Reject of the Race - China 2018

The place for speaking your mind on current goings-on in F1
Post Reply
User avatar
DemocalypseNow
Posts: 13185
Joined: 17 Aug 2009, 09:30
Location: Lost, send help
Contact:

Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by DemocalypseNow »

You know what happens here; who had the most rejectful performance in China today? Which driver, team or organisation did something so unexpectedly bone-headed it's scarcely believable it happened at all?

It might not really satisfy the latter criteria but I'd have to plump for Ferrari strategists. A mistake in their projections led to Vettel coming out behind Bottas depsite having 3.347s in hand before the latter's stop.

But it was Raikkonen's sister car that really went awry. While they made a conscious decision to pull a carbon copy of Audi's default DTM strategy - leave a car out on a much longer first stop to back the following competitors into their other drivers - they had a chance to recover Raikkonen's race and let it slip past.

A door was open for him to ditch mediums for fresh softs, as Hulkenberg was 24.394s behind as the safety car was deployed. Alas, he was left out on his current set. Yes, they were fresher than those of Bottas, Vettel and Hamilton, but a free pit-stop was available and they didn't take it. He was helped to third by problems for others, but had the right call been made, a fight for a long overdue victory with Ricciardo could have been on the cards.
Novitopoli wrote:Everytime someone orders at Pizza Hut, an Italian dies.
Novitopoli wrote:Juve's Triplete: Calciopoli, doping & Mafia connections.

Image Image
User avatar
takagi_for_the_win
Posts: 3054
Joined: 02 Oct 2011, 01:38
Location: The land of the little people.

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by takagi_for_the_win »

I am gonna go very obvious here, and say Toro Rosso's drivers. What is one of the first rules of racing? That's right, don't hit your teammate. I'd be inclined to suggest it was Gasly's fault a hell of a lot more than it was Hartley's, but before I spin the hero to zero narrative I should point out I saw a 4 second clip of the crash so there may be factors I missed. Either way, the two teammates colliding and bringing out a race changing safety car is rarely a good look for a team.
TORA! TORA! TORA!
sswishbone
Posts: 1144
Joined: 25 Mar 2011, 06:23
Location: England

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by sswishbone »

Max Verstappen - Talk about blowing your big chance, first doesn't pull out of a move on Hamilton that had no chance of working then tried blaming Vettel for their collision. Really not a good day at the office
"Hispania are a waste of talent and petrol!" Martin Brundle, Australia Qualifying 2011

Live streams and podcasts from yours truly at http://www.youtube.com/user/sswishbone
BigG80
Posts: 198
Joined: 18 Dec 2009, 12:07

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by BigG80 »

The Toro Rosso crash was all Gasly's error. Verstappen's tangle with Vettel was a carbon copy. Both drivers went for a dive when it was too late and the lead driver had committed to the apex. Was never going to work.

Verstappen is the reject of the race for me as he blew the win with his moves. Gasly runner up.
User avatar
WaffleCat
Posts: 2293
Joined: 08 Jan 2012, 13:02
Location: Singapore

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by WaffleCat »

If I could, I would like to give the honorable mention to Fox Sports Asia. They could only connect to Brundle's and Crofty's commentary just before the parade lap, leaving most of the pre-race proceedings in dead air. Somehow, just judging by the IRC, they're actually behind some streams that y'all use despite being a TV channel. And, get this, they cut to an ad break and MISSED Ricciardo's race winning overtake. Not only that, they cut to ads during the cool down lap, omitting most of Ricciardo's team radio and almost missed the podium ceremony. The only reason Fox Sports Asia isn't my nomination is that you all, thankfully, don't suffer the pain us Southeast Asians have.

And also because one person in particular, somehow, was more rejectful than that.

Enter Max Verstappen. As if touching Hamilton for the second time in a week, something I doubt even Nicole Scherzinger did, wasn't enough, he had that incident with Vettel. The 'he's still young' ecuse doesn't work anymore when it's your third season in F1, racing in an elite team and when your teammate can actually overtake better than you with similar moves.

Simply put, if Kvyat got demoted to Toro Rosso for his incidents in that one race in Sochi, Verstappen is almost asking to be dropped to F2. A big fat ROTR to him.
My friend's USB drive spoiled, spilled tea on her laptop and had a bird poo in her hand.

What did she do in her past life to deserve this?

Signup for the Random Racing League, Season TWO!!!
User avatar
Bobby Doorknobs
Posts: 4059
Joined: 30 Jul 2014, 17:52
Location: In a safe place.

