Grand Prix Rejects

So, who do you think is worthy of the RotR award?

At this stage Alonso

Force India pitcrew just threw it out of the ballpark!

Force India pit crew.

Force India have hit this award for six at the rate they're going.

Wheels

Alonso or FI

but thinking more Alonso at this stage since FI didn't have any problems in aus

Everyone!

Farce India's pit crew.

Everyone... except for Marussia...

(This feels so weird.)

Many possible candidates. Listed here in order of relative rejectfullness:

- Force India: double retirement in a race where they should have done well. And horribly bad pit stops too!

- Kimi Raikonnen: How the mighty has fallen! He went from race winner to having to scrape for minor points for the likes of Hulkenberg and Perez. And he was beaten by his teammate too.

- Sergio Perez: This is probably a good moment for him to regret moving to McLaren. Beaten by his replacement! I bet Sergio is thinking now what he could have done in that Sauber. He came second last year, after all

- Alonso for crashing and missing out on a lot of points

- Maldonado for crashing again (but not missing out on any points, probably)

- Button: I am conflicted about listing him here. On the one hand he was expected to do bad here, so his result is no big surprise. On the other hand he was doing reasonably well until his botched pit stop, so maybe he did miss out on a potentially good result.

Team orders, force India front left wheel hub, Fernando Alonso?

Candidates but for sheer rejectfulness has to be lewis"you have moved down the street a couple of places" Hamilton.

Everyone who isn't Jules Bianchi or Nico Hulkenberg.

the Masked Lapwing wrote:Everyone who isn't Jules Bianchi or Nico Hulkenberg.

Actually, this is a reasonable nomination. They both put their head down and did the job, but the others all had been involved in something!

I nominate Pit Lane antics:
Alonso not stopping to fix the damge.
Vergne released into Pic
Force India screwing up multiple times
Jenson Button's tire not being secure and thus losing an easy 5th.

Force India pit crew wheelnut failure forcing both cars out and costing them points!

Honourable mentions:
Alonso For not pitting at the end of the lap, that wing was always going to end up under his tyres....

Force India for completely destroying the race for both of their drivers.

Dishonorable mention to Alonso for his crash. I can't understand why he thought staying out would be a good idea as he was clearly slower than Vettel, holding up everyone else. Alonso and Ferrari's idiocy in this situation reminded me of Hamilton in China 2007.

It has to be Alonso.Massive mistake by him or the team, it was obvious that the wing was going to come off. What were they thinking? And totally out of character for Alonso. Thats how championships are lost.

Oh and Maldonado, who is obviously on a mission to visit every gravel trap at every circuit.

Shadaza wrote:I nominate Pit Lane antics:
Alonso not stopping to fix the damge.
Vergne released into Pic
Force India screwing up multiple times
Jenson Button's tire not being secure and thus losing an easy 5th.

Not only that, but Red Bull team orders, only because they didn't work!

So many to pick from
Alonso- Pit you stupid man!
Vettal - Why should Mark move over for you?
Chilton- Beaten by both Caterhams
Massa- Dropped quicker than a hot potato
Mclaren- No speed still and they are back to their pitstop issues
Maldonado- If this continues and he brings no money to the team....

but the winner is
Force India- Pit stop issues and double DNF after both drivers got into the top 10. Bad Bad Bad

the Masked Lapwing wrote:Everyone who isn't Jules Bianchi or Nico Hulkenberg.

I second this. My god has this been pathetic.

Can give a pass to Massa too as the only terrible thing he did was losing positions at the start and he had a pretty decent race otherwise.

The entire bloody pitlane deserves this piece of award.

Hypocritical F1 Fans

"ERR VETTEL DEMANDING THE TEAM PUSH HIM PAST WEBBER, WHAT AN ARSEHOLE!"
"ERR WHY AREN'T MERCEDES PUSHING ROSBERG PAST HAMILTON, WHAT ARSEHOLES!"

---

"Really angry with Ferrari for ordering Massa to let Alonso past."
"Really angry with Vettel for ignoring orders to let Webber past."

---

"Vettel gave Karthikeyan the finger, what a baby!"
"Webber gave Vettel the finger, what a legend!"

I nominate the fake smile.

Also nominating Vettel's piss poor apology.
I understand why he would ant to go on and win. But you don't weave like crazy celebrating as you cross the line then climb on top of the car show boating your amazing victory then claim it was an accident he passed Webber and he is sorry.

Afterwards Vettel claimed "It doesn't help his feelings right now. Apologies to Mark and now result is there, but all I can say is that I didn't do it deliberately."

Pedestrian wrote:- Sergio Perez: This is probably a good moment for him to regret moving to McLaren. Beaten by his replacement! I bet Sergio is thinking now what he could have done in that Sauber. He came second last year, after all

- Button: I am conflicted about listing him here. On the one hand he was expected to do bad here, so his result is no big surprise. On the other hand he was doing reasonably well until his botched pit stop, so maybe he did miss out on a potentially good result.

