2016 Austria - ROTR

[DemocalypseNow]

A few strong candidates today. 10 points to the big 'winner', 6pts for the next biggest stooge. Vote away.

[Normal32]

1. Nico Hulkenberg - dropped like a stone
2. Ferrari strategists - way to screw over both of your drivers

HM:

-Nico Rosberg - What was that in the last lap, really?

[Miguel98]

1st - Ferrari Strategists
2nd - Nico Hülkenberg

[Aguaman]

1. Nico Rosberg - Brah...

2. Ted Kravitz - Stupid interview. Look like Toto wanted to deck him.

HM: Pascal Wehlrein - Wrong grid spot and reversed back. Didn't get a penalty but lol.

[Dj_bereta]

1 - Williams: Pole in 2014 season, Podium in 2015... almost finished behind a Manor in 2016. No wonder Massa wants to move for next season.

2 - Force India: A troubled race after a promising qualify session for Hulk.

[AdrianBelmonte_]

Nico Rosberg - obvious reasons

Red Bull racesuits - just LOL

HM to Nico Hülkenberg - dropped like a dubstep song

[Ataxia]

1) Force India - Problems for Hulk, failure for Sergio. A big, clattering bump down to earth.

2) Brexit - because reasons.

[Meatwad]

1. Nico Rosberg: Tried to do a Jerez 1997. Sadly for him, karma is a dog.
2. Sebastian Vettel's tire: Regardless of whether it was due to the kerbs, excessive tire wear or both, it robbed him of what would probably have been a second place in the end.

[Klon]

I can't with good conscience give Rosberg the ROTR when I was one of the "Give him one, m8" fraction. He did what we wanted him to, it only ended badly.

I have gone with the Red Bull racesuits because we need a fun ROTR once in a while. Can't really decide on a second place, so I went ahead and picked Force India.

[Londoner]

1. Mercedes - Threw away a surefire 1-2 because they can't control the utter pillocks who drive their cars.

2. Nico Hulkenberg - What could go wrong, did go wrong.

Honourable mentions to Daniil Kvyat for continuing his efforts to make himself unemployable for 2017, and Renault for being garbage again.

[andrew]

Rosberg especially after he tired to blame Hamilton
Red bull race suits

[mario]

1. Hulkenberg - he started from a great position, but went backwards at a vast rate of knots. Now, the team probably didn't help him with his strategy, but I don't think that Hulkenberg drove especially well (he has nobody to blame but himself for the pit lane speeding penalty, and he'd scuppered his strategy after flat spotting his tyres too).

2. Ferrari's strategists - as others have said, Ferrari ultimately wasted the advantage they had gained from using the supersoft tyres in qualifying. Vettel was unlucky with the tyre failure, but it was questionable why they were running Vettel for so long in the first place given that Kimi had been struggling with his tyres - I can understand trying to make a one stop strategy work, but even then it was, on paper, a slower strategy.

Speaking of Kimi, the pit wall ultimately dropped the ball there as well. It felt as if they were so thrown by the fact that Hamilton made his tyres last several laps longer than expected that they started focussing just on him, and effectively became blind to the fact that Rosberg and the two Red Bull drivers were catching them very rapidly. By looking just at him, they threw away their advantage and let Red Bull overtake them when they should have been able to keep them at bay.

[Fetzie]

1. Ferrari, for obvious reasons
2. Hulkenberg, because he comprehensively failed to do anything with that great grid position.

[rachel1990]

1- Nico Hulkenberg- For a bathplug of a race. Really really bad

2- Toto Wolff- If both drivers had brake issues that could have led to 0 points maybe JUST maybe he could have told them to hold station.

[lance_rambert]

My first pick goes to both Nico Hulkenberg and Red Bull-sh*t's race suit/lederhosen hybrid... thing. I'd say that race sums up Nico's F1 career. He appeared to be a great prospect with a spectacular junior career, but he hasn't done jack squat since actually jumping in an F1 car. He had a front row start, and he comes home 12th . Again, Perez looked set to beat him until his last lap accident. Red Bull's race suit oddity gets it too for just looking silly. They couldn't have picked a worse color than poop brown, honestly.

Second pick goes to Scuderia Ferrari['s Strategists] and because I feel silly, I'm sharing this with Chase Elliott, for failing to keep his damn crew chief from spreading the "shite pit strategy" disease to everybody except Mercedes, and for falling from grace after numerous top-10 finishes. Either Alan has a second job at Ferrari, or they just got a clone of him.