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Bobby Doorknobs »

I'll use my editorial powers to make Takagi's choice of Toro Rosso drivers an official candidate. I'd place more of the blame on last week's hero Gasly, but I think there's sufficient guilt on Hartley's part in this collision for a double nomination.
#FreeGonzo
User avatar
Warren Hughes
Posts: 1334
Joined: 23 Aug 2009, 10:37
Location: Sunderland, UK

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Warren Hughes »

Has to be Max Verstappen IMO, first he blew his chance of the race win with his impatient, one in a million attempt on Hamilton that was never going to end well, then he blew Red Bull's chance of a 1-2 with a crazy lunge on Vettel. After the incident in Bahrain which led to his retirement, a theme seems to be emerging about his competency in wheel-to-wheel combat...
Nico Rosberg wrote:Break me down mentally? Good luck with that one.

:roll:
User avatar
Nuppiz
Site Donor
Site Donor
Posts: 5922
Joined: 30 Mar 2009, 12:10
Location: Vantaa, Finland
Contact:

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Nuppiz »

It has emerged that lack of communication played a part in the Hartley/Gasly collision. Hartley had been asked to let Gasly through as they were on a different strategy, but the location of the move wasn't confirmed. Of course Gasly is still more at fault here due to not waiting for that confirmation and proceeding with a silly divebomb move instead. So my nomination is Toro Rosso as a whole.
Eurosport broadcast for the 1990 Mexican GP prequalifying:
"The Life, it looked very lifeless yet again... in fact Bruno did one, slow lap"
User avatar
Enforcer
Site Donor
Site Donor
Posts: 1493
Joined: 31 Mar 2009, 20:09
Location: Ireland

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Enforcer »

I'm also going to go for Max Verstappen. Generally speaking I think he does get some unfair treatment in the media, I don't think he's any more aggressive or dangerous than Ricciaro or Hamilton, and I think too big a deal was made out of his collision with Hamilton in China.

But his move on Vettel was very amateur in my opinion. He was coming to the corner without setting up for a move, saw 4/5s of a car width appear because Vettel made a small mistake and tried to wedge his car into it. It was never going to work and a talented driver in his 4th season of F1 should know better. He'd already done himself out of the win by this point after a tangle with Hamilton, but could still have gotten on the podium. These things add up, and then when there's a move that's 50/50 that goes wrong, people around the paddock will scowl in his direction.
User avatar
mario
Posts: 8081
Joined: 31 Oct 2009, 17:13

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by mario »

takagi_for_the_win wrote:I am gonna go very obvious here, and say Toro Rosso's drivers. What is one of the first rules of racing? That's right, don't hit your teammate. I'd be inclined to suggest it was Gasly's fault a hell of a lot more than it was Hartley's, but before I spin the hero to zero narrative I should point out I saw a 4 second clip of the crash so there may be factors I missed. Either way, the two teammates colliding and bringing out a race changing safety car is rarely a good look for a team.

As Nuppiz notes, it seems that the team have accepted some of the blame for the collision because it seems that they had told Gasly that Hartley would be letting him through at Turn 14, but it seems that Gasly had the mistaken impression Hartley was going to let him through on the entry into the corner, whilst Hartley thought he would let him through on the exit. I guess that Gasly does deserve blame given that Hartley had already let Gasly through on the exit of Turn 14 during his previous stint, so Gasly should probably have expected him to do the same again, but those slightly vague instructions from the pit wall did not help.

That said, even before that the team were doing pretty badly in terms of performance - from Gasly's surprise performance in Bahrain, they were pretty terrible this weekend and were already looking at finishing towards the back of the grid before that collision happened. On pure pace alone Toro Rosso was already looking good for a ROTR nomination, but the collision just added the cherry to the cake.

I'd agree that Ferrari's strategists had a bit of a brain fade too, though I'd argue that getting jumped by Bottas wasn't one of them. To be fair to the team, there is a suggestion that Vettel did make a small mistake on his in-lap that cost a bit of time, whilst Mercedes did also pull off an exceptionally quick pit stop and Bottas then made it stick with a very quick outlap (especially in the middle and final sectors).

Ferrari, perhaps understandably, were a fraction slower in their pit stop, and all of the other minor factors on the inlap also just helped eat away at that lead - I wouldn't say that it was so much that Ferrari did anything particularly wrong there, more that Bottas and Mercedes just got everything particularly right.

