Reject of the Race - Russia 2021 (POLL)

[Londoner]

1. Yuki Tsunoda. Absolutely appalling performance, seemingly never ran higher than 17th all day. Mazepin was only 20 seconds behind at the end, in a car which is the modern-day incarnation of Forti.

2. Aston Martin. Team mate collisions, especially one as daft as that, always merit a mention.

[Klon]

1. Yuki Tsunoda. Absolutely appalling performance, seemingly never ran higher than 17th all day. Mazepin was only 20 seconds behind at the end, in a car which is the modern-day incarnation of Forti.

2. Aston Martin. Team mate collisions, especially one as daft as that, always merit a mention.

Replace Aston Martin with Lance Stroll alone and you got things covered.

[Aerond]

Just one nomination from me

TV DIRECTOR Managed to miss most of the overtakes, interesting action and happenings for one hours and 40 minutes straight.

[Pinkd56]

1. Tsunoda - get out

2. Lando - listen to your engineer

3. TV director - ???

[Aislabie]

It's a rough one, but I think you have to nominate Lando Norris - he overruled his engineer and it cost him seven or eight places and about ninety seconds on the track

[Fetzie]

1. TV directors: did we see any action outside of replays?

2. Lando Norris: Your team can see the weather radar, you can't.

[Enforcer]

Going to say the late rain. Obviously subjective, but imo a rare case where it made the race worse.

I'll also give an honourable mention to the "Dummy Pitstop" rule. It didn't make a difference in the end cos of the rain, but this rule should either be enforced or scrapped.

[RAK]

1) Sergio Perez: Verstappen made it from last to P2, albeit taking advantage of sudden inclement weather conditions, making his engine change almost free. Perez started closer to the front and only snagged a couple of points. A mismatch in quality.

2) Yuki Tsunoda: After early promise, he's been as lacklustre as the other rookies coming in from F2, but in a considerably faster car. Gasly may not have had the best day at the office today, but Tsunoda only managed to keep ahead of Mazepin on pace.

Dishonourable Mentions: Lance Stroll - what was that move all about?; Lando Norris' judgement - messed up a potential maiden win by pushing beyond sensibility; Race Directors - missing a large number of the overtakes; Me - for deciding to use double points in the Predicament Predictions Championship at a race where rain was forecast.

[Shadaza]

TV Direction: So much missed action, even excusing the hectic nature of the end of the race it was atrocious throughout.

For example, Perez pit from the lead, had a slow stop and emerged just ahead of Verstappen. None of this seen live as we focused on dead action and only the pitstop was replayed.

Lance Stroll Had an incredible lap 1, everything went very southwards after that. Wrong strategy, hitting team mate, spinning into Gasly.

[Cynon]

Lando Norris -- Threw away a maiden Grand Prix win by not listening to his engineers. Easy call. I almost shouldn't have to do a #2 vote.

Lance Stroll, and the entire #18 side of the Aston Martin garage -- Stupid driving, stupid tire strategy, stupid everything

[Nessafox]

As much as it hurts, i got to give it to Lando Norris decision making. And Yuki Tsunoda for just not being anywhere at all.

Stroll did the unforgivable sin of hitting his teammate, tv directors were clueless again, Perez was once again anonymous and Bottas might have lucked himself into a good finish with the right call for intermediates, he was however nowhere during the whole race.

[Ducktanian]

Norris' decision making under pressure

The Race Director

Tsunoda

People nominating Perez as ROTR

[IceG]

(1) Bottas - when your team principal has to tell you to get on with it and you somehow luck into 5th position. Without the rain that race would have been reason enough to swap Russell in early.

(2) Perez - your job is to stop Mercedes scoring points. You do not do that by starting 8th and finishing 9th in the second best car on the grid.

[TomPryce]

I cannot possibly nominate Lando. The team failed him by not forcing the issue with him.

For me, its Yuki. Useless.

DHM to Gio. He was also useless.

[Rob Dylan]

I'm going to say that TV direction beats all else for me.

Also Pérez got screwed over by a 9 second pitstop, and he would have been an easy third had the rain not arrived. I couldn't nominate him.

The rookies again shared the basement all day, whatever the weather

[Miguel98]

1. Lando Norris - I'm sorry Lando. That hurt. You are the best driver of the year, you did a 10/10 race. And then you didn't listen to your engineer, who could see the damn radar. I can see why you stayed out but given how much the time loss ended up being, I can't help but to put it as #1.

