Singapore GP ROTR

[Salamander]

Anyway, my RotR nomination goes tooo.... Ferrari/Red Bull AND ESPECIALLY WILLIAMS strategies. You can find my expanded explanation in the main race thread.

Really? Three teams with three different strategies and you feel all were wrong? I'd love to know what genius strategy you've come up with that would have given 1-2 finishes for Ferrari, Red Bull and Williams...

They didn't beat Hamilton, that's his problem.

Yeah, because it's not like Hamilton could go 3 seconds a lap faster anyway and had the straight-line speed to breeze past any car except maybe the Williams, which he would've had dead to rights in the corners anyway.

[CoopsII]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

[DanielPT]

Sutil and Sauber : Appalling performance.

[Ducktanian]

David Coulthard for his statement that "Well, we all know who is the true thoroughbred now" when looking at Hamilton's (then) 6 wins to Rosberg's 4.

Jesus Christ Coulthard, just declare your love from Hamilton already and get it over with.

[Ed24]

The Williams strategy worked fine for Massa, as it got him ahead of Kimi, it was just that Bottas seemingly had a power steering issue that affected his ability to manage the tyres. Ironically, the Bottas issues caused a train that allowed Massa to coast home and manage his tyres without pressure from behind.

[Aguaman]

Woo first time doing this.

I'm surprised no one picked this up yet.


Lotus pit crew

Reason - Pitted Maldonado during the Safety Car period but kind of put the wrong tires, so good old Pastor had to come back in to get the right tires. I mean how does a team do that? Even though it made no difference in his position because he was last anyway minus the lapped cars, it is still reject worthy.

[DOSBoot]

1. Sutil: Terrible.

2. The FIA: Their new rules on radio restriction was absolutely pitiful.

[roblo97]

ROTR goes for anyone who nominates an ROTR/ROTRs. Why Because there's nothing very bad happened. Why too? Because I'm controversial

There is a fine line between controversial and stupid and that is on the stupid side of that line.

[FMecha]

ROTR goes for anyone who nominates an ROTR/ROTRs. Why Because there's nothing very bad happened. Why too? Because I'm controversial

There is a fine line between controversial and stupid and that is on the stupid side of that line.

Says the person who gets called out using that line in the past.

Although yeah, I have to agree with Rob on this one. This is F1 Rejects, Axel.

[AustralianStig]

Woo first time doing this.

I'm surprised no one picked this up yet.


Lotus pit crew

Reason - Pitted Maldonado during the Safety Car period but kind of put the wrong tires, so good old Pastor had to come back in to get the right tires. I mean how does a team do that? Even though it made no difference in his position because he was last anyway minus the lapped cars, it is still reject worthy.

I forgot about that. Let's not also forget Maldonado then tried to massacre the pitlane with his wheelgun and hose!

[TheFlyingCaterham]

I will also put in a honourary mention for the FIA stewards. How Alonso got away with cutting the second corner on the first lap and how Vergne got penalised for being pushed wide by a certain Lotus I will never know.

On the other hand though, The Codemasters penalty system might be more realistic than popular opinion...

[More_Blue_Flags]

I had almost nominated Sutil for his general air of rejectfulness and apathy until Aguaman reminded me of the efforts of the Lotus Pit Crew.

[Yannick]

I did not want to nominate Sauber because they still are my favourite team, so I had to think long and hard to find another suitable nominee. And guess what! I found one. It is yet another inanimate object:

The Turn 1 and Turn 2 runoff area (!)

It just does not penalize drivers from cutting Turn 2. In this race, suspiciously many drivers, when racing somebody who has been coming out of the pits, have locked up their brakes going into Turn 1, overshot the corner as a result, ran straight through the runoff and re-entered the track in Turn 3, thereby being able to go through this section of corners faster than usual, and thus being able to overtake the car that has been coming out of the pits.
Even with no car coming out of the pits, this runoff area has been used as part of the track more often than other escape roads on the track. And it was not just Jean-Eric Vergne (more than once) and Fernando Alonso who did it, but by far not all drivers.

[watka]

This isn't a prediction contest I know (that's Predicament Predictions!) but I suspect that Jamie and Enoch will go for a more abstract ROTR than just a team, driver or group of people (stewards etc) because they haven't done so for a while!

Whilst Sutil sticks out as a poor performer, clumsy and slower than ever, I nominate the length of the race. It ran the full 2 hours and every year it has reached it or been quite close to it. However, Singapore is never an interesting enough a Grand Prix to warrant that length. What's more, its an absolute car breaker because of the heat, and with Magnussen's burns we've got yet another issue on top of the exploding brakes and such we've seen in the past. Just except that it's a slow street circuit, like Monaco, which should be run over a shorter distance to make it similar to other grand prix.

