Grand Prix Rejects

rachel1990 wrote:Now if you were in charge of Lotus what would you do. I have no idea

Tell them to hold station and hope Vettel's tyres go off, and then allow them to race if they get past.

Can't believe just how much the Mercedes fell to pieces today, but on the other hand it's brilliant seeing the Lotuses (Loti?) up front. I eat my words criticising Grosjean completely.

The German TV commentators are pondering putting the 2 GenII Capital Racing cars on 2 different stragtegies.

come on ro gro!

What the scrap are the Lotus strategists doing??? Kimi losing several tenths a lap... and stays out??? C'mon Iceman, just sign with Red Bull already...

DonTirri wrote:What the scrap are the Lotus strategists doing??? Kimi losing several tenths a lap... and stays out??? C'mon Iceman, just sign with Red Bull already...

Ja, the strategy hasn't worked. Kimi pits. Lotus fail.

time for the tennis now. Vettel has it in the bag. FFS Lotus

Kimi looking like a right beast he is on it

Enstone's strategists are amongst the worst on the paddock IMO, which is a shame given their engineers are some of the best.

rachel1990 wrote:time for the tennis now. Vettel has it in the bag. FFS Lotus

If Kimi Wins it's ROTR for you

Maldonado has a super-bad stop. Williams are set to just miss out on points again. And at their 600th race as well.

Vettel's engineer has to tell him how to behave appropriately.

And to what extent does Grosjean have to slow to let Kimi past if he's not lapping that much slower? If Kimi can't catch Vettel he should give the position back at the end.

Kimi-ICE wrote:

rachel1990 wrote:time for the tennis now. Vettel has it in the bag. FFS Lotus

If Kimi Wins it's ROTR for you

Kimi is going to run out of laps

And Sebastian Vettel wins the German Grand Prix.
What did I say? As you will read in my own mid-season report, I said that the title race is already as good as over and even if Alonso and Räikkönen were resurgent for a few races, Vettel would record a streak of dominant wins and strengthen his lead so that it becomes unassailable. Alonso is 34 points behind and Räikkönen is 41 points behind. It also looks as though Mercedes won't challenge for the title for much longer, having lost a lot of ground.

rachel1990 wrote:

Kimi-ICE wrote:

rachel1990 wrote:time for the tennis now. Vettel has it in the bag. FFS Lotus

If Kimi Wins it's ROTR for you

Kimi is going to run out of laps

And I was right

Sigh.

wasn't the best but was good seeing the charges done by the top 7

Why so miserable everyone. Give him his credit. He fought for that fair and square. One of his best ever wins in my book.

Congrats to the man in blue.

Two things.

A) If your remaining options have the same amount of laps already driven as the primes of your main competition... DON'T RELY ON THEM. FFS, Kimi could've won this if he had either pitted sooner for Primes or remained till the end.
B) Romain... if you are told NOT TO HOLD UP... let go of the throttle, IMMEDIATELY. Even if it seems Kimi isn't close enough, he is suffering from dirty air and unoptimal lines.

Sigh...

Well done to Vettel.

DonTirri wrote:B) Romain... if you are told NOT TO HOLD UP... let go of the throttle, IMMEDIATELY. Even if it seems Kimi isn't close enough, he is suffering from dirty air and unoptimal lines.

Why do I get the feeling that if the positions were reversed you would be hailing Kimi for ignoring team orders?

Jesus, they didn't really send Kai Ebel up there?

Where is a mechanical failure when you need one?

Alright, I still think the proper course of action for Kimi was to stay out and defend his 13 second lead. He wasn't losing that much time in context, those old tyres were only costing him a half a second per lap, at most. And he had eleven laps to go with a 14 second lead! If they were going to pit him, they should have pitted him earlier in order to avoid the scenario that actually happened. The ideal window to pit, IMO, would have been 13 laps till the end, as he could have utlilized track position with Vettel's tyres going off at about the same rate in the latter stages. Instead, the Lotus strategists left Raikkonen out too long, and instead of committing to a plan, they split the difference and lost. They also should have gotten Grosjean to move over sooner.

That being said, it was a fantastic drive from Vettel, who proved once again that he is arguably the best driver in the field when the pressure is on.

tristan1117 wrote:That being said, it was a fantastic drive from Vettel, who proved once again that he is arguably the best driver in the field when the pressure is on.

No doubt about that, he defended Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen when they appeared to close up on him. I have to admit, he does churn up superb laps when drivers get closer to him.

Do you think Grosjean could have won if he had pushed himself a bit harder? His pace seemed pedestrian compared to Kimi. Speaking of Kimi, he definitely had the best overtakes of the day, and so did Hamilton. Great race overall.

JeremyMcClean wrote:

tristan1117 wrote:That being said, it was a fantastic drive from Vettel, who proved once again that he is arguably the best driver in the field when the pressure is on.

