Grand Prix Rejects

3. FIA/FOM/FOTA/Whoever it was that decided that 5 pm in Melboure is a good time for qualifying and racing.

I was at the track and there were 80,000 of us suffering through wet and wind to watch 20 minutes of qualifying.

To those complaining about race control: I sat at turn 11/12 and the painted over white lines were like ice on that section of the track. HALF the field (11 of the 22 drivers. We counted) went through either 11 or 12 backwards or sideways. Most others came close to losing it; Alonso, Grosjean and Rosberg all had big moments. Massa and Gutierrez were so lucky their accidents weren't worse and happened when there weren't that many other cars on track.

I'd have been upset if they canned quailifying on a dedicated race circuit, but Albert Park is a street circuit. Its greasy, its bumpy and the grip level is variable.
As someone who attended the GP, I think CW's eventual decision was correct. Some of the 10/20 minute delays were a bit pointless though.

2. Mark Webber's start Apparently he had both clutch (no telemetry to set the right clutch bite point) and KERS issues, which meant he got mugged, but it was frustrating to say the least.

1. Sauber Promising weekend scuppered by poor qualifying by Gutierrez and then a fuel system problem for Hulkenberg.

Dishonourable mentions - Almost to many to name

Caterham - Out raced and out qualified by Marussia
Williams - Looked horrible on Saturday AND Sunday. 3 1/2 seconds off the pace.
McLaren - See Williams, but at least they scored a point.
Romain Grosjean - Pootled about in 11th all day, while Kimi won
Pirelli supersofts - Five laps and gone on some cars
Maldonado - Back to his old habits, out-qualified by rookie. Spent most of the weekend going rallying around the Albert park circuit.

Caterham, Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde all rate a mention for making a mockery of what was once a very promising team. They'd better get used to looking at Marussia's rear wings.

But my Reject of the Race has to be Paul di Resta, for these post-race comments, where he said he felt "robbed of seventh place" because he didn't catch Sutil - who was much more deserving of seventh place (or any higher palcing, for that matter) than di Resta was.

3. Sauber, for having a mechanical DNS in 2013.
2. McLaren, for being slow.
1. Maldonado, for being crashy not just during the race but the whole weekend.

Van Derp Garde, finished behind Chilton who had to pit in for a broken wing from hitting van der Garde's car and as last car running. Dangerous in practice and incompetent in the race.

1. Maldonado, he's headed for You Lucky Bastard status at this rate.

McLaren. What can I say that hasn't already been said? When they put that second set of slicks on poor Perez's car towards the end of P2, my jaw dropped in disbelief.

1. WILLIAMS - They were nowhere pretty much all weekend. Maldonado retired because of a silly driver error and Bottas, while performing a bit better, didn't exactly fly in the race either.

2. SAUBER - Same as Williams. I didn't see one glimpse of the one car running during the whole race!

1. Pastor Maldonado - After praising the car in pre-season testing as a big step forward, got beaten by his rookie team-mate in qualifying and although wasn't having a bad race he did became the only one to retire due to driving error. Finally and most importantly, in the end of the race he says that the car is now undriveable. It changed that much, Pastor?

2. McLaren - If the goal is proving that Hamilton was right all along in switching to Mercedes, then they are doing a very good job indeed...

Reject of the Race? Who did the most rejectful thing in that race - clearly Pastor Maldonado. That accident was just comically pathetic.

eichy wrote:1. Maldonado, he's headed for You Lucky Bastard status at this rate.

I've got a conspiracy theory that it wasn't actually him driving the car at Barcelona last year.

James1978 wrote:

eichy wrote:1. Maldonado, he's headed for You Lucky Bastard status at this rate.

I've got a conspiracy theory that it wasn't actually him driving the car at Barcelona last year.

Haven't you heard? It was Nigel Mansell behind the wheel that day.

James1978 wrote:

eichy wrote:1. Maldonado, he's headed for You Lucky Bastard status at this rate.

I've got a conspiracy theory that it wasn't actually him driving the car at Barcelona last year.

No, it's that, as Sniff Petrol stated in their preview, a lot of the time he's beaten to the car by his evil twin, Bastor Maldonado. Which is exactly what happened in Australia.