[dr-baker]

This isn't a prediction contest I know (that's Predicament Predictions!) but I suspect that Jamie and Enoch will go for a more abstract ROTR than just a team, driver or group of people (stewards etc) because they haven't done so for a while!

Whilst Sutil sticks out as a poor performer, clumsy and slower than ever, I nominate the length of the race. It ran the full 2 hours and every year it has reached it or been quite close to it. However, Singapore is never an interesting enough a Grand Prix to warrant that length. What's more, its an absolute car breaker because of the heat, and with Magnussen's burns we've got yet another issue on top of the exploding brakes and such we've seen in the past. Just except that it's a slow street circuit, like Monaco, which should be run over a shorter distance to make it similar to other grand prix.

If we're going for abstract concepts, then I want (yet again) to nominate the computer-generated track advertising. It's just plain annoying and adds absolutely nothing to my enjoyment of the sport. Heck, I may even go so far as to say that it detracts from my enjoyment. Thanking someone for something is more sincere if you say it in person face-to-face in private rather than sit at a computer screen and just plaster it onto TV screens for the world and his neighbour to see. (I tried to find an image of Singapore being thanked for the GP via these TV graphics, but failed.)

[DonTirri]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

Well, he is? Since winning the title in 2008 (And even then you could say he got lucky. Last corner on the last lap of the last race >_>) Hamilton's done nothing but whine, moan and complain about the machinery he's been given. (Compare to Alonso, who's been consistently dragging the lacklustre ferraris where they really didn't belong.). And then he gets a car that wipes the rest of the field without breaking a sweat, and even THEN he spends the majority of the season bitching, moaning and complaining simply because his teammate dares to actually challenge him instead of just letting him win.

[Salamander]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

Well, he is? Since winning the title in 2008 (And even then you could say he got lucky. Last corner on the last lap of the last race >_>) Hamilton's done nothing but whine, moan and complain about the machinery he's been given. (Compare to Alonso, who's been consistently dragging the lacklustre ferraris where they really didn't belong.). And then he gets a car that wipes the rest of the field without breaking a sweat, and even THEN he spends the majority of the season bitching, moaning and complaining simply because his teammate dares to actually challenge him instead of just letting him win.

Even then, he's clearly been the faster driver - this coming from someone who desperately wants Rosberg to beat Hamilton.

[mario]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

Well, he is? Since winning the title in 2008 (And even then you could say he got lucky. Last corner on the last lap of the last race >_>) Hamilton's done nothing but whine, moan and complain about the machinery he's been given. (Compare to Alonso, who's been consistently dragging the lacklustre ferraris where they really didn't belong.). And then he gets a car that wipes the rest of the field without breaking a sweat, and even THEN he spends the majority of the season bitching, moaning and complaining simply because his teammate dares to actually challenge him instead of just letting him win.

Even then, he's clearly been the faster driver - this coming from someone who desperately wants Rosberg to beat Hamilton.

All of the drivers complain to some extent, which is why I feel that your comment is something of an exaggeration of the situation. Please do not take this as a personal attack, but there is strong evidence that people do tend to have a negative perception bias. In other words, if you actively dislike something, it tends to be the case that you tend to more receptive to information that speaks to that negative bias, whereas negative information about something you were either neutral or favourably inclined towards would have a much smaller impact.

By that logic, it could also be said that Rosberg has done his fair share of moaning too, just that he tends to hide it more than Hamilton - such as using the fact that Hamilton couldn't speak Italian to call him "f***ing lucky" and complaining that he lucked into the victory at Monza right in front of Hamilton just before the podium ceremony, or some of the comments that he has made in the German press that haven't been that complimentary of other drivers.

Similarly, Alonso may have bided his time at Ferrari and not publicly spoken out, but the indication is that Ferrari have sometimes had to put pretty heavy pressure on him to make sure he didn't publicly complain. Some of his comments this year have nevertheless had a rather pointed edge to them, such as the way that he offered praise for the departing Domenicali whilst simultaneously cutting Mattiacci out of the picture.

Equally, I could point to some of the comments that Hulkenberg was making over the radio whilst driving for Sauber in 2013, where he wasn't exactly shy of making his opinions about the car and the team known. The less said about some of Sutil's comments, the better, especially his downright abusive comments in the German press about the management of Force India when he was fired - all in all, if you looked hard enough, I am fairly sure that you could portray quite a few of the drivers in the field in exactly the same way that you perceive Hamilton to be.

[James1978]

Look at Hungary or Monza last year for Alonso complaining about Ferrari.