2. Lance Stroll - Did a great race up until the final 5 laps where he hit every damn thing out there.

Honorable mention to Yuki Tsunoda for putting up a horrible drive, Valtteri Bottas for the luckiest P5 on earth, to the TV Director not realizing this was a 10/10 race and for Red Bull for doing a horrible strategy that worked in the end.

[dr-baker]

I'm going to say Norris, simply for the LOL of seeing him nominated for both IIDOTR and ROTR in the same race...

[mario]

1. Lando Norris - I'm sorry Lando. That hurt. You are the best driver of the year, you did a 10/10 race. And then you didn't listen to your engineer, who could see the damn radar. I can see why you stayed out but given how much the time loss ended up being, I can't help but to put it as #1.

I would caveat it by noting that, whilst Norris did ultimately push to stay out on the slicks, there is an argument that McLaren perhaps does have to take some of the criticism there as well.

Now, McLaren had told Norris that the rain was expected to remain at the same intensity until the end, and we know there was the radio message from Norris angrily rejecting the suggestion from the pit wall to switch to intermediates. Against that, it is the case that, when Hamilton switched to the intermediates, McLaren did then send a message back to Norris telling him that he had to stick to the slick tyres and hope he could keep it on the road if he wanted to stick to that strategy.

You can see why McLaren went for it in the hope he could have held on, but given that he had such a buffer to those behind him, there is also an argument that they really should have insisted he pitted. Even if the win might have slipped from his grasp, a podium finish was still there for the taking and would still have been a fairly decent prize - I think both parties should take some blame, as McLaren were a bit too passive and should have overridden Norris in that situation.

(2) Perez - your job is to stop Mercedes scoring points. You do not do that by starting 8th and finishing 9th in the second best car on the grid.

That 9th place finish owed a lot to Red Bull leaving him out for so long when everybody else had switched to the intermediates, given he'd managed to get up to 3rd just before the rain started falling.

I'd actually say that Red Bull really deserve the nomination there - they switched Verstappen over on lap 48, but waited two more laps to switch Perez when they would have seen Sainz, whom Perez was battling with, had also pitted that same lap. Why did they leave Perez out for that long?

I'd agree with the suggestions for Tsunoda there - he went into the race weekend talking about how he expected to perform decently, but underperformed in qualifying - his race pace, meanwhile, was just utterly dreadful.

OK, the one slight thing that could be said to be the fault of the team rather than Tsunoda was that, when he pitted on lap 47, they fitted a set of soft slick tyres, rather than intermediates. However, at most that seems to have only cost him one place, dropping him back to 18th, which then went back to 17th with Latifi's retirement.

That said, Gasly's performance wasn't exactly stunning either given that he was 15th before the rain started falling - as a whole, the AlphaTauri team really performed quite poorly.

[rachel1990]

1- Yuki Tsunoda- Its going from bad to worse for him- If he doesn't improve in 2022 he might be shown the door quite quickly.

2- Aston Martin- Talking of things going from bad to worse- AND Lance is racking up the penalty points- the Hulk might be needed after all

Hm- TV direction- Overtake? Nah
HM- Mclaren and Norris- not to kick the guy when down but if he had only pitted... However, Mclaren should have forced the issue and told him to pit.
HM Mercedes- Yes Hammy won the race. However, plenty of questionable decisions all weekend from the team especially changing Bottas engine 1 race after he did that in Italy- If they were planning for Bottas to hold up Max then Bottas put a deserved two fingers up at that idea. Driving wasn't amazing from both Hamilton and Bottas too overall in the weekend, especially since this is a Merc track and all the cards were in their favor.

[Hermann95]

Yuki Tsunoda - another horrible performance all weekend.
Lance Stroll - very good start, but the rest went from meh to very bad afterwards.

DHM: Lando and his engineer. I think both parties are to blame here, but I fully understand why they took the decision as they did. In the end, he would have got an easy podium if he stopped earlier for inters.
DHM: TV director. Stop drinking so much Vodka before a race

[Alextrax52]

Really don’t get why people voted for Perez here. Would have taken a podium without the rain and who knows how close he’d have been to the leaders without the bad tire change.

Anyway

Valterri Bottas: Let’s not sugarcoat it here, that race performance was worse than what he delivered in Baku. At least there we knew he’d be crap because of how he performed all weekend but I expected his post-departure announcement form to continue on a track he’s always shone to continue.

