Reject of the Race - Mexico 2023

[Londoner]

Post your choices for ROTR!

[Miguel98]

Aston Martin - Double retirement, Alonso spent the whole race basically last (when was the last time that happened?), and Stroll drove like a tool again. Remember when they were close to winning races?

Sergio Perez - Too much ambition. Felt like a goodbye, to be honest.

Alfa Romeo - Were busy being close to Ferrari after friday, got into Q3, and then didn't score a single point. What the hell

[RAK]

1) Sergio Perez: Not making his case for remaining in Red Bull with a clumsy first-corner retirement.

2) Aston Martin: Double retirement; not that they looked terribly impressive in qualifying either.

[Wallio]

Checo Barichello/Reubens Perez - That was bloody embarrassing.

[sswishbone]

1) Aston Martin - Their whole weekend has been the epitome of going backwards

2) Logan Sergant - last lap pit stop... did he think the checkered flag came out early?

[dj_vicious]

1) Perez- Didn't make a single corner when he was ostensibly the star of the show.

2) TC Direction- Cut away from intense battles to show other, less intense moments.

[takagi_for_the_win]

Feels unfair to call this a nomination because he did eventually pass him, but Ocon’s “tell Haas I’m going to go for it, so be ready” radio message immediately before bailing out of a move, nearly going off in the process, and then spending the next 12 laps very firmly not going for it gave me a chuckle.

Speaking of radio messages, Ferrari’s reassuring shout to Leclerc some time around lap 48 suggesting that Hamilton’s tyres would be slower than the hards in 5 laps aged well, considering Hamilton proceeded to pull away from Leclerc at a rate of knots and set the fastest lap right at the end for ships and giggles.

Nominations for me are:

Aston Martin - hell of a fall, 6 months ago they looked like the nearest thing we had to a Red Bull challenger, now they’ve double DNF’ed after farting around in the lower midfield all afternoon.

Yuki Tsunoda - ruined a potentially superb afternoon for Alpha Tauri with a very clumsy failed overtake on Piastri, which he responded to with his trademark maturity.

Valterri Bottas - racecraft was never his strong suit, but that collision with Stroll was pitiful. Takes something to get involved in on-track contretemps with Stroll and be the one in the wrong.

[TomPryce]

1) Aston Martin - Their whole weekend has been the epitome of going backwards

2) Logan Sergant - last lap pit stop... did he think the checkered flag came out early?

Seems Logan retired with a fuel pump issue.

While Perez's incident was bad, I respect his attitude after it and so I want to go with pure awfulness:

1) Aston. What once was such a promising team...


2) Alfa. What the hell happened?

[James1978]

Considering where they were earlier in the season, it has to be Aston Martin for me - more or less the slowest team!

[rachel1990]

1 Sergio Perez. Home town hero did exactly what Lewis Hamilton did 2 races ago and got the exact same results. Quoting Senna about if there was a gap.... but there was not a BIG enough gap. 13 seasons on the grid. Half a season too many now.

2- Aston Martin. And Jaguar are back again folks. After pretending to be near decent (but not a race winning car Mr Brundle) the old Jaguar case is back again

Hm Bottas- 11 seasons this bloke has been on the grid. Stupid move. Will get a 12th season. Don't think he will get to 13.

[golic_2004]

1. People in the crowd who were fighting each other: we don’t want that at all, especially not in F1 https://x.com/f1_images/status/17187417 ... oaHee2iTtQ

2. Checo Perez: Crashing out at his home race.

[mario]

2) Logan Sergant - last lap pit stop... did he think the checkered flag came out early?

Sargeant is listed as having retired from the race due to a fuel pump issue, so it appears that it was an intentional retirement on mechanical grounds.

There does seem to be something of an embarrassment of riches this time around, particularly with Perez proving the old adage that you might not win a race at the first corner, but you can certainly lose it there.

Similarly, Tsunoda threw away a golden opportunity for points, particularly in a race where Ricciardo proceeded to take full advantage of the situation and is starting to show some of his former promise. At a time when there is speculation over Ricciardo possibly being brought back into the parent team, neither Tsunoda nor Perez could really afford the sort of performances that they ended up putting in today.

