Reject of the Race - Azerbaijan 2022

[Frogfoot9013]

Post your ROTR nominations for the Azerbaijan GP here. I didn't watch the race but I presume some of ye did.

[Hermann95]

Ferrari, no explanation needed

[Meatwad]

Ferrari: Congratulations to Max Verstappen and Red Bull for winning both championships! Completely ridiculous, three wins in a row thrown away for Leclerc.

[pi314159]

1. Ferrari - double mechanical failure
2. AlphaTauri - Sending Tsunoda back out with a rear wing held together by tape was simply irresponsible, especially on a track like Baku

[IceG]

(1) Ferrari - golf clap

[Enforcer]

Ferrari Power Units - Pretty bad, lads.

Alpha Tauri Duct Tape - Was considering nominating the whole team for not pitting their drivers under the VSC, but despite this they still got Gasly into 5th which is a good result for them.
So we'll just go for the carney fix on Tsunoda's car.

Of course, what if the FIA ultimately do not take any further action against AT for it? Should they be ROTR instead?

Honourable mentions:

Latifi - 2 penalties, obliterated by Albon, and last runner. Desolation. This guy will not see the season out.

Mercedes crippling their drivers and blaming the rules - Yeah, porpoising is an issue, but most aren't having it the way you are. Raise the ride height and finish further down the order if you care about your drivers that much.

[golic_2004]

1. Ferrari & their engines

2. Alpha Tauri with their duct tape. Sure, I guess it worked out at the end but I call that stupid and dangerous.

[Alextrax52]

Ferrari: 4 of the 6 cars not finishing with mechanical failure. What more can you say? May as well crown Red Bull champions now.

AlphaTauri’s DRS fix: Great speed, not so great method to fix an issue which I thought should have warranted retirement.

HM’s

Lance Stroll: Obliterated by Vettel all weekend. Even by the low standards we expect from him the gulf was massive. Less said about his qualifying performance the better.

Valterri Bottas: Easily his weakest weekend since joining Alfa.

Nicolas Latifi: A daft penalty for ignoring blue flags. Williams must be running out of patience

[Aerond]

Ferrari PUs - 66% failure rate

Alpha Tauri aero solutions: that tape :L

[Rob Dylan]

Lance Stroll in qualifying - Crashing twice in two minutes is the stuff of legends. Gave me quite the chuckle.

McLaren drivers whining - My goodness did the "battle" we were subjected to between the two of them get insufferable quickly. Geez oh man did I get irritated by constantly having to listen to "let me past" "no I'm faster" "what about meeeee" for a solid 10-20% of the broadcasted race. Probably just a coincidence, but with recent news surrounding Ricciardo's probable team departure, it seems taht the all-so-rosy environment wasn't so rosy today.

[RAK]

1) Ferrari power units: Not only killing the chances of the Ferrari team, but scuppering the races of Zhou and Magnussen as well.

2) Lance Stroll's qualifying efforts: Comical.

Dishonourable Mention: Mercedes ride height debacle - Trying to blame the rules for something of their own making and causing physical harm to their drivers in the process is not a good look; Alpha Tauri's low-tech fix - Combine that with the car kicking in Le Mans and we've got a real redneck engineering approach to fixes this weekend.

[Bleu]

1. Ferrari power units

No 2nd place because it's too obvious.

[James1978]

Ferrari really do slam-dunk it but on any other day Alpha Tauri duct-taping Tsunoda's rear wing would be reject gold.

Ferrari power units also screwed Zhou's best showing so far.

Both Canadian drivers, McLaren's team strategy and Mercedes porpoising are big DHMs too.

[rachel1990]

1. Ferrari power unit failures- with 3 out of 6 cars going out with this and a hydrolytic failure for Sainz. 0 points for any Ferrari-powered team. Horrific and gifting Red Bull both championships on a plate

2- Lance Stroll- Very Poor all weekend and while his teammate managed 6th even with a spin, Lance was nowhere all weekend, crashed in quali, and was generally unimpressive all weekend. At one point the drivers that were last were Stroll, Schumacher, and Latifi, and it's hard to argue against the fact that these drivers are the worst 3 drivers in f1 at the moment.

HM- Yuki Tsonda's rear wing held down with duct tape- Hilarious but certainly rejectful

[Vassago]

1. Ferrari - No contest here. Two mechanical DNFs in the first 20 laps of the race? What year is it? 1986 or 2022? You feel like the championship is over already.