Even with the engine penalty the Mercedes was clearly the car to beat so he should have scythed his way through the field but instead he surrendered to Verstappen who along with Leclerc did a much better recovery job in a worse car and would have limped home 14th until he lucked in with the rain.

Lando Norris/McLaren: I think they’ve both got to share the blame for how that ended. The Team failed to spot the second blanket of rain quickly enough but ultimately it was the Driver who wanted to take the gamble and stay out. Not everyone gets away with it like Brad Binder.

Lance Stroll: Did a solid job for about 47 laps. Completely lost his head in the remaining 6.

AlphaTauri Strategists:

Gasly wanted fresh tyres in Qualifying, they ignored him

Gasly wanted to pit for Inters ASAP in the race, they ignored him

Tsunoda pitted in the first group, they stuck him on Soft tyres.

Someone needs a P45

[James1978]

It's between Bottas and Tsunoda for me. Bottas let Max through WAY too easily and Yuki was nowhere. He can count himself lucky that Albon has signed for Williams as he'd be a prime candidate to take his seat otherwise.

[UncreativeUsername37]

1. Tsunoda - useless
2. Giovinazzi - all the stats sites say he was in the race but I didn't see him

[mario]

Might I throw a curveball into the picture by suggesting another way in which Masi is not exactly covering himself in glory this weekend? We saw that Alonso went wide at the first corner and went flat out across the run off area, with the result that he was up to 5th place ahead of Hamilton and Ricciardo.

It seems that Alonso had been been planning to cut across the run off area for exactly that purpose, as on the reconnaissance laps to the pits, he was simulating that move. As noted on the Racefans website, Masi's justification was that Alonso was technically ahead of both Hamilton and Ricciardo when they began turning in to the corner - so, because he had technically overtaken them before he went off the track, he could hold onto the position and only had to let Russell and Stroll back past him.

What Masi doesn't appear to have considered, though, is whether Alonso was only ahead of those two drivers because he intentionally did not try to slow down to take the corner normally, given his plan was to cut across the run off area. Some have wondered if it is a case of Alonso deliberately trying to provoke Masi into enforcing the rules on overtaking off the track more thoroughly on the first lap, or whether it was a case of simply exploiting the weak enforcement to the full, but Masi's response has been to deny that there was any problem.

[Rob Dylan]

Some have wondered if it is a case of Alonso deliberately trying to provoke Masi into enforcing the rules on overtaking off the track more thoroughly on the first lap, or whether it was a case of simply exploiting the weak enforcement to the full, but Masi's response has been to deny that there was any problem.

Judging by Alonso's comments back in the first half of the season about this very problem, it does very much seem like Alonso pointing out the lack of rule enforcement by blatantly and deliberately breaking the rules himself to see what happens...

And the answer is nothing

[Batty]

Hate, hate to do this.

Lance Stroll - "Can you stay out?" "Yes" - Then hits the barrier but still continues. Reenters the track and spins Gasly around and before that didn't know where Seb was and pushed him into the wall. Unfortunate cause he was looking good before all that happened.

Gio - Was just nowhere in the race. Yeah, I know he had radio issues but in quali he spun, in FP he spun and caused a red flag. Dude is so done in F1 for the time being.


------

Regarding Norris - It's a tough call. Hindsight it looks bad cause it cost him a win and if he pitted a lap earlier, he could have gotten 2nd instead of 7th.But McLaren didn't overrule. Ricciardo same deal but Daniel made the call to change.

Yuki - AT were pretty meh the whole race. Dunno why they put him on softs on Lap 47.

Perez - Bad pit stop and by the time he changed tires for inters, it didn't help him. He was driving a solid race.

Bottas - Engine penalty dropped him down to 16th which wasn't going to be ideal. Then Mercedes put him on a high downforce setup (per Karun) compared to Max who had a low downforce for overtaking (again per Karun). So the cards were stacked against him especially once he got into that DRS train. Also luck plays a huge thing. He was one of the early ones to pit and it paid off. He called it.

[Rob Dylan]

Poll is at the top of this thread!

Four options are available folks. Get your vote in by the next 48 hours to determine our Reject of the Race from Sochi

[Londoner]

With a result which may be a first in F1R/GPR history, find out who scooped ROTR around Sochi!