Hulkenberg - DNS
McLaren - Shouldnt have bothered.

McLaren - to go that far backwards with so few rule changes is astonishing

DanielPT wrote:1. Pastor Maldonado - After praising the car in pre-season testing as a big step forward, got beaten by his rookie team-mate in qualifying and although wasn't having a bad race he did became the only one to retire due to driving error. Finally and most importantly, in the end of the race he says that the car is now undriveable. It changed that much, Pastor?

2. McLaren - If the goal is proving that Hamilton was right all along in switching to Mercedes, then they are doing a very good job indeed...

What he said.

CoopsII wrote:Hulkenberg - DNS

To be honest, Hülkenberg's car crapped itself, so Nico couldn't do much. The team decided not to let him race.

Shizuka wrote:

CoopsII wrote:Hulkenberg - DNS

To be honest, Hülkenberg's car crapped itself, so Nico couldn't do much. The team decided not to let him race.

And they didn't really have a choice, as the alternative was replace pretty much the entire fuel system, including the fuel tank, which would have taken far too long to do properly anyway.

In a certain era, I bet the team could have given up Gutierrez's car for Hulkenberg to drive - after all he was their main hope for good points! Not any more though.......

Pastor Maldonado for letting el Comandante Chávez down. And if he doesn't get any better I can see the PDVSA money running away.

Disonorable mentions for the lack of pace of Mclaren, Williams and Caterham, though these look more like candidates for reject of the year unless something happens.

Wizzie wrote:

Shizuka wrote:

CoopsII wrote:Hulkenberg - DNS

To be honest, Hülkenberg's car crapped itself, so Nico couldn't do much. The team decided not to let him race.

And they didn't really have a choice, as the alternative was replace pretty much the entire fuel system, including the fuel tank, which would have taken far too long to do properly anyway.

All of which is pretty Rejectful, hence...

CoopsII wrote:

Wizzie wrote:

Shizuka wrote:
To be honest, Hülkenberg's car crapped itself, so Nico couldn't do much. The team decided not to let him race.

And they didn't really have a choice, as the alternative was replace pretty much the entire fuel system, including the fuel tank, which would have taken far too long to do properly anyway.

All of which is pretty Rejectful, hence...

I think his point is you should nominate Sauber not Hulk, not that it wasn't rejectful.

Its so easy to nominate race control, and they would deserve it, as either the telemetry failure, or quali debacle, or random blue flags are horribily rejectful on their own, but added together are so rejectful its epic.

However, as an RBR fan, it has to be Webber. Hands down. Gets called out on American TV then doesn't disappoint, dropping what? 6 or 7 spots on the start? Then has Horner cry about his ECU, only for it to be shown it was fine. Go home old man!

I love the fact there's so many contenders. It was such a reality check for some people. However, my vote goes to McLaren who were nothing short of dismal all week-end. I think we're seeing Button's ability despite the nay-sayers, because the way Perez is driving that thing suggests to me its the car that's a dog, and I'm no big fan of Perez.

Ed24 wrote:I think his point is you should nominate Sauber not Hulk, not that it wasn't rejectful.

Yes.

Time for the official decision!

In the end, I've decided not to go for the likes of Caterham or McLaren. For one thing, yes teams can sometimes come up with poor cars, even top teams like McLaren. Plus why waste a ROTR award on them now when perhaps they're setting themselves up for higher honours?

I've also decided not to go with race control especially over the qualifying delays - particularly since my view was that the delays (and ultimately the postponement) were justified.

In the end I've gone back to familiar territory, and it's a back-to-back Australian GP ROTRs for Pastor Maldonado. It's one thing for Williams to have been so surprisingly uncompetitive - and it looks like it may have been a misguided developmental path rather than fundamental problems with the FW35, since the basics are similar to last year's competitive FW34 - but it's another thing for Pastor to have driven so wildly in response. His numerous offs in practice, qualifying and the race were a sign of a driver who was completely over-driving. Sure, the FW35 may have been "undriveable", but Valtteri Bottas did a steady job in it.

