Captain Hammer wrote:The 107% rule is like the microphone at a Britney Spears concert - it just doesn't matter.
That is my new sig.
I'll go with 107% rule as well for ROTR.
Same here. What is the point of the rule if it's not going to be enforced?
Because he was in a completely new chassis after his proper one was destroyed in practice, so it was only fair that the stewards gave d'ambrosio a chance, considering he's no deltraz esque no hoper who will be lapped 14 times; he's won around Monaco in GP2 and as was pointed out elsewhere, he would have got 13th had it not been for that ridiculous decision to change tyres before the restart by Virgin, which even my father knew was ileagal!
mario wrote:But, it was the error in putting D'Ambrosio onto the intermediate tyres too soon that might prove to be the biggest penalty - D'Ambrosio had to take a drive through penalty for that, and at the time he had been ahead of Liuzzi. Given that he finished within 8 seconds of Liuzzi, and a drive through penalty is about 16 seconds at Canada, D'Ambrosio would almost certainly have finished in 13th place, ahead of Liuzzi - and, crucially, kept Virgin Racing ahead of HRT.
Ferrim wrote:I've previously nominated race control, but what about... Vettel?
I noticed during the race that he pulled away pretty fast, but then proceded to slow down A LOT. He pulled away from the Ferraris at the beginning at over 1 second a lap, but then the gap stabilised. He pulled twice from Kobayashi I think, but when he was some five seconds ahead he would stop pushing. He again pulled away ridiculously fast after the final SC period.
At that point I had already forgotten about the fight for the win, and I was rooting for Schumacher to keep his podium spot. After a couple of laps where Webber's mistakes allowed Michael to retain second place, I saw what looked to me like a backmarker a few seconds in front of the Mercedes. I thought: "let's hope that helps Schumi to build a small gap". But the backmarker never came, I saw him again a couple of times and the gap was still more or less the same than before. I didn't pay much attention to that until Button got past Schumacher and suddenly started to close the gap on Vettel, who was just a few seconds ahead.
Of course, the "backmarker" I had seen before was no other than Vettel himself! He spent several laps just trolling around the track at a much slower pace than he could. I'm looking at the lap times and he was lapping in 1:20s, went down to 1:19 in lap 66 and the following three laps, when Button was already pushing, he started lapping in 1:17s. You could see that he was completely at the limit in every corner, sliding very close to the walls a few times -the last one, just before his spin- while Button looked like he was on rails. But if Vettel had been lapping during the previous laps in the 1:18-1:19, over a second slower than the pace he had, he would have been +10s ahead when Button passed Schumacher and would have won the race easily.
Totally agreed. He thought he had the race in the bag and then, when he saw Button he panicked, overpushed and went wide. For someone who was having a perfect season that was a mighty rejectful. If he had the pace why settling 3secs ahead? Why leave himself open to nasty surprises? If it was Mansell or Senna they would've driven off into the distance. Well, I guess that he will learn for the next time.
Yes, he did throw away the win, but how much damage was actually done? In 7 races, 5 wins and 2 second places, 60 points in the lead. Let's put things into perspective. It's not exactly the end of the championship, is it? The effect will be more psychological than anything, I think.
Exactly. It is unlikely he will lose this championship. But that faultless and invincible state of mind is gone. It could give the initiative to others (Webber shows what can be made in such state of mind). Next race for him is about coming back while for others is about striking while the iron is hot. And no, Hamilton, that doesn't mean mad overtaking is now acceptable.
Colin Kolles on F111, 2011 HRT challenger: The car doesn't look too bad; it looks like a modern F1 car.
jpm wrote:Because he was in a completely new chassis after his proper one was destroyed in practice, so it was only fair that the stewards gave d'ambrosio a chance, considering he's no deltraz esque no hoper who will be lapped 14 times; he's won around Monaco in GP2 and as was pointed out elsewhere, he would have got 13th had it not been for that ridiculous decision to change tyres before the restart by Virgin, which even my father knew was ileagal!
Yeah? Then why Liuzzi and Karthikeyan weren't allowed to race in Melbourne? The team was inept enough to not be able to build the cars until well into FP3, and they had to use last year's front wing to boot. So it should've been fair that the stewards gave them a chance, considering that despite their shortcomings as GP drivers neither Liuzzi nor Karthikeyan are Délétrazesque no-hopers who would be lapped every 10 laps; Liuzzi won F3000 in 2004 winning almost all races and taking pole in all of them and Karthikeyan showed a fair turn of speed from time to time while at Jordan in 2005. And may I remind them that the Virgin car is clearly the worst in the field and that HRT is rightly ahead of them in the CC right now?
DanielPT wrote:Exactly. It is unlikely he will lose this championship. But that faultless and invincible state of mind is gone. It could give the initiative to others (Webber shows what can be made in such state of mind). Next race for him is about coming back while for others is about striking while the iron is hot. And no, Hamilton, that doesn't mean mad overtaking is now acceptable.
Vettel is still in an optimal state of mind. Unless he picks up a puncture at the start on a dry race at Silverstone like last year, he'll win again.
Jeroen Krautmeir wrote:Two or three guys (can't remember) were 'clearing' the debris from Nick Heidfeld's front wing, and some fellow tumbled on track. It had me laughing for a moment, but then it was just getting ridiculous when he fell the second time. He really could have been steamrolled.
Then it got really scary when Petrov came steaming in at about a million miles an hour before just pulling up infront of the debris field.
Is it just me or do the Renault teammates have a knack for inadvertently screwing each other over? Because wasn't it a problem with Petrov's car that botched Heidfeld's chances of breaking into Q3 in China?
