Grand Prix Rejects

based on the assumption that, at any moment in time, there is a non-zero probability that even the slowest, most inexperienced and least reliable of underdogs might win the race. That under every rock, there might be a gold nugget. This is the award for that first podium that we all celebrate, for the overtake no-one was expecting, for Charles Pic's first win. This is the award, in short, for the driver or team that makes you go "Woah! Where did THAT come from?!".

Just remember: this is a feel-good award, that will focus on nothing but track action.
Usual rules: everyone gets two votes. First vote is worth 10 points, the second 6.

Results to be done: June 2, Saturday

Felipe Massa for being surprisingly competitive. Would have nominated the finger but it was half expected for that jammy sod to get a decent result.

Massa
di Resta

Massa
Vergne, before his gamble

Felipe Massa - I love you. I bathplug love you. Even though you dropped back and gave up at the end, I still goddamn love you. If he hadn't been stuck in traffic in Q3 he would've been on the podium now instead of Alonso. You plugging beauty.
Force India - Kept their calm and kept their drivers on reliable strategies.

1 - Felipe Massa
Woah, that's a BIG improvement in speed. Keep this up!
2 - Heikki Kovalainen
He managed to keep a MCLAREN behind. On merit!

Jean-Eric Vergne
Should have had points, by his driving he deserved it, it was a mature drive to get the tires to last that long and get into 7th...only for his team to smeg it all up with a risky strategy call.

Heikki Kovalainen
A ruthless 78 laps of driving, he was driving that Caterham to its limits, with just a little more luck he could have nabbed a point. It's like Bernoldi vs DC all over again.

Felipe Massa - his best result in the season.
Honorary mention goes to Heikki Kovalainen for 70-circa laps of great driving.

1. Kovalainen - Nice drive, helps Caterham jump Marussia (finally).
2. Webber - 'BOUT FRIGGEN TIME!

1. Kovalainen - also known as Enrique Bernoldi!
2. Webber - seemed to be slipping into his 2011 form, but a superb drive.

1. Kovalainen - ahead of a McLaren for the whole race
2. Massa - hard to pick, but given his recent performance, this decent race has to be mentioned here in some way

Please don't compare Kovalainen to Enrique bathplug Bernoldi The pace of the Caterham was genuine and Button can't pass for shite. As soon as Button was out of the way, Perez muscled past in ONE LAP compared to the 70-odd it couldn't take Button.

Anyway, my first vote goes to Massa and my second to Kovalainen.

Kovalainen Best drive to date for the bottom 3 teams. P11 on merit at one point (I think).

Force India Solid Sunday with both cars in points.

honourable mentions:

Perez Dead last + drive thru penalty and finished a position short of a point
Massa Great comeback in form... but a bit expected because I knew Ferrari got good car for this weekend.

1) Kovalainen who did well and still managed to stay ahead of Glock at the end, even though both had made stops for new front wings.

2) Massa for actually being half-competitive for once. Wasn't expecting that judging by this year's form!

1. Felipe Massa: Solid points finish is what he needed badly.

2. Hekki Kovalinen: Kicked Button's butt througout the entire race.

1. Heikki Kovalainen
2. Jean-Eric Vergne (could've and should've had points.)

Heikki Kovalainen - Takes his revenge on McLaren (finally) by ruining Button's day.

Felipe Massa - A few more of those races and he'll have a better chance of making it through the season!

Honourable mention goes to Sergio Perez for placing 11th from 24th on the grid.

pasta_maldonado wrote:Felipe Massa for being surprisingly competitive. Would have nominated the finger but it was half expected for that jammy sod to get a decent result.

It was certainly expected given that Vettel was openly taking about his strategy before the race by stopping as late as possible, so it was hardly improbable in that sense.

I'd have to agree with nominating Massa for first choice - before this race, quite a few people were questioning whether he could make his way into the points, but he was harrying Alonso quite hard in qualifying and the early stages of the race and putting Hamilton under considerable pressure too. To finish six seconds off the lead at a venue that rewards driver skill, and five behind Alonso, when you've been facing barrages of criticism looks like a pretty handy riposte to your critics.

For the second nomination, I guess that Heikki would be worth nominating - he did kind of spoil it towards the end there by banging his nose (he might have had a chance to get Vergne without that), but to hold on for so long on merit was impressive (in the opening stages of the race when everybody was on high fuel, Heikki was actually fairly competitive against the Toro Rosso drivers - it just seems to be on lower fuel that they struggle more).

For honourable mentions, I guess that the two Force India drivers did a pretty respectable job (particularly Di Resta managing to work his way past Hulkenberg, whilst the latter did manage a nice opportunistic pass on Kimi when he was held up briefly by Perez). They might not have the same points haul as either Sauber or Williams, but Force India are still picking up a fairly steady trickle of points (to the extent that, if they manage to keep this up over the year, they might yet claw their way ahead of Sauber and Williams).
Vergne, too, was putting in a quite respectable performance, right up until the team switched him over to inters (a nice idea, but they should have known that the track wasn't wet enough from what happened on Thursday, where the intermediate tyres were torn to shreds pretty quickly in those sorts of conditions).

1. Massa - I'm going with Massa because a good performance from him in recent times is rather improbable.
2. Heikki Kovalainen - Soundly beat Petrov this weekend and was competitive with the midfielders for most of the race.

