Reject of the Race - Austria

[Londoner]

A laundry list of candidates today, where to start here?

1. Haas. It's been five seasons and they still can't get a handle on brake-by-wire. Their race pace was diabolical in any case.

2. Alfa Romeo. When was the last time a wheel fell off an F1 car at speed?

Honourable mentions

Lewis Hamilton, Albon had the corner and the line.
Sebastian Vettel, who's clearly phoning it in this season.
Racing Point, the promised pace wasn't really there and Perez threw away a surefire podium.

[Enforcer]

If it transpires that the collision is what KO'd Albon's car, I'm going with Hamilton because Albon would've probably won. Also I don't like Hamilton much.

Other than that... choices choices. Vettel for once again ejecting his brain mid race with a stupid attempt to dive Carlos Sainz. He likely would've been 5th or 6th which would've been a decent result considering the truck he's driving.

Haas & Red Bull had double retirements and Alfa Romeo's wheel falling off was embarrassing.

[Meatwad]

I'm giving this to Red Bull. While Ferrari managed to get a respectable points haul on a weekend when they were terrible, RBR did the opposite. For Mercedes' main rival to be behind Williams in the constructors' championship is just embarrassing.

[Klon]

1. Ferrari - I do not care about Leclerc's fluke podium. When we expected them to be behind RBR and Mercedes, we expected them to be guaranteed P5 and P6 - not an actual midfield team. Their engine is atrocious across the board, all teams using them have suffered massive time losses. For all intents and purposes, they may very well have the worst PU on the grid right now. Right now there's genuine reason to doubt they can challenge for podiums on pace even when the Hungary upgrades come in.

2. Lewis Hamilton - ignoring yellows in qualifying and then wiping out Albon isn't a particularly good look.

[Pacific Edge]

Ferrari: Yes they finished 2nd, but let's not kid ourselves, they were very lucky to get it. If their pace is going to be like this, it could be a LONG season

Haas: Despite all the time between last season and this, nothing has changed

The entire "chasing field":On race pace alone, no-one can touch Merc, those safety car periods made the race as a whole look better than it really was.

[dr-baker]

Vettel, for finishing ahead of Latifi, who is making his F1 debut in the slowest car, and, erm, nobody else!

And Hamilton for not making it a Mercedes 2-1.

Plus Raikkonen for having a wheely bad end to his race.

[rachel1990]

1- Vettel. In a god Awful Ferrari Leclerc still manages to get 2nd (okay by luck). Vettel, on the other hand, comes second last. Only just beats a Williams. Dreadful move against Sainz who is correctly replacing him next season. Is Vettel done in F1? Quite Possibly yes.

2- Ferrari- saying that though one cannot escape the fact that Ferrari have created the worst Ferrari since 2014. Leclerc got a podium through his own skill and a lot of luck- I wouldn't say it was Schumacher like (because 1- I think the car is better than the 1996 Ferrari and 2 I don't think Leclerc is at Schumachers level. Yet.)
Ferrari should not be picking up the scraps of Mercedes and Red Bull's Failings. Awful

HM- Long list here

Haas- Brake issues still there and Grosjean makes more mistakes. Timewarp anyone?

Alfa Romeo- Very Poor weekend overall. Giovinazzi scored 2 points but looked nowhere. and as for the Kimi pitstop which led to the tyre falling off

Lewis Hamilton- Correctly Penalized all in both Quali and in the race. Never really looked like passing Bottas even though the timesheets say different. As for Albon

George Russell's luck- I think he would have scored some points here. He looked sharp in a poor car. Needs a better car for 2021.

Racing Point- All that talk for nothing really. Perez went backwards at the end. plus Speeding in the pitlane???

[Miguel98]

1. Ferrari - I think singling out Vettel's mistake is too little. Leclerc's fluke of a second place (third on track) only came from being on the right strategy and SC periods. And while it seems that Vettel has really phoned it in, there is so much more to say. We had low expectations for Ferrari, but not having a car missing out on Q2 and being the 5th best team today. They were awful, awful. And just see the delta's between last year and this year for their car (and other Ferrari powered cars), and you'll come across the major point of what is wrong. They have the worst PU in the grid right now. How can that happen? Well, guess Binotto and the FIA know the reason, but we won't know.

2. Haas - How the hell can you go further from this? Honestly, I would have singled out Grosjean's terrible performance, but having (another) two brake failures on the same race and overall, it seems that the team hasn't really fixed their problems from last year, it was another awful weekend for the team.