Even getting married during the off-season and the death of Mr Chavez aren't enough of an excuse to let The Reverend off on this occasion!

Sometimes I think that people here are just waiting for Pastor to make a mistake just to hit on him and award him ROTR...

Zetec wrote:Sometimes I think that people here are just waiting for Pastor to make a mistake just to hit on him and award him ROTR...

Not true. It is the size of the disappointment. For instance, I have Pastor in such high regard that I just get massively disappointed if he ends up binning his race in some very avoidable incident. After all the man carries most of Williams hopes due to being the first winner for them in almost a decade. I think I am not very wrong in saying that most people here only love Pastor a bit too much.

To be honest, the way he just lazily threw it in the gravel when barely any other driver, not even the rookies, had made a mistake like that in dry weather all weekend, summed it up really.

Zetec wrote:Sometimes I think that people here are just waiting for Pastor to make a mistake just to hit on him and award him ROTR...

It's more than van der Garde didn't Derp his car into the wall leaving Pastor as the reject candidate by default.

Zetec wrote:Sometimes I think that people here are just waiting for Pastor to make a mistake just to hit on him and award him ROTR...

Whilst it is true that Maldonado has established something of a reputation of being a wild and ragged driver (a reputation he has had since his time in Formula Renault), such that it can prejudice some against him, the award is perhaps not without merit in this instance.
As has been hinted at, McLaren may not just be earning a ROTR but a ROTY nomination soon enough (although, overall, I would probably have given the award to them over Maldonado), as may Caterham. Maldonado did have a number of scruffy moments when the pressure was on and was, ultimately, the architect of his own demise in the race; it also has to be said that he seemed to get himself rather confused over his set up and ended up publicly complaining about it quite bitterly when Bottas seemed more content to knuckle down and work at his set up.

mario wrote:

Zetec wrote:Sometimes I think that people here are just waiting for Pastor to make a mistake just to hit on him and award him ROTR...

Whilst it is true that Maldonado has established something of a reputation of being a wild and ragged driver (a reputation he has had since his time in Formula Renault), such that it can prejudice some against him, the award is perhaps not without merit in this instance.
As has been hinted at, McLaren may not just be earning a ROTR but a ROTY nomination soon enough (although, overall, I would probably have given the award to them over Maldonado), as may Caterham. Maldonado did have a number of scruffy moments when the pressure was on and was, ultimately, the architect of his own demise in the race; it also has to be said that he seemed to get himself rather confused over his set up and ended up publicly complaining about it quite bitterly when Bottas seemed more content to knuckle down and work at his set up.

Hit the nail on the head, mario.

As I have said in the past, mediocrity and underperformance is probably the last criteria for finding an ROTR, if all else fails. Much more preferable to find an ROTR on the basis of something bizarre, stupid, laughable, or downright wild. Unfortunately that makes Pastor a prime candidate for ROTR often because he basically has two modes: on the limit (like in Spain last year), or way over the limit. Throughout the Melbourne weekend he was in the latter mode as his default response when things aren't going his way. Bottas showed how you can curb your enthusiasm much more effectively.

ROTR is partially decided by our expectations. We know Maldonado can do a lot better, that is why he is dissapointing so much. Same thing can be said for a lot of ROTR candidaded. Except GVDG, of whom we expect do be rejectful, in his case a ROTR would be a case of 'told you so!'

Well, Maldonado was over-driving the car while trying to find some time to catch up and had a spin. Bottas on the other hand was driving save, but in the end his result can't buy anything to Williams either.
I mean, Maldonado just touched the wet gras on the left side and had snap-oversteer. He's not the first driver to make this mistake. It can happen, so what?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing anyone here.

Wallio wrote:However, as an RBR fan, it has to be Webber. Hands down. Gets called out on American TV then doesn't disappoint, dropping what? 6 or 7 spots on the start? Then has Horner cry about his ECU, only for it to be shown it was fine. Go home old man!

I think the point with the ECU was that it wasn't the unit itself, but some other component elsewhere on the car.

Zetec wrote:Well, Maldonado was over-driving the car while trying to find some time to catch up and had a spin. Bottas on the other hand was driving save, but in the end his result can't buy anything to Williams either.
I mean, Maldonado just touched the wet gras on the left side and had snap-oversteer. He's not the first driver to make this mistake. It can happen, so what?

