Reject of the Race - Mexico 2024

[Londoner]

1. Red Bull drivers. Disgracefully dangerous driving from Verstappen, hilariously incompetent driving from Perez.

2. Yuki Tsunoda. Two days, two big crashes, not helping his case to replace Perez at all.

[Aislabie]

1. Checo

2. Max

3. Whatever knobcheese decided the Flap point is a Bad Thing

[Ciaran]

Perez. </thread>

[Salamander]

1. Red Bull drivers - Max Verstappen is a fake racing driver. Sergio Perez won't even be that in a few weeks time.
2. Whoever in Ferrari decided to kick Sainz to the kerb in favour of Hamilton - Betcha feel smart about that one now, huh?

[rachel1990]

1 Red Bull Drivers. Both were terrible this race. Max managed to get 20 second worth of penalties for disgraceful driving and Perez had a humiliating weekend.

2. (Oof this is tricky). Piastri. Didn't look on it. Went out in q1 and struggled to get back up. And finished behind a haas.

[Meatwad]

My nomination is the entire Red Bull family:

• Red Bull Racing lost second in the WCC to Ferrari.
• Verstappen was deservedly penalized for dangerous and unsporting driving.
• Pérez had one of his worst weekends ever (as disastrous as he's been lately). Tried heroics with the fastest lap but lost to Leclerc by nine tenths!
• Tsunoda wrecked his car in both qualifying and the race, really desperate move at the start.
• Lawson was good... until his crash with Colapinto.

[dj_vicious]

1. Max Verstappen: He has a history of reckless defending but was particularly conspicuous about it today. He seemed to have the mercy of the stewards last week and decided to double down today.

2. Sergio Perez: His presence on the 2025 grid is becoming less and less likely. Red Bull is falling backwards in the champion in large part to Perez' bad performances.

[RAK]

My nomination is the entire Red Bull family:

• Red Bull Racing lost second in the WCC to Ferrari.
• Verstappen was deservedly penalized for dangerous and unsporting driving.
• Pérez had one of his worst weekends ever (as disastrous as he's been lately). Tried heroics with the fastest lap but lost to Leclerc by nine tenths!
• Tsunoda wrecked his car in both qualifying and the race, really desperate move at the start.
• Lawson was good... until his crash with Colapinto.

Yeah, gonna second this - don't think anybody from the Red Bull stables looked good after that one.

[Alextrax52]

The whole Red Bull stable: All 4 drivers caught up in incidents and accidents. Verstappen copping a 20s penalty to throw away needless points, Perez was diabolical yet again and had a clash with Lawson, Tsunoda had 2 big crashes over the weekend and continues to prove why Red Bull aren’t considering him for the main team and even Lawson didn’t escape another accident late on with Colapinto though his reputation has probably taken the least damage after today.

To top it all off Red Bull are now down to 3rd in the constructors and I’ll be very surprised if they go on and win it now, meanwhile RB lost a lot of ground to Haas in the race for 6th which I thought was on lock for them for much of the season.

Oscar Piastri: He’s been really off it these last 2 races, was knocked out in SQ1 and had a quiet Grand Prix at Austin and here he fell in Q1 and still finished behind a Haas on merit. He’s done good for most of the year but with Ferrari on fire he needs to get back to his mid season level quickly.

HM: Aston Martin: Nowhere yet again and I wouldn’t have noticed them had it not been for Alonso’s 400th start.

[mario]

3. Whatever knobcheese decided the Flap point is a Bad Thing

Well, it seems that you've got the complaints of those at sites like Racefans to thank for that, given how much they've been moaning about the point for fastest lap and how keen they are to see it go.

1. Red Bull drivers. Disgracefully dangerous driving from Verstappen, hilariously incompetent driving from Perez.

2. Yuki Tsunoda. Two days, two big crashes, not helping his case to replace Perez at all.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the latter, as I'd suggest that Albon deserves some of the blame for that incident (he was trying to pinch Tsunoda to the left hand side of the track on the approach to the braking zone).

I agree with nominating both Red Bull drivers - Perez was terrible, whilst you get the impression with Verstappen that he's quite happy to just throw his car at Norris given that it's to his advantage if they crash, so long as Norris doesn't end up scoring any more points. There have been a few drivers making some rather pointed remarks that Verstappen is basically repeating the moves he made towards Hamilton in the 2021 Brazilian GP, and it seems they were putting the FIA under pressure to penalise that sort of behaviour during the drivers briefing before this race.

Even now, to some extent, it may still have helped Max given he was able to keep Norris behind him in the first stint whilst the two Ferrari drivers opened up a gap to them. Given Norris was catching Sainz quite quickly in the latter stages of the race and was only 4.7s behind him at the finish, you do wonder whether Norris might have had a chance of winning if he'd been ahead of Max and able to put the two Ferrari drivers under more direct pressure in the opening stint of the race.

2. (Oof this is tricky). Piastri. Didn't look on it. Went out in q1 and struggled to get back up. And finished behind a haas.

I do have to agree that Piastri's performance was disappointing - Piastri finished a minute behind Norris, and I was expecting that he'd have made better progress through the field than he did.

With Mercedes not really being that competitive and Verstappen being heavily penalised - as well as having somewhat lacklustre pace on the hard tyres too - Piastri had a chance to make up for some of the damage, but struggled to make as much headway as I'd have expected him to.

[IceG]

Agree with everything above re Red Bull.

Max is a great driver but last weekend he showed Lando how to win this weekend.

Checo has fallen faster than Dani; teams looking at Max as a star driver may start to consider the down-sides: destroys team-mates and pushes beyond the limits to the point where it damages the team's chances.

Oh yes, I forgot the ROTW: Danica Patrick who talks utter rubbish and has rock-cakes for knee-caps - please just put some trousers on.

[James1978]

None of the Red Bull stable did anything good was Checo was so bad it was laughable. Max probably escapes due to his teammate being so bad!

DHM for Piastri - his inconsistency could cost them too.

Ferrari of the top teams have the best all-round driver pairing but even that's going to spoiled next year - then again Hamilton did put one ovver on Russell too so maybe that will stay but possibly not as harmonious!

[Wallio]

Albon - I understand he's feeling the pressure as Franco wipes the floor with him again, but damn that was Logan Sargent bad.

Lawson - Was there anyone he didn't hit? Pity Red Bull doesn't have a NASCAR team anymore.

Red Bull Racing - laughably bad in numerous respects. Car is absolute garbage and it's turning Max into Senna (and not in a good way.)

Ferrari - Why not have Sainz back up and help LeClerc? Not like the slipstream is important in Mexico City or anything.....

[sswishbone]

1) Red Bull - the red being key word here, both drivers drive like open lobby amateurs, pathetic.

2) Danica Patrick - Aside from proving she knew where Norris finished at last year's race, she was totally out of her depth and added nothing to the Sky coverage.

[mario]

Ferrari - Why not have Sainz back up and help LeClerc? Not like the slipstream is important in Mexico City or anything.....

For a start, there is a question of whether Sainz really is that inclined to try and help Leclerc given that Sainz is leaving the team at the end of the season.

Asides from that, Ferrari probably also considered it to be a bit of a risky strategy for Sainz to have to slow down that much to allow Leclerc to catch up. If Norris were able to pressure Leclerc into a mistake - and we saw in the race that Norris managed to do that - then you've potentially thrown away most of your advantage and potentially put Norris into a position where he could challenge Sainz for victory too (despite pitting later for the hard tyres, Ferrari seemed to start struggling with the harder compounds before McLaren did).