Honorable mention for the awful stewarding and for the NBC broadcast of the Indycar race. The first because, if the incosistencies from yesterday to today regarding Lewis penalty, then they still take a good 20 minutes to detect Pérez broke the pitlane speed limit (at least) and that across the support races, the consistency of their decisions was awful. And for the second? The worst broadcast of motorsport I've ever seen.

Oh yeah, and to Lewis Hamilton for the overall shenanigans he pulled across the weekend on track. Thankfully, his off track behaviour has been exemplar.

[Fetzie]

Everybody that wasn't Mercedes: It took three safety cars (two of them without Mercedes pitting) for the field to be anywhere near contention. If there hadn't been the safety cars, Mercedes would have finished miles away from everybody else.

DHM: F1 TV, because it didn't ******* work. Seriously, they had 4 extra months to do their one ****** job.

[Bleu]

1. Vettel
2. Red Bull

[dj_vicious]

Red Bull Might have been a different story if things went differently for Albon, but this is not the way you want to end a season opener at your eponymous circuit. The Red Bulls could have given the troubled Mercedes a run for their money but ended their weekend with a double DNF. This is not top-tier team material.

Lewis Hamilton Their are other contenders that one could argue are more deserving of ROTR than Ham, but in what may be a record-setting year, this is not a GOAT performance. In itself, the qualifying penalty, was forgivable. Then there was the sloppy defending maneuver which denied Albon a 2nd and potential victory. After many laps, Hamilton was well aware of his car's limitations and at his caliber, ought to have known his car wasn't going to hold the inside line against a much faster Albon. It was a move of desperation from a driver who has a habit of squeezing drivers. One can fairly argue it was a racing incident, but taking out a competitor, moreover, the same competitor for the same position twice in three races, is what warrants the penalty. Just because you're Lewis Hamilton doesn't mean you're entitled to keep a position by any means necessary.

Honorable Mention Sebastian Vettel. Another sloppy move resulting in another spin. There's a lot of theories about whether Seb is getting the short end of the strategy stick, but this spin was all on him. This guy sadly isn't right in the head anymore and needs to get a mentor or hang up the keys. This hurt to watch.

[dj_vicious]

Everybody that wasn't Mercedes: It took three safety cars (two of them without Mercedes pitting) for the field to be anywhere near contention. If there hadn't been the safety cars, Mercedes would have finished miles away from everybody else.

DHM: F1 TV, because it didn't ******* work. Seriously, they had 4 extra months to do their one ****** job.

+1 to your DHM. I bit the bullet and spent $80 CAD for a subscription only to have this first race problem. There is no excuse for an entity as large as Formula 1 to have such amateur tech problems. They've had months to prepare and conduct market research to get an idea of the race-day web traffic, and they outright s**t the bed. I don't want your damn apology. You have ONE WEEK to fix the problem and to implement several redundancies to ensure that, barring the literal end of the world, a repeat is impossible. This is a paid subscription and the paid subscription promised features denied to paying customers. MAKE. IT. WORK. I don't have the answers because I'm not paid to be the F1 TV technical specialist, but someone is and has failed at the most crucial possible time.

[Wallio]

the NBC broadcast of the Indycar race. The worst broadcast of motorsport I've ever seen.

??????? That was one one NBC's better broadcasts. Much better than Texas was.

DHM: F1 TV, because it didn't ******* work. Seriously, they had 4 extra months to do their one ****** job.

+1 to your DHM. I bit the bullet and spent $80 CAD for a subscription only to have this first race problem. There is no excuse for an entity as large as Formula 1 to have such amateur tech problems. They've had months to prepare and conduct market research to get an idea of the race-day web traffic, and they outright s**t the bed. I don't want your damn apology. You have ONE WEEK to fix the problem and to implement several redundancies to ensure that, barring the literal end of the world, a repeat is impossible. This is a paid subscription and the paid subscription promised features denied to paying customers. MAKE. IT. WORK. I don't have the answers because I'm not paid to be the F1 TV technical specialist, but someone is and has failed at the most crucial possible time.[/quote]


The trick to F1TV is not to watch the races live. I'm completely serious on this. This is my third year with it, and I've never had any issues. Just wait 5 minutes after the podium and watch the replay.


My ROTR:

1.)Drivers having to explain their pre-race decisions - Kneel or don't. You don't owe anyone an explanation either way.

