Formula 1 - 2011 Season

Somehow I'm not surprised that it was again Hamilton who was involved in the one incident that was dangerous to others (making Di Resta go via very slippery grass to avoid hitting him getting his car right way, it's also curious how he says "di resta came out from nowhere even though his car was pretty much straight towards di restas before he made the correcting spin)

 

Somehow I'm not surprised that it is again you banging on about Hamilton. Again.

 

Look at the stats and then think is it really not justified? 5 or 6 times this season in front of judges after race, causing others to crash and or to put into dangerous situation like now etc

 

Paul Di Resta seemed to have already moved to the right because he saw Hamilton on the track, I don't think he was in any danger, however Hamilton should have waited till all cars had passed. He probably would have if he was not in the lead at that point.

 

Right, yes, out from track, definately not.
And I can't figure out many more dangerous places for F1 than wet grass, unless you count when you actually hit something.

 

I never understood this "need some Vettel (any other dominant driver) DNF's to get the championship alive again" mindset. If a driver is doing well due to skill/team/both then why wouldn't you want the rivals to catch up fairly? What's this need for "omg I hope he breaks down or crashes so lil Timmy can win a race!"

The races are enjoyable and Vettel's having a good year. Why wish ill will on the guy?

 

Great race, a lot of fighting. That Renault explosion was scary as hell, though.

Congrats to Button, that was a great performance. I wish Alonso could have finished in front of Vettel.

 

I'm a lot more surprised about the lack of discussion about the importance of Hamiltons strategy going wrong when he was pitted for super-softs a third time, when at that point, it was already clear (although Brundle and Coulthard didn’t get it at this point) that some already attempted to go prime-tyre and take them to the end.

This ment, that Hamilton would definately need to pit again, where as all those on the prime tyre would probably not. At this point, Hamilton still had a ‘healthy’ 7 seconds lead over Button who was on the prime-tyre.

The rain potentially could have saved Lewis’s race had the rain been strong enough to force all front runners to pit another time. The spun didn’t help, but it wasn’t what cost him the race. The extra pit to inters was a risky gamble that could have payed off if all others had pitted for inters as well. It didn’t – and as a result he lost 40 seconds in total for the pit to inters and back to the prime tyre. The drive-through only cost him another 15 seconds, putting him 55 seconds behind Button at that stage.

To sum it up – Lewis’s had already lost 1st place to Button when he went onto supersofts instead of softs.

I’m amazed no one really picked this up on the BBC broadcast and decided to focus on the stop on inters and his drive-through instead. One has to ask, with a team as big as McLaren – what made them pit Lewis for super-softs instead of softs at that stage? At that stage, the only reason to do that was to cover Alonso who was on super-softs and he was how many seconds off the lead?

 

Well It seemed like Hamilton was quite hard on his tires and maybe they thought that the softs wouldn't have lasted around 30 laps under him or atleast thought he'd be in serious trouble at the end with them. Hamilton had to pit earlier than what they planned and in those situations it's easy to make somewhat questionable calls. In any case going to softs at that point wouldn't probably have negated their later decision to change in to intermediates when the the rain started, but who knows.

 

That's true, Hamilton was quite hard on the tyres, but I thought that was more because he used them agressively to pull out a comfortable lead - a lead that was around 9 seconds earlier, then down to 5, but a good pitstop ment that he maintained a gap to Button of around 7 seconds on his final stop for his 3rd set of super-softs. Compared to Button, it didn't really seem that his tyre-wear would be a huge problem - certainly not something he couldn't manage. Even if Button was more efficient on his tyre - he still would have had track position on a track that doesn't feature a lot of overtaking and his biggest competitor was Button, something the team could have 'managed' if they had wanted.

The radio from his team, 5 laps after he was on the super-softs, informing him of the 'situation' IMO was quite telling that they did in fact make a big mistake.