[CoopsII]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

Well, he is? Since winning the title in 2008 (And even then you could say he got lucky. Last corner on the last lap of the last race >_>) Hamilton's done nothing but whine, moan and complain about the machinery he's been given. (Compare to Alonso, who's been consistently dragging the lacklustre ferraris where they really didn't belong.). And then he gets a car that wipes the rest of the field without breaking a sweat, and even THEN he spends the majority of the season bitching, moaning and complaining simply because his teammate dares to actually challenge him instead of just letting him win.

I appreciate that you're not on the forums very often and that you're unlikely to spend that time reading my posts but if you did you'd know we agree on much of what you say about Hamiltons personality. In terms of negative PR, though, Alonso? Really? Yeah, he's keeping quiet at Ferrari at the moment, which may have something to do with the bucketloads of Euros they keep throwing at him to keep him, but there's been many an occasion when the mask has slipped (sometimes on the team radio) and the frustration has boiled over, much like Hamiltons.

Rosberg is quick but Hamilton is quicker. Rosberg knows it and he knows the lead he had wasnt just down to his own ability, but because of Hamiltons mistakes and bad luck.

[DonTirri]

You don't need to be clairvoyant to predict that should Hamilton win the championship DonTirri will commence whining about how undeserving he is. Tiresome.

Well, he is? Since winning the title in 2008 (And even then you could say he got lucky. Last corner on the last lap of the last race >_>) Hamilton's done nothing but whine, moan and complain about the machinery he's been given. (Compare to Alonso, who's been consistently dragging the lacklustre ferraris where they really didn't belong.). And then he gets a car that wipes the rest of the field without breaking a sweat, and even THEN he spends the majority of the season bitching, moaning and complaining simply because his teammate dares to actually challenge him instead of just letting him win.

I appreciate that you're not on the forums very often and that you're unlikely to spend that time reading my posts but if you did you'd know we agree on much of what you say about Hamiltons personality. In terms of negative PR, though, Alonso? Really? Yeah, he's keeping quiet at Ferrari at the moment, which may have something to do with the bucketloads of Euros they keep throwing at him to keep him, but there's been many an occasion when the mask has slipped (sometimes on the team radio) and the frustration has boiled over, much like Hamiltons.

Rosberg is quick but Hamilton is quicker. Rosberg knows it and he knows the lead he had wasnt just down to his own ability, but because of Hamiltons mistakes and bad luck.

I am not denying that Hamilton is faster than Rosberg. But what really nailed the point home about Hamiltons personality is the fact that even when he has a car that wipes the floor with the rest of the field, he even then finds something to bitch and moan about. That just boggles my mind. Hamilton comes off as a guy who can't handle any kind of misfortune or hardship without throwing a hissyfit, and to me that doesn't belong in the personality of a World Champion.

And yes, Alonso does complain occasionally, but thats the key word. Occasionally. Most of the time he just keeps his head down and does what he can. And anybody who knows me knows I got no love lost for Alonso either, so the fact I am comparing him positively to Hamilton speaks a lot about what I feel about Lewis.

[DanielPT]

I am not denying that Hamilton is faster than Rosberg. But what really nailed the point home about Hamiltons personality is the fact that even when he has a car that wipes the floor with the rest of the field, he even then finds something to bitch and moan about. That just boggles my mind. Hamilton comes off as a guy who can't handle any kind of misfortune or hardship without throwing a hissyfit, and to me that doesn't belong in the personality of a World Champion.

Well, son, there is a quick fix for that. Just mute your goddamn TV!

[CoopsII]

I am not denying that Hamilton is faster than Rosberg. But what really nailed the point home about Hamiltons personality is the fact that even when he has a car that wipes the floor with the rest of the field, he even then finds something to bitch and moan about. That just boggles my mind. Hamilton comes off as a guy who can't handle any kind of misfortune or hardship without throwing a hissyfit, and to me that doesn't belong in the personality of a World Champion.

Well, son, there is a quick fix for that. Just mute your goddamn TV!

What about hypnosis to unlearn English and stick to Finnish? That way all he'll hear is a load of noise that makes no sense. Problem solved.

[LukeB]

The phenomenon of whining F1 drivers is hardly a new thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNrS9RHMc-I
"We had alot of problems with the car..."

[Ferrim]

This isn't a prediction contest I know (that's Predicament Predictions!) but I suspect that Jamie and Enoch will go for a more abstract ROTR than just a team, driver or group of people (stewards etc) because they haven't done so for a while!

Whilst Sutil sticks out as a poor performer, clumsy and slower than ever, I nominate the length of the race. It ran the full 2 hours and every year it has reached it or been quite close to it. However, Singapore is never an interesting enough a Grand Prix to warrant that length. What's more, its an absolute car breaker because of the heat, and with Magnussen's burns we've got yet another issue on top of the exploding brakes and such we've seen in the past. Just except that it's a slow street circuit, like Monaco, which should be run over a shorter distance to make it similar to other grand prix.