Why are you not nominating McLaren? It's their fault the race was so bad, with the awful car and ruining Button's race.

I think that it is going to be a tough decision to weigh it up between pit lane antics and Alonso throwing away a chance for a decent points haul by not pitting.

Hamilton's pit lane blunder was a bit bizarre (although at least he could laugh about "doing a Jenson" after the race, and at least it is a little more excusable in his case given the similarity of the McLaren and Mercedes overalls), but the Vergne-Pic collision was less of a laughing matter and is currently the subject of an investigation. Force India's pit stops were truly awful, and probably cost them very dearly in terms of points (since it looked like they had a chance of beating the Sauber's in that race), whilst Sauber were probably quite lucky not to get away with a penalty for an unsafe release when they nearly took Kimi out. And, of course, we had McLaren sending Button on his way with a loose wheel - at least he realised quite quickly what was up, but they threw away what looked like a fairly comfortable 5th place for Button with that blunder.

At the same time, you have to wonder what went on with Alonso earlier in the race - clattering Vettel is an unusual mistake for a driver of his experience and calibre, and surely the team must have known that it would not be possible to leave him out there for much longer even if the wing didn't collapse or he would have been given the black and orange flag for being a danger to the other drivers (there is no way that race control would have let him drive round for several laps with a wing that was that badly damaged).

Mind you, Maldonado deserves at least a passing mention for throwing the car off the track so many times - Kimi also had a rather scruffy race by his usual standards (went off at least twice during the race, and ended up being beaten by Grosjean despite the fact that Grosjean was driving with an older specification car).

Shadaza wrote:Also nominating Vettel's piss poor apology.
I understand why he would ant to go on and win. But you don't weave like crazy celebrating as you cross the line then climb on top of the car show boating your amazing victory then claim it was an accident he passed Webber and he is sorry.

Afterwards Vettel claimed "It doesn't help his feelings right now. Apologies to Mark and now result is there, but all I can say is that I didn't do it deliberately."

What utter rubbish from Vettel! Of course he did

Force India or Vettel. Disgraceful from both.

Way too many candidates for this to be an easy decision.

Fernando Alonso, just because that wasn't a mistake you'd expect from Fernando. Clattering Vettel in the first place was a bit clumsy, and it's probably his biggest mistake since Belgium 2010 (and that's a long time ago). Behind Massa in the championship for the first time in three years?

Force India pit crew, how long was di Resta's stop?

McLaren pit crew threw away a great result for Button. He might even have challenged the Mercedes cars given their inter-team friction and Hamilton's poor pace for the last podium step. As it is they have 4 points after 2 races.

Toro Rosso pit crew - Vergne might lose his point for the incident with Pic. A bit like Hungary 2010, but less spectacular.

Red Bull inter-team relations just went ice-cold. Instead of complaining about the tyres, they might need to spend more time controlling their drivers, just like...

Mercedes inter-team relations have Hamilton and Rosberg fallen out after two races? Rosberg's frustration is understandable, and Hamilton was surprisingly apologetic on the podium. They're lucky that the Red Bull war will take the attention off them.

Kimi Raikkonen, lots of mistakes, soundly beaten by Grosjean and rather weakly gives up the momentum from Australia. He hasn't looked comfortable in the wet for a while now.

Lewis Hamilton just for driving into the McLaren pit.

Pastor Maldonado, two races, two crashes. Meanwhile Bottas might still snare a point if Vergne is penalised.

I'd probably give the award to Alonso, just because that was such an unusual error from him and very costly, especially with Vettel winning.

DidNotQualify wrote:Force India pit crew, how long was di Resta's stop?

According to F1.com, 2:03.124
Sutil's was 1:29.401, as an added bonus.

Shizuka wrote:

the Masked Lapwing wrote:Everyone who isn't Jules Bianchi or Nico Hulkenberg.

Actually, this is a reasonable nomination. They both put their head down and did the job, but the others all had been involved in something!

I'd add Grosjean to that list. He got overtaken a few times, but didn't do anything stupid, and picked up some good points.

Anyway, my nomination is the pitlane. Cars in the wrong garage, cars colliding, cars with bad wheel nuts and a disrespect of team orders. Nobody had a good day there.

How long before China?

Good, we might need that long to decide.

Many candidates, but the standout is Force India, honestly, that was the overall worst team performance I ever saw.

The F1 fan point is good as well.

Maldonado - not sure if 2nd off was a spin or failure but still a poor race
Alonso/Ferrari - just like Suzuka last year, must play the numbers game to avoid wasting points like that.
McLaren - Still having pitlane communication issues!