As for Aston Martin, it sounds like something has been going wrong behind the scenes for some time now. There was speculation earlier in the season that they were hardest hit by the FIA's investigation into the construction of the front wings of some teams, but their upgrade programme also seems to have gone awry.

There has been speculation that, whilst the updates do seem to have increased peak downforce, it sounds like the car is prone to yaw instability that have resulted in unpredictable losses of downforce in the corners, as well as making the overall handling balance shift towards increased oversteer and rear end instability. It's been a handful for Alonso, who's been unable to fully exploit the car, whilst Stroll's downwards spiral in performance seems to be partially caused by a major loss in confidence in the car.

It seems that the net result in this race was that Stroll was reverting back to the specification that Aston Martin used in Qatar, mainly for data collection versus Alonso (who was using the newer bodywork package). The team seems to have lost it's way, and it's a bit of a concerning sign that the team may yet fall further in 2024 given the similarity of the regulations.

1. People in the crowd who were fighting each other: we don’t want that at all, especially not in F1 https://x.com/f1_images/status/17187417 ... oaHee2iTtQ

I've commented in the past that it's felt like, in more recent years, the sport has seen some sections of the fan base behaving more like the ultras in the world of football, and that it raised the prospect of seeing potential outbreaks of violence. Whilst it is good to hear that the people involved have apparently received permanent bans from the circuit, it's concerning to see that we are now starting to see some of that increased hostility overflowing into violence.

[Alextrax52]

Aston Martin: That weekend was almost Australia 2022-eqsue. What the hell has happened to them?

Perez: An over ambitious move to rival Hamilton’s in Qatar with the same dire consequences. In that one move he wasted the gift he got at Austin to let Hamilton back into the fight (and I don’t think Hamilton’s done anything spectacular to be there but I’ll talk more about that when we nominate ROTY) and ramped up the speculation about his seat even more.

HM: Tsunoda: AlphaTauri may have climbed up to 8th but Tsunoda’s clash with Piastri cost them further points to really put the pressure on Williams

[Batty]

Not giving it to AM

Alonso had debris damage from the incident with Perez & Charles. And Bottas was given a penalty for his incident with Stroll (I'm not going to give a nomination to a driver when the other driver got the penalty). The car is slow compared to their main rivals but it isn't rejectful, not yet at least.

Sergio Perez - I mean if we are giving Lewis Hamilton ROTR for Qatar, surely we give Checo the same.
- He did as Lewis said in the coolroom "He did a me in Qatar"
- He is now 20 points ahead of Lewis in P2 in the standings
- He was going for gap as he said
- His rival for the seat finished with an impressive drive in P7
- It was his home race!

The Red Bull is quicker than Ferrari but I get his I wanna go for the win but in his case a measured P2 performance would have been great.

As a shoutout but not at all a nomination. What the heck has happened to George Russell? He's just been like not good compared to the standards that we know of him.

[IceG]

(1) Team - Aston Martin: struggled all the way through the weekend with an overambitious hero of yesteryear and the son of teh team's owner. They really do have a problem with lack of race-winning drivers now. For all the good and bad reasons for the results oday, they showed that they are not championship contender material

(2) Driver - Checo: first corner, really? Just no.

[Rob Dylan]

As a shoutout but not at all a nomination. What the heck has happened to George Russell? He's just been like not good compared to the standards that we know of him.

I'll also agree with this sentiment. I've only been able to catch the full races live every other event, but I must say that the broadcasted version of George Russell is a bit of an arse. All he does is complain and desperately try to get any other car penalised by the stewards rather than actually just drive his car. It's probably projection due to the fact that he seems to finish every other race with a 5 second penalty himself, but gosh is it unbearable to see him with this kind of attitude when he's fallen quite considerably behind his teammate this season.

[James1978]

Actually I didn't know about Alonso having damage when I said AM.

