Reject of the Race - Belgium 2023

[Londoner]

1. Carlos Sainz Jr. A tragicomedy of a race, all of his own making.

2. Daniel Ricciardo. Utterly demolished by Tsundoa today. A really inspired choice of replacement for De Vries clearly.

Honourable mentions to Haas and Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, which I started watching at lap 4 today having never seen it before, and which didn't live up to the hype. Hell, it even made Series 8 somewhat palatable at times.

[You-Gee-Eee-Day]

1. Ricciardo - where was he
2. Gasly - he's being passed by people he should be lapping

[FalconCapelli]

I would like to suggest something else

Pepe Marti is not only the ROTR but also the ROTY (Reject of the year)

[Enforcer]

Carlos Sainz. Poor error which ended his own race as well as Piastri's.

[Rob Dylan]

I find it hard to nominate Sainz and Piastri, because it was a turn 1 incident and the offensive driver got duly punished.

My first nomination would be Alpine, for completely failing to capitalise on McLaren's "horror" weekend. McLaren had a dreadful draggy car on the straights that was rubbish in the dry and kept getting passed by everyone. Piastri didn't make it to the end of the first lap. How did Alpine not capitalise on this? More so than that, how did Norris actually beat both of them!

Lots of drivers had dreadful tyre runs and seemed to slip down the order. I feel like I saw Alex Albon do 50 overtakes, but he still finished out of the points afterwards. But again, this was more due to a lack of dry running until Sunday, so hard to throw any blame on a particular person.

[Meatwad]

Carlos Sainz Jr.: A race ruined on lap 1, ended up getting overtaken by everyone before giving up.

[Ducktanian]

Belgian Elton John - I mean do I need to explain
Ricciardo - Qualified last and was beaten by Tsunoda quite cleanly in the race.

[rachel1990]

1- Carlos Sainz and Ferrari While he got the punishment he clearly deserved the fact was that he took Pisatri out by leaving him no room - literally. However, I would add Ferrari onto this when they could see Sainz tumbling down the order and left him out (maybe it was extra punishment). Anyway after the rain (which did barely anything barring Russell and Norris) Ferrari finally gave up.

2-Belguim Elton John- Bloody hell that was Bad. Not exactly keeping it classy.

Hm- Ricciardo- had his backside kicked by Yuki. That's the dale I remember.

[IceG]

Alpine: not for the drivers or the cars but for their treatment of the management team - that is not how you move up the grid.

The Sky kids commentator team: a bunch of precocious children coached to behave and speak like adults whilst the graphics were straight out of a 1990s console game - yeugh! This could have been done so much better. Luckily there was cycling and cooking on other channels.

I loved Belgian Elton! And the flyover by a bunch of propeller trainers was the Kriek Lambic on the top. Belgium is such a great and quirky country.

[James1978]

Everyone but Max again

[golic_2004]

1. Carlos Sainz: Ruined his and Piastri’s races right off the bat.

2. Daniel Ricciardo: Totally anonymous compared to Tsunoda. This is showing that the performance of the car, or lack there of, has not been down to De Vries.

[mario]

1- Carlos Sainz and Ferrari While he got the punishment he clearly deserved the fact was that he took Pisatri out by leaving him no room - literally. However, I would add Ferrari onto this when they could see Sainz tumbling down the order and left him out (maybe it was extra punishment). Anyway after the rain (which did barely anything barring Russell and Norris) Ferrari finally gave up.

It seems that Ferrari were basically hoping that there might be a very intensive rain shower, along the lines of what we saw on Friday and Saturday, which might result in the race being red flagged - that would then give them an opportunity to change the bodywork on Sainz's car during the red flag period. I am basing that on the fact that, before Sainz withdrew, he sent a message to the pits along the lines of "if the rain isn't going to be heavy enough to cause a red flag, then we should retire the car".

[RAK]

1) Carlos Sainz Jr.: Spoilt not only his own race, but that of Piastri, with a dodgy start.

2) Daniel Ricciardo: Easily beaten by Tsunoda, a driver who hasn't exactly set the world alight.

[Spectoremg]

1. The rain for not turning up properly.

[dinizintheoven]

Yet again I have to suggest an outlandish choice that should never have been outlandish: Saubfer Romeo's Kick logos. I've heard several explanations of why big corporations are changing their logos to highly simplified, monochrome versions of what they used to display - it's so that they can be displayed in any colour on any background, usually with the intention of it being clear and obvious on a mobile phone screen. Kick, though, didn't get that message, because their lurid Mountain Dew-coloured logo clashed horribly with the deep red of Saubfer Romeo's livery. They even sloshed it all over the wheels. Hideous! Hideous! Kill it with fire. Get the drivers out first, mind.

Honourable mentions to Haas and Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, which I started watching at lap 4 today having never seen it before, and which didn't live up to the hype. Hell, it even made Series 8 somewhat palatable at times.

14 years you've had to watch that. 14!

For the record, if we were to compare the series of Red Dwarf to the teams that competed in the 2010-12 seasons, Series 7 would be Caterham, Series 8 would be Marussia and Back To Earth would be HRT.

STOP PRESS: Red Bull's constructor trophy is going back to Milton Keynes in pieces. And this time, it wasn't Lando that did it, it was entirely of their own making!

[Alextrax52]

I’ll go for the boring nominations this time

Sainz’s side of Ferrari: I can only assume the reason Ferrari wasted engine mileage on Sainz was down to them praying for the rain to red flag the race so they could fix the car because if not then what was the point? Carlos of course played his part by colliding with Piastri which effectively ended his race there and then. It’s astounding that he’s still without a podium this year (discounting the Austria Sprint) while Leclerc dragged a less than perfect chassis to his 3rd of the season.

The rain: Caused havoc all weekend and then the one time we actually wanted it to fall it refused to budge meaning a fairly static order to the end

DHM

Ricciardo: Let’s be real even if he hadn’t exceeded track limits in qualifying he wouldn’t have done anything on race day. Tsunoda mopped up with him.

[Batty]

Carlos Sainz - I mean while it was a racing incident, he blamed Piastri. Pretty rejectful

Buutttt

1. Alpine - The In/Out transfer of the team looked more like Chelsea sending their players off on loan. Then they didn't do much in the race except Ocon got some points. Then you had Otmar and Alan still there cause whatever. Prost's comments are a huge indictment on the team

[Wallio]

It'd be easy to say Haas, but at this point, it's more shocking when they aren't nominated. So for the second week in a row its:

Alpine - Absolute hot mess off the track. Much like at Miami, the shake-up has led to a bit of an upswing, which will no doubt crash and burn post-summer break. When the commentators are openly setting bets on when you will sell up, it's not a good weekend. And none of that is considering how they went hat in hand to the F1 Commission earlier in the week to beg for engine upgrades. After bragging all of last year that their unreliability was due to engine power......

[Rob Dylan]

A whopping five excellent, all deserving choices for Reject of the Race after the Belgian GP. Get voting, you have 48 hours!

[dr-baker]

Reject of the race: me. I have only just watched the race, and even then, it was C4 highlights, not the whole race. And I didn’t get round to doing my Predictament Predictions or vote in the poll on this thread. I need a break from my annual leave…

[Londoner]

FInishing well behind in the Max Verstappen Invitational at Spa!