However, I do agree that Ferrari did blunder with Kimi - as others noted, whilst they might have hoped to use Kimi to back Bottas into Vettel, not only did that strategy not work, it then let Kimi fall even further down the order and into a position where he couldn't then help Vettel in the latter stages of the race. Perhaps they did get lucky that Kimi did finish ahead of Hamilton, but only because Hamilton went wide whilst trying to avoid Vettel and Verstappen - otherwise, they'd have allowed Hamilton to also gain more points by letting him get ahead of Kimi.

As DemocalypseNow notes, they were then given an opportunity to make amends for that, but chose not to pit Kimi. Now, they were perhaps in a bit of a no-mans land because Kimi had just pitted four laps earlier, but I believe he did have a fresh set of soft tyres available to him - they could have used him to attack the Mercedes drivers and counter Red Bull's tactics, but didn't. Perhaps, though, they had a lack of confidence in Kimi being able to pull off the sort of pass necessary to make that strategy work - which is perhaps an equally damning indictment.

As others have noted, Verstappen is equally hard to top - it had gone fairly well in those opening laps too, but then it all went wrong after that. The move with Hamilton was, as he later admitted, just never going to work - Verstappen admitted that he lost control of the car by himself because the track was just so dusty and dirty around the outside of the corner - and the later move on Vettel smacked of being a bit flustered after that earlier mistake.

He'd already been warned by Horner before this race that he needed to calm down - he'd already faced criticism from the team for crashing in Bahrain in qualifying, as well as the clash with Hamilton in that race, not to mention a bit of sloppy driving in Australia - whilst it seems that a Spanish TV crew caught Marko rather publicly telling off Verstappen behind the back of Red Bull's garage after the race. I don't think he'll get a dose of the sort of medicine that the team gave Kvyat just yet, but I imagine that things won't be quite so comfortable for him within the team right now either.
Martin Brundle, on watching a replay of Grosjean spinning:
"The problem with Grosjean is that he want to take a look back at the corner he's just exited"
User avatar
Rob Dylan
Posts: 3461
Joined: 18 May 2014, 15:34
Location: Andy Warhol's basement

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Rob Dylan »

My nomination would be for Max Verstappen, because he has messed up in all three races so far this year. The spin in Australia, the contact with Hamilton in Bahrain, and then multiple screw-ups that saw a possible win disappear from him and go to his teammate. Max must know that the win was his for the taking, and unless he steps up very, very soon, he's already out of the championship. He must already have a win's worth of points lost in three races due to screw-ups.

I totally agree with the other two nominations, The Toro Rosso drivers and Ferrari's strategy though. I hate to also feel like nominating Vettel, but that pass by Alonso, shoving him out of the way and down to eighth, was pretty dire. Whatever damage to Vettel's car has only been implicit to me, as I never heard Ferrari team radio or the C4 commentators saying anything about damage. Was it the tyres that caused him to lose those extra places at the end of the race? Either way, his damage limitation was poor, however in control he was.
Murray Walker at the 1997 Austrian Grand Prix wrote:The other [Stewart] driver, who nobody's been paying attention to, because he's disappointing, is Jan Magnussen.
Felipe Nasr - the least forgettable F1 driver!
User avatar
dinizintheoven
Posts: 3980
Joined: 09 Dec 2010, 01:24

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by dinizintheoven »

My nomination is this new way of deciding ROTR and IIDOTR: nine days after the race and we still don't have the poll. Nominating these awards is a spur-of-the-moment thing; if you're going to do it this way the poll needs to be posted on the same day, preferably, or the Monday at the latest - by this stage it's unlikely anyone will care. I reckon this was something that sounded like a good idea at the time - a bit like that countdown-to-elimination qualifying - but didn't work in practice.
James Allen, on his favourite F1 engine of all time:
"...the Life W12, I can't describe the noise to you, but imagine filling your dustbin with nuts and bolts, and then throwing it down the stairs, it was something akin to that!"
User avatar
DemocalypseNow
Posts: 13185
Joined: 17 Aug 2009, 09:30
Location: Lost, send help
Contact:

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by DemocalypseNow »

dinizintheoven wrote:My nomination is this new way of deciding ROTR and IIDOTR: nine days after the race and we still don't have the poll. Nominating these awards is a spur-of-the-moment thing; if you're going to do it this way the poll needs to be posted on the same day, preferably, or the Monday at the latest - by this stage it's unlikely anyone will care. I reckon this was something that sounded like a good idea at the time - a bit like that countdown-to-elimination qualifying - but didn't work in practice.