EDIT: I wanted to avoid bringing up Sky's usual Hamilton ass kissing/[nasty act involving sex things] and I already voted in the Google form, but I must mention Ted Kravitz, who would've shared top ROTR honors if I could go back and change the response. Why? Because he spouted so much bullsh*t from his mouth to the point where even Crofty started to shrug off his nonsense. The big line that pissed me off royally was Ted asking Niki Lauda if there was a "moral obligation" for Nico to hand the lead back to Lewis (last lap calamity notwithstanding).

Yeah, I get it, Sky is a British broadcasting network. I get that Sky's commentators/pundits want Lewis, a British driver, to win. I'm fine with commentators cheering on, or feeling giddy when their preferred driver is doing well. It gets annoying sure, but not unreasonable. However, suggesting a tabloid-esque reason like what Ted did post-race IS unreasonable. Ted, don't go suggesting such ridiculous hypotheses just to make yourself believe that Lewis has the full-on advantage. This is especially true when Toto Wolff himself tells you that you're totally wrong. How about laying off the Hamilton infatuation for just one race?

[FullMetalJack]

1. Nico Rosberg - That didn't work Nico, you hit the wrong part of him my friend
2. Force India - I don't need to explain why

[MrMG]

No nominations for the lady who did the podium interviews yet?

[James1978]

No nominations for the lady who did the podium interviews yet?

I was just looking at her legs.

Anyway:

1. Rosberg - Australia 1994 again if I ever saw it.
2. Force India

[dinizintheoven]

1. Nico Rosberg - That didn't work Nico, you hit the wrong part of him my friend

I see what you did there.

I'm going to give ten points to the Red Bull race suits, because I haven't seen anyone covered in that much brown since I was at Wacken in 2002 and one of those drunkards I was with decided to drink far too much until it gave him extreme bowel trouble and the inevitable happened and he didn't have a change of clothes becayse Ryanair had lost his luggage. In the words of Top Gear Australia: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"

Six points go to The Five Live Commentary Team, who I may only have been making use of today but I heard "crucial" more times in the space of five minutes than in a whole season of Jonathan Legard's commentary. It was almost as if they were trying to be him. And at the risk of repeating myself, in the words of Top Gear Australia: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"

Dishonourable mentions go to everyone in the race except PASCAL WEHRLEIN WHO SCORED A POINT FOR MANOR!

[Peteroli34]

1. Hulkenberg - Started 2nd running 17th when he retired

2.Williams - One car retired the other only just beat a Manor, from a team that scored a podium here last season.

[AndreaModa]

All good nominations here. Hulkenberg hadn't crossed my mind when I cast my votes, but he definitely deserves to be up there.

I want to add in Austrian (and central European) F1 fans for not bothering to turn up today. I wrote this in the main race discussion thread but God knows what the official attendance figure was. Empty stands everywhere. It was like going back to South Korea! Red Bull surely can't keep bankrolling the race forever. That said, I bet the grandstand tickets were priced far too high for people to consider affordable, in which case fair enough. But then you have to ask, what's the point of the track owner/promoter setting prices so high if no-one is going to pay? I'd rather halve the prices and have double the number of bums on seats.

[Fetzie]

All good nominations here. Hulkenberg hadn't crossed my mind when I cast my votes, but he definitely deserves to be up there.

I want to add in Austrian (and central European) F1 fans for not bothering to turn up today. I wrote this in the main race discussion thread but God knows what the official attendance figure was. Empty stands everywhere. It was like going back to South Korea! Red Bull surely can't keep bankrolling the race forever. That said, I bet the grandstand tickets were priced far too high for people to consider affordable, in which case fair enough. But then you have to ask, what's the point of the track owner/promoter setting prices so high if no-one is going to pay? I'd rather halve the prices and have double the number of bums on seats.

A weekend's grandstand ticket for next year's costs 466 pounds / 550 euro.

https://www.grandprixevents.com/f1-tick ... grand-prix

No wonder nobody turns up.

[AndreaModa]

You say that, but the best seats at Silverstone for the three days are over four times that value.

It's still ludicrous that fans are expected to pay those sorts of amounts, but that's really not that bad compared to the British GP.

EDIT: Ignore the above. In my head I had platinum packages from a couple of years ago floating around at around £2000 for some daft reason. Weekend pit straight seats for 2016 were going for £625.

[Enforcer]

1st - The Hulk He started 2nd on the grid and disappeared off the radar completely by lap 9.

