Reject of the Race - Saudi Arabia 2023

[Londoner]

1. Race Control. Not quite sure what drugs Freitas and Wittich were on today. Stroll's car barely merited a VSC, let alone a full-blown SC. Alonso's penalty and Hamilton's reprimand seemed insanely harsh too.

2. Valtteri Bottas. Dear god he was rubbish this weekend.

Honourable mentions to McLaren and TV direction

[Bert]

. Race Control.

[FalconCapelli]

Without a Doubt Race Control is the ROTR.

[Aerond]

Race Control - ~~

[Vassago]

1. FIA Race Control - You have a gazzilion TV cameras around the track and you rely on GPS to determine whether a car has stopped on track or not? Horseshit.

2. McLaren - Need front wings? Their race was hosed within the opening 5 laps.

[Ciaran]

1. Liberty Media for accepting Saudi blood money.
2. NEOM McLaren.

[James1978]

Race Control for throwing the SC at anything is the obvious one but, Ferrari, McLaren and Jos Verstappen for having a face like a slapped arse at the end because his son's teammate had dared to win the race are all candidates for me. Think Bottas had some sort of car problem.

[Wallio]

FIA/The Stewards - We all had at laugh at poor Ocon last week, myself included, but we now see that the FIA is just incompetent. Alonso's original "offense" was a joke, but you then wait over an hour to penalize him again post-race (and after the official F1 social media's posted 100 podium graphics for Alonso). Pathetic. And this all after they cost Sargent a trip to Q2 with their "Turn 27 track limits" nonsense yesterday.

[RAK]

1) Race Control: Yeah, Stroll's retirement didn't merit a full safety car and it's quite worrying that they relied so much on flawed technology instead of the Mk.1 Eyeball. Also, Alonso's penalty was harsh.

2) Valterri Bottas: Dismal.

Dishonourable Mention: The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, for existing; Liberty Media for allowing it to go ahead.

[rachel1990]

1- Race Control/Stewards/FIA- leaving aside the 'safety car' which benefitted no one barring Max (don't race control/ stewards have access to the tv cameras)- they had 31 LAPS to decide the penalty for Alonso because we all saw the jack touch the car- to give him that penalty JUST AFTER the podium procedure meant that it was a complete waste of time as well- Total Farce.

Edit- Now they have the Poduim back. Complete farce.

2- Valtteri Bottas- I wonder if he will be the next driver to retire- Totally off the pace all weekend and really hasn't doesn't done anything since mid-last year- his teammate beat him comfortably and he was dead last

HM Mclaren- Not looking good is it- Williams and Haas have more points than you.

[Meatwad]

The safety show car: Just why? A VSC would have been more than enough, it really felt like they wanted to "spice up the show". Thankfully it didn't give us the VERSTAPPENWINSLOL we'll get in the next 20 races anyway.

Dishonorable mention to Bottas – Zhou was clearly faster than him all weekend, and finishing 35 seconds behind the McLarens and getting lapped despite the show car's appearance is ridiculous.

[Enforcer]

Race Control / Stewards: The thing with Stroll's car is a bit embarrassing, but it can happen, and let's be honest it didn't massively impact the outcome of the race that much. Taking 3/4s of the race to realise that Alonso should be penalised is really poor though.

[Vassago]

Aston Martin won the appeal and Alonso is back to 3rd. Icing on the cake

[dr-baker]

Aston Martin won the appeal and Alonso is back to 3rd. Icing on the cake

[mario]

The safety show car: Just why? A VSC would have been more than enough, it really felt like they wanted to "spice up the show". Thankfully it didn't give us the VERSTAPPENWINSLOL we'll get in the next 20 races anyway.

Dishonorable mention to Bottas – Zhou was clearly faster than him all weekend, and finishing 35 seconds behind the McLarens and getting lapped despite the show car's appearance is ridiculous.

There have been suggestions that Liberty Media has been leaning on race control to make heavier use of the safety car to close up the field and "spice up the show", or at the least to use the SC more heavily in preference to the VSC.

For Bottas, I guess that the one thing in his defence is that there might have been damage to his car, as it seems that he ran over debris from the clashes that the McLaren drivers had with other drivers; still, as you say, it was mostly a performance to forget.

Race Control / Stewards: The thing with Stroll's car is a bit embarrassing, but it can happen, and let's be honest it didn't massively impact the outcome of the race that much. Taking 3/4s of the race to realise that Alonso should be penalised is really poor though.

I'd argue that the responsibility for that incident falls more on race control than on the stewards, as according to the official documents, race control had originally told the stewards that the penalty had been served correctly by the team and that no further action was warranted.