1. Massa
2. Kovalainen

1. Heikki Kovalainen

2. Jean-Eric Vergne

1) Massa
2) Force India

It's the third time in four races that Massa's finished the race within 7 seconds of Alonso, so I wouldn't say he was particularly improbable today, it's just that the Ferrari is rapidly improving.

Of course his problem is now that if he does get ahead in a race (what's the bet it's at Hockenheim?), there will definitely be team orders at play.

1) Massa: considering his rubbish season till here, any good performance is good for him, and in this race, he was on par with the best.

2) Force India: a discreet but solid race for the team and the two drivers, behind the group of six who have fought for the win.

1. Heikki Kovalainen - Kept Bunsen behind him ON MERIT and came oh so close to scoring Caterham's first point.
2. Force India - Double points finish in what is reckoned to be the 8th fastest car on the grid.

Honourable mention to Felipe Massa for a good weekend all around.

Kovalainen
Force India

Vergne because had the team left him alone he would've earned decent points. Until they waded in and got all 'intermediatey' about things he was going great guns.

Kovy because he drove way beyond the capabilities of his car. Mostly.

1. Kovalainen - Great start, and in contention for points as rain started falling, even when other cars were constantly trying to destroy his.

2. Paul Di Resta - At a loss of many amazing performances today, Paul was slower than Hulkenberg all weekend in his lower midfield car and once again intelligent strategy and conservative driving places him in a strong points finish.

Kovalainen: no explaination needed.
Massa: he reached Q3 for the first time of the season and ended just a little more than 6 seconds from the winner.

Though they drove very well, to me Webber and Massa aren't quite there as they did what I expected them to do after Quali. Therefore...

1) Di Resta - Great job in a not particularly good car, huge jump in places from grid slot and beating your team mate, can't ask for much more
2) Vettel - Surprised he seems to be getting no nominations. Yes, he had the strategy, but still had to drive bloody hard to make it work. I was surprised he finished where he did.

Barbazza wrote:2) Vettel - Surprised he seems to be getting no nominations. Yes, he had the strategy, but still had to drive bloody hard to make it work. I was surprised he finished where he did.

He's a jammy git. It was expected of him to do better than his grid slot

pasta_maldonado wrote:

Barbazza wrote:2) Vettel - Surprised he seems to be getting no nominations. Yes, he had the strategy, but still had to drive bloody hard to make it work. I was surprised he finished where he did.

He's a jammy git. I was expected of him to do better than his grid slot

That doesn't change much. Button certainly didn't get it to work.

AdrianSutil wrote:As soon as Button was out of the way, Perez muscled past in ONE LAP compared to the 70-odd it couldn't take Button.

Bear in mind that Kovalainen's front wing was broken, and Perez still had to cut the Nouvelle chicane (although only slightly) to get past him.

My nominations:

1.Kovalainen: missed Q2 by only five hundreths of a second, took full advantage of the first turn collisions and held off Button for 70 laps, who eventually got so frustrated that he crashed himself out of the race.

2.Massa: First Q3 appearance, and a solid race throughout.

I didn't think I would ever say this after enduring through the first half of the 2000s, but Schumi's faux-pole (which was ruined by a nonsense penalty) was also pretty impressive, and I actually felt a bit bad for him when he had to retire.

Nuppiz wrote:

AdrianSutil wrote:As soon as Button was out of the way, Perez muscled past in ONE LAP compared to the 70-odd it couldn't take Button.

Bear in mind that Kovalainen's front wing was broken, and Perez still had to cut the Nouvelle chicane (although only slightly) to get past him.

Granted, Kovalainen was driving a pretty-battered car at that point, and I'm not trying to take anything away from an excellent drive by the Caterham, but you have to be a bit ruthless at Monaco otherwise you'll get nowhere. Jenson's couple of half-hearted 'looks-up-the-inside' won't get you past an 85 year-old grandmother driving a Nissan Micra let alone another F1 car.

My nominations:
1. Heikki Kovalainen - A great weekend. Missed out on Q2 by less than a tenth of second, jumped to 13th on the start and stayed there, at one point even pulling away from the likes of Button. It even looked like (to me) a points finish was within reach, but sadly it wasn't to be. His defense against Button in the last few laps was to me somewhat reminiscent of Ayrton Senna fending off Nigel Mansell who was behind in a much faster car in the 1992 race. Also the 13th place finally puts Caterham ahead of Marussia.

2. Felipe Massa - This was his best weekend in this season so far. Would have started ahead of Alonso were it not for traffic in Q3, and matched the pace of the front-runners in the race.

Honorable mention:
Sebastian Vettel - Made the strategy work, being fast when it counted, enabling him to emerge from the pits ahead of Hamilton and Massa.

Kovalainen - Did a great job again!

Force India - Double points finish with a crap car.

1. Kovalainen, heroic drive!
2. Massa - how did he suddenly improve this much?

1. Massa

He really needed a drive like that.

2. Kovalainen

Looked good enough to score points at one stage.

1) Massa - Finally put in a performance worthy of the seat under huge external pressure

2) Di resta - Inteligent racing got him a points haul

Honourable mention

Kovaleinen - drove magnificently to maintain the lead over Button through pits, but not getting my overall vote for the repeated chicane cutting to unfairly maintain track position

1. Felipe Massa - He was actually a genuine contender to win the race, which was the first time in a long time for him so all credit to him
2. Heikki Kovalainen - Spent all afternoon destroying any notion I had at the start of the weekend that the McLaren is the fastest car overall.