With Checo's interview, it reminded me of (another connection being a #2 Red Bull driver at his home race) Webber at Melbourne 2010 talking about going down fighting etc, and he got RotR for that race so I guess what will happen here. Though what Checo really needed was a 2nd behind Max which would have been great, not this.

[mario]

As a shoutout but not at all a nomination. What the heck has happened to George Russell? He's just been like not good compared to the standards that we know of him.

I'll also agree with this sentiment. I've only been able to catch the full races live every other event, but I must say that the broadcasted version of George Russell is a bit of an arse. All he does is complain and desperately try to get any other car penalised by the stewards rather than actually just drive his car. It's probably projection due to the fact that he seems to finish every other race with a 5 second penalty himself, but gosh is it unbearable to see him with this kind of attitude when he's fallen quite considerably behind his teammate this season.

I would treat the broadcasted messages with a sizeable pinch of salt though, because the messages that tend to be selected will be the ones that are considered more "dramatic" - not to mention that there have been more than a few times where a message was broadcast out of context or a few laps later than when the message was actually sent (that is something that is widespread across the field, not just to any specific driver).

If you're at FOM, your focus is less likely to be on the more mundane messages, such as asking for adjustments in front wing settings or target lap times - because it's not the sort of message that's going to sell the "drama" of the sport. Instead, you're going to pick, say, Russell complaining about another driver or, in Austin, Verstappen screaming abuse at his pit wall about the performance of the brakes.

The impression that you might get of Russell through the broadcasts is therefore heavily shaped by what is and isn't selected, and the image you'd get might be rather different if you had the full radio transmission and not just the cherry picked snippets chosen for broadcast.

[Paul Hayes]

1 Sergio Perez. Home town hero did exactly what Lewis Hamilton did 2 races ago and got the exact same results. Quoting Senna about if there was a gap.... but there was not a BIG enough gap.

I only heard his English interview during the Sky coverage, so I don't know if he raised this himself in any other interviews, but in that one at least it was the interviewer who tried to put that quote to him (making a bit of a mess of it in the process), rather than Perez himself raising it.

[Har1MAS1415]

Perez. Great performance in your home GP! NOT!

[Meatwad]

I guess I'll go with Pérez: really a shame, today was a day I wanted to see him do well, but it all ended in disaster.

[Bleu]

1. Perez
2. Q1 shenanigans

[Wallio]

As a shoutout but not at all a nomination. What the heck has happened to George Russell? He's just been like not good compared to the standards that we know of him.

I'll also agree with this sentiment. I've only been able to catch the full races live every other event, but I must say that the broadcasted version of George Russell is a bit of an arse. All he does is complain and desperately try to get any other car penalised by the stewards rather than actually just drive his car. It's probably projection due to the fact that he seems to finish every other race with a 5 second penalty himself, but gosh is it unbearable to see him with this kind of attitude when he's fallen quite considerably behind his teammate this season.

I think it has less to do with George and more to do with Hamilton honestly. You all know I'm no fan of Lewis', but what we saw last year was NOT Lewis. Now that the car suits his style the real Sir Lewis has returned and this is probably the gap between the two honestly.

[Row Man Gross-Gene]

the real Sir Lewis has returned and this is probably the gap between the two honestly.

I agree.

I think George can (and will) improve. He should win multiple races and could be a world champion someday. Will he ever be on Lewis' level, probably not. And there is no shame in that.

On the radio messages, I agree with Mario that they're chosen for their ability to up the level of drama. That said, everyone's messages are chosen with an eye to raising the drama. Russell is about in the middle for my taste. Not the least and not the most objectionable. That said, he probably has the largest delta between his image and his messages, which makes them stick out quite a lot. If Albon's messages sounded like Russell's, we be talking about him instead.

[FalconCapelli]

Sergio Perez and Aston Martin

[Rob Dylan]

Two candidates soared over the rest, and then there were a few crumbs of other great candidates which I haven't included just due to the lack of votes. You have 48 hours so get voting on your Reject of the Race in Mexico!

[Londoner]

A flyaway ROTR winner for one of F1's flyaway weekends!