No doubt about that, he defended Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen when they appeared to close up on him. I have to admit, he does churn up superb laps when drivers get closer to him.

Do you think Grosjean could have won if he had pushed himself a bit harder? His pace seemed pedestrian compared to Kimi. Speaking of Kimi, he definitely had the best overtakes of the day, and so did Hamilton. Great race overall.

Rosberg had a great double overtake on Ricciardo and one of the Williams cars. Probably the only good part of his weekend.

I'm really delighted Lotus didn't win. Team orders suck. Oh, and to those who were moaning about Vettel's luck, did you watch last week's race?

GwilymJJames wrote:I'm really delighted Lotus didn't win. Team orders suck. Oh, and to those who were moaning about Vettel's luck, did you watch last week's race?

Yes, because Red Bull are a shining example of sportsmanship, particularly in regards to team orders.

GwilymJJames wrote:I'm really delighted Lotus didn't win. Team orders suck. Oh, and to those who were moaning about Vettel's luck, did you watch last week's race?

Team orders are an inextricable part of Formula 1. I'm no more happy Grosjean had to hand over second than you are, but if Kimi had won I wouldn't begrudge him it for a second.

I'm doing fuel adjusted standings for each race, taking into account when in the race the driver set fastest lap, how quick it was and the fuel load penalty for a lap's worth of fuel.
Below is the order but there obviously are abnormalities. Button and Bottas second and third respectively? I mean really? Obviously the laps done under the SC didn't help here.

Pos Driver
1 Fernando ALONSO
2 Jenson BUTTON
3 Kimi RAIKKONEN
4 Valtteri BOTTAS
5 Nico ROSBERG
6 Felipe MASSA
7 Lewis HAMILTON
8 Pastor MALDONADO
9 Nico HULKENBERG
10 Sebastian VETTEL
11 Romain GROSJEAN
12 Mark WEBBER
13 Jean-Éric VERGNE
14 Paul Di RESTA
15 Sergio PEREZ
16 Esteban GUTIERREZ
17 Daniel RICCIARDO
18 Adrian SUTIL
19 Jules BIANCHI
20 Giedo Van Der GARDE
21 Charles PIC
22 Max CHILTON

Mercedes still not entirely without their tyre demons, it seems.

I wonder if it was a mistake for Lotus to bring Raikkonen in for that final stop? I think there's a chance he could have held out for the win.

Kai Ebel performing the podium interviews
Tanja next time!

Button whinging about Caterham it seems:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108645

Dan B wrote:Button whinging about Caterham it seems:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108645

Well, it's not like he was the only one they comprimised, they weren't all that considerate to Vettel either.

Dan B wrote:Button whinging about Caterham it seems:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108645

Because it's completely unacceptable to express frustration at being blocked by backmarkers and losing crucial championship points, right?

OK, what the hell was going on with the TV coverage this week?

I can just about understand them not showing the guy getting hit by the wheel again until they could be sure if he was OK, though even after the race when it was clear that he was, we didn't get to see the incident in full again (I suppose it's possible that that was Sky's decision, not FOM though)

We have ONE shot of Massa going out, and that's from Alonso's cockpit 2 cars behind where you could see barely nothing. "I'd like to see that again" says Martin Brundle. Yes, so would the rest of us!

And then we see no replays of Bianchi's car rolling across the track - why? I have my suspicion, given the position of the tractor, that it fell off that before it started rolling, and that Bernie has ordered that we can't see any of that footage at all.

What with the tyre failures last week and the 2 major incidents this week that thankfully passed without serious harm to anyone, am I being a doom-monger or is it just me starting to get a 1994 vibe from this season?

Barbazza wrote:What with the tyre failures last week and the 2 major incidents this week that thankfully passed without serious harm to anyone, am I being a doom-monger or is it just me starting to get a 1994 vibe from this season?

It does feel like responsible people in varying fields, have become quite sloppy recently.
Be it Pirelli people at Silverstone, lollipop people in Germany, track marshalls people in Canada & Germany, what-have-you people at everything else that has happened so far. Hope no one gets seriously hurt or dies again. It's not even 1 month since that tragedy in Montreal.

kevinbotz wrote:

Dan B wrote:Button whinging about Caterham it seems:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108645

Because it's completely unacceptable to express frustration at being blocked by backmarkers and losing crucial championship points, right?

Well to be honest I didn't see where the Caterhams held up Button, with the cameras being pointed at the leaders.
I guess I am more ticked off by Button's tone more than anything else.

Barbazza wrote:OK, what the hell was going on with the TV coverage this week?

I noticed the same during todays GP2 race. We never once saw a replay of the incident with De Jong and Richelmi. It was frustrating.

All right, the SC just bathpluged Grosjean's strategy, but, Lotus used him as "decoy" for lure Vettel. I was hoping for a victory of him, but all went wrong.

Grosjean, also, didn't look very happy at podium.

Also, 2, Button needs to stop whinning.