I'm actually for the opposite, and have been for a few years: now that races tend to be shorter overall than 30 years ago, let's increase Monaco distance to 91-92 laps, like all the other GPs.

Anyway, you have a point - either both races should be shortened, or neither. Since Singapore started, Monaco is shorter only because of the tradition, which is inconsistent. Another possibility would be to run timed races, with a fixed race time of 1h 30m. The counter would be stopped in case of a red flag situation, just like it is now. I think it could be good for the TVs, and you could never be sure about what distance remains to go.

I've just come up with the idea as I was writing, so I fully expect you to start throwing arguments at me about why it is such a bad idea

[Barbazza]

For almost doing a brilliant one-man Rene Arnoux tribute act (If he'd just held up the leaders blatantly it would have been perfect) it has to be the one man who shouldn't be in F1 - I'll keep saying this until he isn't - Sutil.

Although Hamilton's whinging got on my tits that's almost par for the course these days.

[Normal32]

Track limits and Rosberg/Maldonado's luck

[eytl]

Official decision time ... for various reasons I've been out of action for much of the past week, and just as well, because a last-minute entrant has snuck in to claim the prize!

Jamie and I deliberated about going with Adrian Sutil, and whilst the German certainly didn't cover himself in glory, I just didn't think that his general underperformance and the swipe on Perez sufficiently grabbed my ROTR attention.

In fact, I was leaning towards agreeing with Watka and going with the race length, because I must admit that I ended up having to watch the race in about three different sittings, and on each occasion I started falling asleep, such is the length of the event, the fact that the cars actually LOOK slow, the fact that they are lapping about 6-7 seconds off quali pace, and maybe because I've experienced the heat and humidity there before and so the heavy atmosphere somehow comes through for me even on the TV coverage.

But, at the eleventh hour, comes the revelation that an unspecified foreign substance contaminated Rosberg's steering column electronics during pre-event servicing. Not only did it derail Nico's race and possibly his championship, but it raises numerous questions. Like, why did it only affect Rosberg and not Hamilton? Why did it only hit Nico in the race? Was it deliberate sabotage? Should conspiracy theorists be standing up? Is Toto Wolff smiling again? Do aliens exist? Apart from clearly needing to call in Mulder and Scully, even if ultimately there is perfectly logical explanation, it simply sounds ludicrous and yet potentially had far-reaching effects, and that is pure ROTR fodder as far as we're concerned.

[Ataxia]

[Yannick]

Official decision time ... just as ... a last-minute entrant has snuck in to claim the prize!

... at the eleventh hour, comes the revelation that an unspecified foreign substance contaminated Rosberg's steering column electronics during pre-event servicing. ... and that is pure ROTR fodder as far as we're concerned.

LOL! LOOOL! The award has never gone to a less specified entity before, and it remains to be seen if it ever will.
No wonder this nominee took so long to come to the spotlight, as unspecified as it is. In fact, this feels almost like you have specifically waited for this particular unspecified nominee to show up. If there were some kind of prize money on the Reject Of the Race Award, what would the unspecified foreign substance do with it? Would it put the money in Rosberg's steering column where it itself lives? Certainly, Rosberg would consider that a good idea because the money could help fix his steering column for the next race. Or would the ominous substance transfer the prize money for the Reject Of the Race Award into more unspecified channels, like an unspecified account in Switzerland perhaps? It's all very unspecified!

Enoch & Jamie: congrats on this great choice! And a great picture on the front page, too, in which you explicitly had to circle the substance in yellow to specify it for your readers. Having Reject Of the Race winners like this clearly shows that F1 is still glamorous as an expletive!

[TheFlyingCaterham]

The most exciting part of the Grand Prix was this thread in my opinion

[LionZoo]

But, at the eleventh hour, comes the revelation that an unspecified foreign substance contaminated Rosberg's steering column electronics during pre-event servicing. Not only did it derail Nico's race and possibly his championship, but it raises numerous questions. Like, why did it only affect Rosberg and not Hamilton? Why did it only hit Nico in the race? Was it deliberate sabotage? Should conspiracy theorists be standing up? Is Toto Wolff smiling again? Do aliens exist? Apart from clearly needing to call in Mulder and Scully, even if ultimately there is perfectly logical explanation, it simply sounds ludicrous and yet potentially had far-reaching effects, and that is pure ROTR fodder as far as we're concerned.

I'm standing up.

[CoopsII]

I'm standing up.

No couch either?

[BigG80]

I'm standing up.

No couch either?

Sofa king funny.

[dr-baker]

I'm standing up.

No couch either?

Sofa king funny.

Boomstick is the King of Sofas yet to be, and he is indeed funny. So you're right, the Sofa King is funny!