So... it was a rejectful thing to do

fjackdaw wrote:

Wallio wrote:However, as an RBR fan, it has to be Webber. Hands down. Gets called out on American TV then doesn't disappoint, dropping what? 6 or 7 spots on the start? Then has Horner cry about his ECU, only for it to be shown it was fine. Go home old man!

I think the point with the ECU was that it wasn't the unit itself, but some other component elsewhere on the car.

The apology that McLaren Electronic Systems issued to RBR referred to the loss of the telemetry from Webber's car and the need to reset that system, which in turn seems to have caused problems with the clutch bite setting for the start. The ECU itself seems to have worked OK, but the ancillary data acquisition and transmission systems didn't.

mario wrote:

fjackdaw wrote:

Wallio wrote:However, as an RBR fan, it has to be Webber. Hands down. Gets called out on American TV then doesn't disappoint, dropping what? 6 or 7 spots on the start? Then has Horner cry about his ECU, only for it to be shown it was fine. Go home old man!

I think the point with the ECU was that it wasn't the unit itself, but some other component elsewhere on the car.

The apology that McLaren Electronic Systems issued to RBR referred to the loss of the telemetry from Webber's car and the need to reset that system, which in turn seems to have caused problems with the clutch bite setting for the start. The ECU itself seems to have worked OK, but the ancillary data acquisition and transmission systems didn't.

It was clearly non intentional by McLaren and one of those things that can happen to anyone. If I wanted to screw a Red Bull driver on purpose it wouldn't be Webber.

Zetec wrote:Well, Maldonado was over-driving the car while trying to find some time to catch up and had a spin. Bottas on the other hand was driving save, but in the end his result can't buy anything to Williams either.
I mean, Maldonado just touched the wet gras on the left side and had snap-oversteer. He's not the first driver to make this mistake. It can happen, so what?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing anyone here.

I'm in the "go home, Pastor Maldonado!" camp, and his win in Spain didn't convince me, so I am naturally prejudiced. But it wasn't his crashing out of the race that made me nominate him, silly enough though it was. It was his previous off in Turn 1, when Alonso was leaving the pits, that first made me realise he was using his head to drive. This was the same Maldonado of last year, not a new and improved version. Plus, his comments about the car won't have ingratiated him with the team either. Remember that despite his win last year, most of the mechanics and team members openly defended and looked up to Senna, who was considerably slower but much more pleasant to work with. Ultimately, Williams needs Reverend Maldonado to show a degree of leadership (he has a rookie team mate after all), and part of that is to show some resilience in the face of adversity. If he keeps on like this the team will quickly start relying on Bottas for direction and inspiration.

CarlosFerreira wrote:

Zetec wrote:Well, Maldonado was over-driving the car while trying to find some time to catch up and had a spin. Bottas on the other hand was driving save, but in the end his result can't buy anything to Williams either.
I mean, Maldonado just touched the wet gras on the left side and had snap-oversteer. He's not the first driver to make this mistake. It can happen, so what?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing anyone here.

I'm in the "go home, Pastor Maldonado!" camp, and his win in Spain didn't convince me, so I am naturally prejudiced. But it wasn't his crashing out of the race that made me nominate him, silly enough though it was. It was his previous off in Turn 1, when Alonso was leaving the pits, that first made me realise he was using his head to drive. This was the same Maldonado of last year, not a new and improved version. Plus, his comments about the car won't have ingratiated him with the team either. Remember that despite his win last year, most of the mechanics and team members openly defended and looked up to Senna, who was considerably slower but much more pleasant to work with. Ultimately, Williams needs Reverend Maldonado to show a degree of leadership (he has a rookie team mate after all), and part of that is to show some resilience in the face of adversity. If he keeps on like this the team will quickly start relying on Bottas for direction and inspiration.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that was Bottas taking to the grass to avoid Alonso at turn 1.

If you believe a conspiracy I read the other day, Maldonado's win at Spain was only a fix to help Frank celebrate his 70th! All it takes is a lucky set of tyres