The way I read it is that McLaren's (and probably most teams) plan was to get through the intermediate tyre phase at the beginning, then have their drivers on a 3 stop (Int, SS, SS, SS) strategy. The problem was that the tyres didn't last long enough for all, which is why they all came in earlier relative to what was probably planned. At the point when Lewis came in for his last SS, he had 27 laps to go to the end with a lead of 7 seconds. At that point, there were already others (the Mercedes, Saubers) that were on the prime-tyre to take some measure about how quick they were and how they would last relative to the SS.

I'm just amazed by the lack of of foresight. Even Brundle and Coulthard missed it when Webber went onto the softs and what they were attempting to do....

 

hehe you've been spoiled with the high quality BBC broadcast, if only you knew what the Finnish broadcast is like, our guys often don't even notice overtakes/other major events and only realise them few laps later when the replay of them comes + similar absolutely amazing retardness/downright idiotic speculations on a constant stream It's much better when Mika Salo is on the team, but when it's our regular "experts" things go really bad. Thankfully I watched the latest race (and every race from now on) using the BBC player (thanks Kaotik).

Yeah it does sound like a mistake with Hamilton's tires, lot of things went wrong for him, he did have a good pace though so that's positive.

 

Yeah, the BBC broadcast is great - something that has increased my interest in F1 a lot in the last 1.5 years that I've been watching it. Before that, I used to switch between our local broadcast and RTL. Our local [Swiss] one isn't bad because we at least get a lot of exclusive Sauber news and updates, but the commentators don't really have the best insight and there's little before and after the race. RTL is better, but I just can't stand listening to Niki Lauda and the constant rubbish. Naturally, they also have a very pro-Vettel (or anything German) take on things and the frequent commercials are a pain to get through.

It's really sad that the BBC is reducing as of next year. It's just a huge loss.

BTW: There are heaps of torrents around on the BBC F1 broadcasts including Practice, QF, the Race and the Forum (all but the Forum in HD), usually the latest within a day of the race online....

 

But he was broad on when Paul started moving over and then moved

1. Away from him to the otherside of the track
2. Then spun within his own car length so reducing the car profile to Paul.

In summary I think it looked a lot worse than it was, Paul could have actually got past on the tarmac as it turned out.

It didn't look good hence the penalty.

As for anything worse than wet grass how about an exploding Renault, not putting the fire out, not calling out the SC and then pulling it backwards up the pit lane almost causing an accident with Vettel?

There seems to be no sanction against anyone for that 5 minutes of Keystone Cops malarky.

 

He was not straight towards Di Resta, he was parallel to the track, he moved towards the car coming after Paul before starting his spin so presumably was looking at that, Paul had already started moving right at this point so was on the left of Hamiltons vision that was limited by a visor that had rain drops on it.

Obvioiusly a harder judgment call in the car than on the armchair.

 

You answered your own question in one small sentence

"The rain potentially could have saved Lewis’s race had the rain been strong enough to force all front runners to pit another time."

It was a gamble that did not pay off.

 

He is talking about the tyre change many laps before the change to intermediates... Not the gamble to go intermediates.

 

It was always a posibility that the Softs wouldn't have held up to the end of the race too so everyone may have needed new tires. Turned out that softs did hold up and the assumed speed advantage of the ssofts wasn't enough so it made going onto ssofts a bad idea in retrospect. If Hamilton managed to keep increasing his lead on the ssofts of about a second a lap vs everyone else on softs he would have had enough time to come in for another pitstop.

 

So was I, I'm not sure why you are bringing intermediates into the discussion.

 

Because your being confused would have been the only option that made sense. Your version doesn't make any sense whatsoever... Atleast if you mean that they were counting on the rain to be so strong that everybody has to pit for inters later, so "let's go supersofts now to gain few secs and risk the entire race"...You don't do that sort of super risk gamble tactics for the race leader in any situation...

 

Just wanted to make a quick post that I'll be attending the grandprix at Spa!

Anyone else going to be there? General advice?