more fuel to the fire for next season.

If the shoe was on the other foot and Hamilton won like that, would we see these complaints? No chance.

To change the result off the track would be far, far more damaging for the sport.

 

Option 3 did not given Verstappen a chance, it handed him the race. It was a formality for him to overtake on new tyres. Anyone that follows F1 knew what the result would be after the decision.

If they wanted to make it a race, then red flag and give Hamilton the chance to put on new tyres. Then it’s fair.

It was nothing more than race fixing. Mercedes has every right to take this to arbitration as everyone can see the injustice of it all. If it drags the sport through the mud, it’s a situation entirely of the FIA’s own making.

 

Imagine caring about this 'sport'.

LMAO

 

From who? If you mean from Red Bull then yes, without a shadow of a doubt.

Option 1 would have been something of an anti-climax but would have preserved the hard won status quo of the race to that point.

Option 3 also gave Verstappen far more than ‘a chance’ and I’m not sure how you really consider what we saw to be racing. I accept it briefly had the appearance of racing but sort of in the same way Watford holding out for 20 minutes in the cup final gave the appearance we were in with a chance of beating City and winning the cup. (@GoingDown FOOTBALL ANALOGY KLAXON)

 

Max had an excellent overtake and Hamilton went wheel-to-wheel with Verstappen in the slip.

I guess everyone is going to argue about it until March, but I thought it was entertaining. No allegiances here, all my favourites retired long ago, just happy to see some excitement.

I would be surprised to see Masi there next year, though.

 

Any does mean All what else can it mean, So WTF is that all about?

Furthermore as I understand it the FIA rules are designed to make sure that the person who deserves to win the race does so! Therefore citing their own definition of the rules if Article 15.3 is the deciding factor, how has the race director decided in favour of Verstappen?

Lets look at the facts: -

Before the safety car LH had a massive lead over MV and had done so for the vast majority of the race, he even took the lead off the grid from MV and went on to establish his well deserved lead.

Then bang the safety car is deployed with 4 laps left so MV was able to make a pit stop to put on fresh soft tyres which we all know are the fastest over a short distance. Then in steps Horner screaming in the ear of the race director "that we only need one lap of racing" and low and behold the RACE DIRECTOR decides to overrule Article 48.12 and basically hand the race to MV on a plate.

Hamilton had about an ELEVEN SECOND lead before the safety car was deployed, but that lead was reduced to virtually nothing under the safety car, and lets not forget that MV also changed to the soft tyres under the safety car giving him a vast rubber advantage over LH.

Then the final twist of the knife is the race director decides to overrule Article 48.12 alledgedly to make the race more exciting, but in fact that decision basically handed the title to MV as LH had hard tyres that were over 40 laps old and MV was on fresh soft tyres, which basically made that last lap NO CONTEST!!!

If the actual black and white rules had been observed, and not only that but if THE SPIRIT of the rules had been invoked by the race director there should have only been one outcome, even though it would have been less exciting because the race would have ended under the safety car, however the right man would now be the world champion and that man is...

LEWIS HAMILTON​

 

I agree - Mercedes are effectively representing the teams against the governing body. If the rules can be overridden to manufacture a "spectacle", then the "sport" might find financial backers more difficult to come by in the future.

 

F1 can't have a situation where, one minute stewards re instructing teams to change wings which are tenths of a mm out of rules, and then with the other hand a race director is making rules up on the spot

This is beyond who wins the WDC and is to do with the reputation and future of the sport which has been left in the gutter

I hope Mercedes do take this to court of arbitration, and if no luck there to a high court

Race directors and stewards have got to be forced to follow the rule book, or F1 is RIP

 

I don’t think that’s correct. Many pro-Hamilton fans on here thought Lewis should give the place back earlier. I’d personally hate for him to win the title based on a race director trying to spice things up.

But I agree changing the result now would, if possible, damage the sport even more.

The correct thing to do, if they couldn’t let all the cars past, would be to restart the race with the cars ahead on triple waved blue flags. Max would probably overtake them all on the first or second straight, and he might still have caught Lewis given the discrepancy with the tyres, but it would at least be a fight.

People who found the final lap exciting were people who don’t understand the difference between brand new softs and 40 lap old hards. What he ended up doing was giving Max the most inevitable pass in the world.