[went]

Race control / the stewards. With a honourable mention to McLaren for confirming we should not be expecting anything out of this car. If it weren't because apparently everybody hates Ocon, Piastri might be regretting his move.

[IceG]

Race control / the stewards.

+1

[rachel1990]

There have been suggestions that Liberty Media has been leaning on race control to make heavier use of the safety car to close up the field and "spice up the show", or at the least to use the SC more heavily in preference to the VSC.

The Irony being that the one driver who really benefited from the Safety car was probably the last driver liberty wanted at the Front of the grid for this race- Max Verstappen

[Miguel98]

1. Race Control / Stewards: SC shenanigans (Liberty are doing a NASCAR...?) and the Alonso penalty shenanigan was just the icing on the cake.

2. Jeddah: Crap track.

[Ducktanian]

Alonso's 2nd penalty - I vividly remember that quite a few people on the discord did not realize what the 2nd penalty was actually for at first, defending the decision because they thought that it was for serving the original penalty under the safety car, or it hadnt been timed correctly. If I remember correctly, the commentators got it wrong aswell. But nope it was none of that. Seems it was because the jack was touching the car which is so laughibly specific that people activately thought it was for something else because that made more logical sense. Also the fact that they posted the 100 podium image, deleted it, and than had to put it back up is just peak F1

The track itself Apart from the Last Corner to Turn 1 the track is quite dull. Even last year that section is all I remember. I think Lewis did a pretty creative pass but thats very much the exception. Kinda reminds me of Macau tbh.

[James1978]

I too was going to mention the DRS zone for being far too powerful but I think really it only applied to Red Bull - for other teams it was rather a struggle and just serving its purpose looking at the battles further down such as Magnussen on Tsunoda, the McLarens on Sargeant etc. It would have been far more interesting had Max had to fight his way through without it in an instance such as Schumacher at Suzuka 1998 but you can't have one rule for them and another for everyone else, as tempting as it sounds

[Ducktanian]

Actually thats a good point, I'll alter my nomination.

[Batty]

Race Control for the shambles with Alonso. That's about it.

Bottas got debris and ditto the McLarens. SO yeah

[takagi_for_the_win]

Gotta be Race Control with the Alonso shambles. Passes the "would Jenoch have found it funny?" test with flying colurs, that's enough for me.

[Alextrax52]

Race Control: Stroll’s retirement didn’t even warrant a VSC never mind the full SC and the Alonso penalty shambles is well documented

Saudi Arabian GP: Just because it exists. And they want a 2nd for 2027

Bottas: Debris or not he was outperformed by Zhou all weekend

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

The stewards give penalties, not Race Control, so I'll go with the stewards for sheer rejectfulness.

[dinizintheoven]

The safety show car: Just why?

There have been suggestions that Liberty Media has been leaning on race control to make heavier use of the safety car to close up the field and "spice up the show", or at the least to use the SC more heavily in preference to the VSC.

Either that or the fact that the race was in Saudi Arabia and the safety car has Aramco's logo splattered liberally all over it...

Cynical? Me? Never!

[mario]

The stewards give penalties, not Race Control, so I'll go with the stewards for sheer rejectfulness.

I would say there is still an argument that Race Control does deserve to be criticised, because it was the FIA's Remote Operations Centre, which forms part of Race Control, which asked the stewards to take a second look at whether Alonso's penalty had been served correctly. Whilst the stewards were the ones making the final decision, it could be argued that it was based in part on incorrect information supplied by Race Control.

Alonso's 2nd penalty - I vividly remember that quite a few people on the discord did not realize what the 2nd penalty was actually for at first, defending the decision because they thought that it was for serving the original penalty under the safety car, or it hadnt been timed correctly. If I remember correctly, the commentators got it wrong aswell. But nope it was none of that. Seems it was because the jack was touching the car which is so laughibly specific that people activately thought it was for something else because that made more logical sense. Also the fact that they posted the 100 podium image, deleted it, and than had to put it back up is just peak F1

To be fair, up until 2018, it was the case that drivers were not allowed to serve a time penalty if they pitted under a virtual safety car or an actual safety car, unless they happened to already be in the pit lane when the VSC or SC was deployed.

[Forti]

Easily the Stewards/Race Control/FIA.

[Rob Dylan]

Seems like one candidate made quite a bit of a stronger case than the rest, but this website (unlike Saudi Arabia) is a democracy so we shall allow a vote to determine the Reject of the Race. You have 48 hours

[Londoner]

ROTR has been determined