[Fetzie]

1. Ferrari

Three PU failures and one hydraulics system failure in one race.

2. Williams.

A mechanic infracts the start procedure rules, then Latifi gets a penalty for ignoring blue flags (the race after Albon ignored them in Monaco).

[mario]

Mercedes crippling their drivers and blaming the rules - Yeah, porpoising is an issue, but most aren't having it the way you are. Raise the ride height and finish further down the order if you care about your drivers that much.

I think that Mercedes is maybe being disproportionately criticised for this, because they're not the only ones who've been vocal about this.

Coming into this weekend, Sainz stated that he was also worried about the long term health implications from excessive porpoising and that he was going to speak to Russell and get him to raise a formal complaint on the part of the GPDA asking the FIA to intervene because he was concerned that he might have a back injury in the longer term.

After this race, Ricciardo also stated that he was feeling a bit disorientated because of the porpoising that he experienced and that he was also going to raise a formal complaint with the GPDA because he was, both physically and metaphorically, quite shaken up by the experience.

Added to that, Leclerc, Perez and Magnussen have reported back issues, nerve pain issues and even temporary vision problems. Some have also wondered if it's been behind the issues Ferrari and their customer teams had in the race too - Mick Schumacher's water leak in practice was linked to a clamp for one of the water pipes failing due to porpoising induced stresses.

Nicolas Latifi: A daft penalty for ignoring blue flags. Williams must be running out of patience

Whilst Ferrari have certainly had a good crack at earning the award this weekend - not just for both cars failing, but having two customer teams also break down - Latifi's explanation for his blue flag penalty is truly bizarre and feels like true reject material.

The explanation he has given is that, because he thought that he was holding Gasly up earlier in the lap, he did not then want to leave Gasly vulnerable to Hamilton possibly passing him using DRS on the main straight. He therefore decided to ignore the blue flags - a full 12 in total - in order to give Gasly DRS down the main straight as his way of trying to 'recompense' Gasly.

It's truly strange, because he arbitrarily took it upon himself to reinterpret a pretty clear cut rule - and it begs the question of why Latifi felt he should be interfering in the race of two other drivers in that manner to begin with. Furthermore, if he had been following the rules correctly in the first place, he shouldn't have been holding Gasly up to begin with - and, if he was worried about having held Gasly up earlier in the lap, it then begs the question of why he thought that not pulling over and instead staying in front of Gasly for several more corners wasn't going to hold Gasly up even more.

[dj_vicious]

1. Ferrari. This is a CLASSIC example of ROTR. Threw away a guaranteed 4th and 2nd or possible victory and walked away empty handed. 3 Races in a row Charles has been screwed by things out of his control. You want to give the man a hug.

2. Lance Stroll. Two Q1 crashes within half a lap of one another.

HM Canada. As a Canadian, I facepalm at the embarrassing lack of talent we're brining to F1. We can't win a f***in' Stanley Cup, and we look like a bunch of f***in' hosers out there in F1. C'mon boys, start givin' 'er for f*** sakes.

[Batty]

1. Yuki DRS Gaffer Tape Fix - Totally rejectful and it was like are they even allowed to do this? What a way to solve the issue though.

2. Williams & Latifi - Getting Latifi a stop go for pushing him back during the 15 seconds that the people are supposed to be off the grid. His reasoning for ignoring blue flags was funny and weird

HM - Ferrari PU - Just putting more rejectful and funny first.

[dr-baker]

1. Yuki DRS Gaffer Tape Fix - Totally rejectful and it was like are they even allowed to do this? What a way to solve the issue though.

This does feel like the kind of thing that the original forum overlords would have awarded ROTR to, in my opinion.

[Wallio]

You guys are too harsh on AT. On F1TV, Palmer thought it was outrageous Yuki even got the Black and Orange over it. Many pundits thought the same. Less than ten laps left, tell him no DRS and let him go.


The real answer is: Ferrari as I said in a great debate on here a while back, they cannot put a season together. they just can't.

HM: Mercedes: Raise your ride height and shut up. You have no chance to win this year anyway, a slight performance loss is nothing for you.

[Ducktanian]

Duck Tape - Because its funny.

[Frogfoot9013]

The ROTR poll is now up at the top of the thread. Ye all have 48 hours to vote. Get voting!

[Londoner]

Find out who got, ahem, Baku'd around Baku this time around!