Salamander wrote:Anyway, on the topic of whether or not Raikkonen should be nominated for RotR, what I will say is that the size of the crash or his general performance this season didn't really factor into the nomination for me. What did was the fact that he attempted to rejoin the raging midfield battle at more or less full speed, at a point where doing such was inevitably going to cause some form of incident. He wasn't wrong to rejoin there, because the kerb ended just before then and going over it in the direction he would have, would have risked a puncture, since I think those kerbs are raised on that side. His error was trying to rejoin at racing speeds - but it was a fundamental error nonetheless, and not one you would expect from one of the most experienced drivers in Formula 1 today.
As Will Buxton has pointed out, drivers conduct track walks to be aware what the track is like in these situations - obviously I don't know whether or not Kimi did this and looked at this part of the track, but the point is that if he didn't, then he should have, and if he did, then he should've known better.
What I would also like those that are defending Kimi to consider is this: If it was Pastor Maldonado who had attempted to rejoin the track there in that manner, and not Kimi Raikkonen, would you be so quick to come to his defence? Because let's be frank here - that crash could have been far worse than it was - even as it was,
a tyre almost hit Max Chilton on the head.
In the end, in spite of Kimi's poor season, I don't expect him to suddenly make such a poor call of judgement, given his years of experience. For me, it outweighed Esteban Gutierrez being, well, Esteban Gutierrez, Force India just having a poor day in general, the radio whining from Alonso and Vettel, which I maintain was completely hilarious, and Rosberg's gearbox ruining the race for the lead, but closing up the championship fight in the bargain.
The question over what course of action Kimi should have taken in that scenario is a difficult one - having committed to try to pass one of the Sauber's around the outside of that corner, Kimi was admittedly placing himself into a scenario where any slight mistake would put him into the run off area at high speed (given that the drivers would normally be on full throttle relatively early in that corner).
Once he ends up running wide into that run off area, the natural instinct of any racing driver would probably have been to stay on full throttle to minimise the loss of time and to rejoin the track at racing speed. We have seen in the past how, at places like La Source in Belgium, drivers would take to the tarmac apron at the outside of the track at full throttle if they were forced wide at the start of a race - it took the threat of heavy penalties from Whiting after drivers were able to overtake drivers who started normally and did stay within the track limit before drivers stopped using the run off at that corner in that manner.
Now, it is fair to say that, in some ways, to have swept back onto the track at full throttle in that manner is potentially asking for trouble - even if he had not struck that kerb, to pull back onto the track at full racing speed does run the risk of sweeping into the side of a driver who does not see you coming back onto the track.
However, we have also seen other experienced drivers run at full speed over a run off area even though there is the potential for an accident - only last year in Abu Dhabi, we saw Alonso running off the track and striking a kerb with such force that it threw his car into the air and set off the FIA's medical alarm (which is triggered when a driver is subjected to an impact greater than 25G) whilst fighting with Vergne, an impact severe enough that he was sent to the medical centre for precautionary checks.
Overall, I would take something of a middle line on the whole affair - whilst Kimi's actions were potentially asking for trouble, at the same time I suspect that many other drivers would have instinctively done a similar thing and potentially might have been caught out in a similar manner. It does look as if Kimi was indeed trying to rejoin the track between the end of the astroturf strip on the edge of the corner and the end of the tarmac run off area, but misjudged the move slightly and ended up running across the grass instead.