2nd - Ted Kravitz "Bawwwww... Mercedes should engineer their strategy to let Lewis leapfrog Nico!!! It's only fair since they screwed him over at the start". Wasn't that they were covering a Ferrari threat that ultimately didn't materialise and knew Lewis had a better race tire in reserve or anything. And he didn't say it just once, he kept harping on about it.

Honourable mention:

Rosberg - Outbraking himself trying to block Hamilton and costing himself valuable points. Not to mention giving something for the Hamilton fanboys and the British F1 media to harp on about for at least the next 2 years: "Yes, well I suppose it was a bit underhanded for Hamilton to pay someone to assassinate Rosberg, but do you remember Austria in 2016?"

Vettel's tire - Once the Lewis/Nico drama dies down, we get to have tire drama again.

[James1978]

I'm going to change my 2nd vote from Force India to Toto Wolff - seriously, you have two drivers fighting for the championship not willing to give an inch to the other. Of course they're going to collide every so often and it's inevitable! Do you honestly think issuing team orders will work, and they'll obey when the championship is as stake?

And it's not like they have any threat externally either, both Ferrari drivers are over two wins behind Rosberg and they have a 100+ plus point lead in the constructors, so it's not like they're going to lose the championship over it unless it happens every race (which it won't). Keep letting them race and stop behaving like it's the end of the world when collisions happen.

[Ciaran]

I said Sky as my second ROTR (after Rosberg, of course), but I should have specified Ted Kravitz. That carcinogen Murdoch should just get the Daily Mail to sponsor Sky Sports F1 just to get rid of any pretense of that channel being "fair and balanced".

[Neno]

1 st Toto wolff => Future team orders are stupid. Why Mclaren is legendary, it is because of the prost / senna or Alonso / hamilton

2nd the Fia => Stupid penalties that mean nothing for Rosberg penalise him or not but not this

[tommykl]

Red Bull overalls - they're brown.

Nico Hülkenberg - dropped like a stone throughout the day.

HM: Nico Rosberg - he tried a desperate move to force Hamilton off (something Hamilton himself has done a few times in the past), but Hamilton decided to turn in (which he had the right to). Rosberg tried to avoid, but it was too late. Rosberg's more at fault, because he should have known Hamilton wouldn't try to avoid the contact.

HM: Ferrari pitwall - those tyres were obviously dead. Without the subsequent safety car, Rosberg's gap may have even been bigger, so we wouldn't be having this discussion about the final lap crash.

[Samster]

Williams - Mediocre all weekend and easily their worst performence of the season bar Monaco, Massa posts his and the team's first DNF of the season and Bottas is almost beaten by a freakin Manor. Surprised they don't have more votes.

Nico Hulkenburg - As much as I still believe he is better than Perez on raw talent, his race reminded me of Mark Webber's in Malaysia 2004.

[Dj_bereta]

Williams - Mediocre all weekend and easily their worst performence of the season bar Monaco, Massa posts his and the team's first DNF of the season and Bottas is almost beaten by a freakin Manor. Surprised they don't have more votes.

Williams bad performance was overshadowed by Mercedes clash in the last lap and Vettel's tyre explosion, but I 100% agree Williams is the most deserving contender for the ROTR by a huge margin. Bottas was struggling to hold off a freaking Manor in the last laps to the point of blocking Rosberg for some time just to keep his position.

Austria is supposed to be one of the strongest circuits for Williams, but this season the team was very disappointing here.

[dinizintheoven]

Red Bull overalls - they're brown.

Half of what they pointed out in that video is clearly grey, though.

[DanielPT]

I will go with Rosberg for an incident which was clearly his fault ("forgot" to turn in at a corner) and Nico Hulkenberg which started in very a promising position and made 0 from it.

[roblo97]

1: Nico Hulkenberg
2: Williams

[Cynon]

Nico Hulkenberg -- A more inept drive has seldom been seen. o_____O
Williams -- Valtteri, Wehrlein is faster than you, can you confirm that you understood this message?
Red Bull Firesuits -- No. Just no.
Nico Rosberg -- You can't pull Lewis Hamilton's moves on Lewis Hamilton! The man knows his own playbook and knows how to avoid being wrecked like that!
Renault -- Normally I'd be the first to notice a yellow F1 car. Did they even turn up this weekend? o_o
Whichever Cabbage at McLaren Thought Alonso was Worth $50m a Year -- That's money that could go to Vandoorne and to improving the car. Button can do the job Alonso is doing while simultaneously preparing Vandoorne for when Button retires or leaves the team.