It'll work as soon as we have nominated people overseeing it. We didn't do that last time, and that was our mistake. To help with this, RobDylan has now been upgraded to moderator.
Novitopoli wrote:Everytime someone orders at Pizza Hut, an Italian dies.
Novitopoli wrote:Juve's Triplete: Calciopoli, doping & Mafia connections.

Image Image
User avatar
Klon
Site Donor
Site Donor
Posts: 7178
Joined: 28 Mar 2009, 17:07
Location: Schleswig-Holstein, FRG
Contact:

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Klon »

dinizintheoven wrote:My nomination is this new way of deciding ROTR and IIDOTR: nine days after the race and we still don't have the poll. Nominating these awards is a spur-of-the-moment thing; if you're going to do it this way the poll needs to be posted on the same day, preferably, or the Monday at the latest - by this stage it's unlikely anyone will care. I reckon this was something that sounded like a good idea at the time - a bit like that countdown-to-elimination qualifying - but didn't work in practice.


We shouldn't have a poll because the majority of users are not intelligent enough to see the award as the tounge-in-cheek thing it originally was and think it is about actually awarding the worst performance. We need to go back to two or three people deciding it amongst themselves, preferably pre-2010 users.
User avatar
novitopoli
Site Donor
Site Donor
Posts: 987
Joined: 25 Aug 2014, 16:56

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by novitopoli »

Klon wrote:
dinizintheoven wrote:My nomination is this new way of deciding ROTR and IIDOTR: nine days after the race and we still don't have the poll. Nominating these awards is a spur-of-the-moment thing; if you're going to do it this way the poll needs to be posted on the same day, preferably, or the Monday at the latest - by this stage it's unlikely anyone will care. I reckon this was something that sounded like a good idea at the time - a bit like that countdown-to-elimination qualifying - but didn't work in practice.


We shouldn't have a poll because the majority of users are not intelligent enough to see the award as the tounge-in-cheek thing it originally was and think it is about actually awarding the worst performance. We need to go back to two or three people deciding it amongst themselves, preferably pre-2010 users.


Nothing keeps us from having two ROTRs/IIDOTRs; a more conservative "forumers' pick" as done in the last years and a more left-field "editors' pick" in the old Jenoch style. Which then wouldn't necessarily have to go through a poll.
sw3ishida wrote:Jolyon Palmer brought us closer as a couple, for which I am grateful.


Ataxia wrote:
Londoner wrote:Something I've thought about - what happens to our canon should we have a worldwide recession or some other outside event?

We'll be fine. It's Canon, non Kodak.
User avatar
Rob Dylan
Posts: 3461
Joined: 18 May 2014, 15:34
Location: Andy Warhol's basement

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Rob Dylan »

DemocalypseNow wrote:It'll work as soon as we have nominated people overseeing it. We didn't do that last time, and that was our mistake. To help with this, RobDylan has now been upgraded to moderator.

It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love GP Rejects. The power you have given me I will lay down when this crisis has abated!
Image
Murray Walker at the 1997 Austrian Grand Prix wrote:The other [Stewart] driver, who nobody's been paying attention to, because he's disappointing, is Jan Magnussen.
Felipe Nasr - the least forgettable F1 driver!
User avatar
Rob Dylan
Posts: 3461
Joined: 18 May 2014, 15:34
Location: Andy Warhol's basement

Re: Reject of the Race - China 2018

Post by Rob Dylan »

Hey guys,

So basically I'm going to organise the Reject of the Race and Infinite Improbability Drive of the Race awards from now on, doing what I have done in Azerbaijan from now on. Basically, the most popular nominations will be counted up and placed in a poll, so that a final vote can take place. Generally the top three choices will go into the poll, along with another left-field choice which is more tongue-in-cheek.


Because it has been a while since the Chinese Grand Prix, I am not going to have a poll for this one -- it's been too long for people to remember -- and will simply count up the scores the way I did in 2017. So doing that, the Chinese Reject of the Race is Max Verstappen! With the advantage over his teammate when Red Bull came into their own, he threw away his chance at a solid victory while Ricciardo shone. Max collided with Sebastian, and almost with Lewis as well, and got a penalty to boot. Three races in a row of poor form gets the younger Verstappen this prized award!

Points:
1. Max Verstappen 70
2. Toro Rosso drivers 33
3. Ferrari strategists 23
4. Pierre Gasly 12
5. Reject of the Race 10
6. Fox Sports Asia 6
Murray Walker at the 1997 Austrian Grand Prix wrote:The other [Stewart] driver, who nobody's been paying attention to, because he's disappointing, is Jan Magnussen.
Felipe Nasr - the least forgettable F1 driver!
Post Reply