I'm going for Force India though for attempting to win the Ferrari/Irvine Nurburgring 1999 Memorial Award for Pitlane Excellence.

GwilymJJames wrote:Hypocritical F1 Fans

Agree also

Crikey. Plenty to choose from. Firstly, the honourable mentions...

Pastor Maldonado
As Alexander Armstrong often said in Tooned, "Oh dear, it's happened again...". Erratic driving followed by a DNF. It's up to rookie Bottas to score some points apparently.

Max Chilton
Unless I missed some incident (in which case remove this nomination), he was slower than Giedo van der Garde on pace, in a car at least equal to, and probably faster than, the Caterham. Meanwhile Bianchi is bordering on fighting Williams and Toro Rosso. No good whatsoever...

And now, the podium...

P3 // Fernando Alonso
Your front wing is broken on the first lap, sparks are flying everywhere, one of the wing supports is broken. What do you do? Do you A) Pit and get a new one as soon as possible or B) Just keep driving as if nothing is wrong?
If you are a moron, then B is the correct answer. This was very un-Alonso. I would have expected less of a rookie decision from him. Even the other teams could see it was about to collapse ("watch out for Alonso, his front wing is broken"), but he stayed out. Could have got third at least without that bad decision.

P2 // Christian Horner
He's like one of those parents you see at the beginning of every episode of Supernanny. Two uncontrollable kids that do what they like run around, and he just stands there clueless, telling them what to do with no real conviction or control over the situation. No wonder this is blowing up in his face, I don't think many people in the paddock respect him in the same way they respect Ross Brawn.

If he really wanted to drive the point home, he'd have done a 1995 David Richards. If you're not aware of the story, here's a quick summary; Subaru are on the verge of securing the WRC manufacturers title, and their two drivers Sainz and McRae are fighting each other for the win and the championship lead in the penultimate round in Spain. Sainz is leading going in to the final day, and DR tells both drivers to hold station. But, um, you're telling McRae to not try to win. That's just not going to work! So, Colin does what Colin does best and blazes into the lead, throwing caution to the wind. The team crew are even sent onto the stages to stand in the middle of the road and make him slow down. Which again, doesn't work. The rally ends, and McRae is the winner. Richards however is having none of it, and has the crew make sure McRae suffers a time penalty at the final timecheck that relegates him down to second behind Sainz.

If Horner really wants to make it clear that the drivers are there to serve the team and not the other way around, he should have found a way to get Vettel demoted to second off-track. Having Vettel do that and then not suffer any consequences is not going to cut it.


However, for the win, it can only be one thing...

***WINNER*** McLaren Wheelnut Locking System ***WINNER***
What else could it have been? Once again, McLaren find a way to overcomplicate simple tasks, with fatal results. They give Force India their wheelnut locking system, and something as simple as failing to apply a wheelnut correctly causes a double DNF for the team, when it looked like both cars would score points. And then of course, the wheel nuts also ruin Button's race for good measure. First it was the electronic pit release debacle, now they've got sticky nuts. Not pleasant.

Lots and lots of rejects today, but I'll go with these

Force India's pit crew: While Sutil and PDR were the Force, the rest of the team were as India as they could (we have the tech, but rarely use it). Even regressed to Stone Age to try to understand how a wheel (nut) works.

Williams: Since the team now leads the Nosecone Destruction Champioship and The Reverend is back to pay driver status, I'm surprised the Grove Squad don't receive more votes here.

Dishonorable mentions for Fernando Alonso for the rookie mistake, and McLaren that not only doesn't know how to work out the Mp/4-28, but returned to the Benny Hill-styled pitstops.

The C'mon Man! of the race is for Lewis Hamilton: Lew, we know that you spend a lot of time in McLaren, but your're now in the silver and turquise team, not in the silver and red! C'mon Man!

cynon wrote: Red Bull team orders, only because they didn't work!

I'll agree with that!It was a case of team disorders!

Dim wrote:

cynon wrote: Red Bull team orders, only because they didn't work!

I'll agree with that!It was a case of team disorders!

I'll agree with that as well because it was absaloutley bloody disgraceful

Stramala [kostas22] wrote:However, for the win, it can only be one thing...

***WINNER*** McLaren Wheelnut Locking System ***WINNER***
What else could it have been? Once again, McLaren find a way to overcomplicate simple tasks, with fatal results. They give Force India their wheelnut locking system, and something as simple as failing to apply a wheelnut correctly causes a double DNF for the team, when it looked like both cars would score points. And then of course, the wheel nuts also ruin Button's race for good measure. First it was the electronic pit release debacle, now they've got sticky nuts. Not pleasant.

Slight correction needed here - Force India might have adopted a similar system to what McLaren use, but the Force India system was developed independently from McLaren (it isn't part of their joint R&D agreement or supply deal).