2.)Haas - Embarrassing. Just embarrassing. Williams will beat them on merit at this rate.

3.) Brundle, Croft, Kravitz - SHUT. THE. BATHPLUG. UP. DURING. RADIO!

4.) Hamilton - Was no doubt distracted this weekend, but was sloppy, off the pace and racked up some penalty points.

[Fetzie]

The trick to F1TV is not to watch the races live. I'm completely serious on this. This is my third year with it, and I've never had any issues. Just wait 5 minutes after the podium and watch the replay. .

That's not acceptable. The whole point of the service is to watch all content live, as it happens. Quali worked fine yesterday. I bet they just didn't have the backend capacity. Because who could possibly think that a lot of people are going to want to watch the first race of a season we've been waiting to begin for the last 4 months?

[Wallio]

The trick to F1TV is not to watch the races live. I'm completely serious on this. This is my third year with it, and I've never had any issues. Just wait 5 minutes after the podium and watch the replay. .

That's not acceptable. The whole point of the service is to watch all content live, as it happens. Quali worked fine yesterday. I bet they just didn't have the backend capacity. Because who could possibly think that a lot of people are going to want to watch the first race of a season we've been waiting to begin for the last 4 months?

That's one way to use it, sure. I bought it specifically so I didn't have to watch live. In America, when we actually get F1 telecasts, they are on at all hours of the morning. The on demand part was what sold me. And it works much better apparently. I don't find it hard to stay off my phone for a bit.

[mario]

1) Ferrari and its customer teams - whilst they had signalled before the season began that they were expecting to struggle a bit, I don't think anybody had expected them to slip back into the midfield in the way that they had.

Yes, Leclerc did manage to salvage some unexpected pride for the team by managing to get the car onto the podium, but it owed a fair bit to good fortune - with a more normal race, he'd probably be looking closer to 6th than 2nd. The handling looks pretty poor, whilst their car is slower in qualifying trim than either their 2019 or 2018 cars - one of the few teams to have managed such a feat.

Equally, Ferrari's customer teams also had fairly wretched races too - Haas had a double retirement with their brake issues and Raikkonen had his wheel failure. Even Giovinazzi's point was more from attrition than performance, as he spent a fair bit near the back of the grid - both Ferrari customer teams seem to be struggling for performance this year.

2) Vettel - There were those noting that Vettel seemed to be rather openly frustrated this weekend with the team, particularly his rather barbed comments about how the team never bothered opening talks with him and he only knew they were looking elsewhere when they rang to tell him his contract wasn't being renewed.

There was yet another clumsily executed attempt at a pass that left him spinning again - that, given the number of times he made a mistake in a race in 2019 is bad enough (was it at least five different races in 2019 that he spun in?), but to then follow that up by saying after the race “To be honest, I’m happy that I spun only once”?

With his behaviour this weekend, Vettel might as well have had the words "I can't be bothered" in ten foot high neon lights behind him. I almost wonder whether, if he keeps both that level of performance and that attitude up, if he's even going to last the season with Ferrari - and I also wonder whether he really would mind all that much if the team did fire him midway through the season now.

[James1978]

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet: too many white-based car liveries. From front-on shots, I had trouble telling the difference between a Haas, AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo and Williams!!

[rachel1990]

1)

I almost wonder whether, if he keeps both that level of performance and that attitude up, if he's even going to last the season with Ferrari - and I also wonder whether he really would mind all that much if the team did fire him midway through the season now.

That could cause Chaos down the grid for the last races - If Vettel doesn't go beyond Italy- Ferrari Might persuade Mclaren to let Sainz go early to the team- However could they give Kimi a last retirement present? (not thats much of a treat at the moment)

If Mclaren loses Sainz early to Ferrari, I highly doubt Renault would let Riccadio go to Mclaren early so would they have to promote a junior driver early? or If Mercedes want George Russell in the car in 2021 do they persuade Mclaren to allow him in the car so get gets some higher midfield running in preparation for 2021

However its all ifs and buts but seeing Vettel's attitude on Sunday and his post-race comments I do think it could easily happen.

[CaptainGetz12]

1)

I almost wonder whether, if he keeps both that level of performance and that attitude up, if he's even going to last the season with Ferrari - and I also wonder whether he really would mind all that much if the team did fire him midway through the season now.

That could cause Chaos down the grid for the last races - If Vettel doesn't go beyond Italy- Ferrari Might persuade Mclaren to let Sainz go early to the team- However could they give Kimi a last retirement present? (not thats much of a treat at the moment)

If Mclaren loses Sainz early to Ferrari, I highly doubt Renault would let Riccadio go to Mclaren early so would they have to promote a junior driver early? or If Mercedes want George Russell in the car in 2021 do they persuade Mclaren to allow him in the car so get gets some higher midfield running in preparation for 2021

However its all ifs and buts but seeing Vettel's attitude on Sunday and his post-race comments I do think it could easily happen.

Considering that the Mclaren may outpace Ferrari this year I'm sure Sainz will not be too worried about his future seat being open should Vettel leave early, Mclaren may fight it as well since they don't want their potential title battle to go sideways.

My prediction would be that Kimi or Gio would be promoted to Vettel's spot (Kimi gets first pick) and then either Ericsson or Hartley get the vacant Alfa Romeo seat.

[UncreativeUsername37]

1. Ferrari - The attrition can't fool me, you were a midfield team. Despite having the budget of Ferrari. Your engine sucks too.
2. Vettel - To spin trying to pass Sainz of all people is... poetic. He should've taken the last podium spot and instead he was tenth.
3. Haas - In a new decade where a pandemic has changed seemingly everything, it's nice to see some things have stayed the same
4. Red Bull - A mechanical failure cost them a podium and chance at a win, as did an overeager driver
5. Räikkönen's right front - Suddenly got bizarre and dangerous, which I guess is appropriate for 2020

[Pacific Edge]

With his behaviour this weekend, Vettel might as well have had the words "I can't be bothered" in ten foot high neon lights behind him. I almost wonder whether, if he keeps both that level of performance and that attitude up, if he's even going to last the season with Ferrari - and I also wonder whether he really would mind all that much if the team did fire him midway through the season now.

Yeah, think the chances of "mutual consent" to a Vettel/Ferrari split are quite likely, I think at some point Ferrari will eventually get equally tired of him. This could look like the Alonso/Mclaren split

[Alextrax52]

Quite a few candidates

Hamilton: Error strewn weekend. Didn’t slow for yellows, the collision with Albon and missed the podium in the end. He claimed afterwards that the first SC ruined his chances of attacking Bottas. Pretty odd thing to say when SC’s eliminate time gaps. Reality is he made no attempt to pass at any stage of that race

Vettel: Like Mario said he may as well just have the letters CBA plastered on top of his helmet. Worst attempt at a “pass” I’ve seen since Alex Wurz on Jean Alesi 20 years ago. Nowhere near Leclerc even with the Ferrari struggles. Just retire mate.

Ferrari: Lets not beat around the bush. That podium disguises what was a shocking lack of pace. Leclerc’s radio transcription after Q2 summed it up. I really fear for them when we get to Spa and Monza. The only saving grace at the latter is that we might still have no fans in attendance.

Haas: start of the 5th season with an extra 4 month gap and not only does the car look just as slow as last year’s machine, they STILL have brakes made of clay.

Alfa Romeo: Slow and that stray wheel was dangerous. Have they been fined for that yet?

The chasing pack: I honestly think without the SC’s Mercedes could have lapped the whole field. The only slither of competition on merit seems to be Verstappen and even he can only do so much.

[dr-baker]

Alfa Romeo: Slow and that stray wheel was dangerous. Have they been fined for that yet?

Yes, €5000.

[Nessafox]

Lot of contenders this time.

But seriously Haas, not only are you slow, you had 2 identical retirements, for once not the drivers fault. You got a thing with opening races...

And Ferrari, yeah Leclerc saved your ass once, but he can't save it all season long.

But yeah, Alfa Romeo, Red Bull, Mercedes, Hamilton, Vettel, maybe Albon too. Oh i forgot Renault existed. Lot of candidates... Only Mclaren scored good points here.

[yannicksamlad]

It's an old obsession of mine; brake failures in F1 aren't acceptable . It's the pinnacle of sport, and if they err on the side of caution I'm sure they wouldnt have half the problems

So Haas ..

Also - I'll agree on the prevalence of white-ish cars- it's a bit annoying

[Rob Dylan]

The poll is up! There were about six or seven main candidates, and I narrowed down the ones that were all on equal suggestions to "Everyone but Mercedes", which was also a popular candidate.

You have 48 hours to get your vote in!