Grand Prix Rejects

Well, this is going to be fun, there's so many possible choices. Post your choices for Reject of the Race.

EDIT: Poll!

(1) Christian Horner for not imposing his will and preventing the inevitable

(2) Grosjean for driving like a Parisian limo chauffeur

As much as Ro Gro is calling out to me, it just has to be the Red Bull Drivers here. There's no excuse as a team, when you're in the high points-scoring positions, to just throw all sorts of moves here and there like madmen. That final move was the cherry on top of the cake of chaos. Max probably double-moved. Ricciardo probably braked way too late and locked up massively. Both drivers seemed to be at fault, especially for battling unnecessarily hard in such good positions.

I'm going to make this easy for myself and say... everyone.

Hamilton made loads of mistakes and got lucky
Raikkonen messed up in qualifying, is somewhat to blame for colliding with Ocon and got lucky.
Pérez had that time penalty.
Vettel threw it all away towards the end.
Sainz probably did something wrong, I just don't know what.
Ditto Leclerc.
Alonso had that double puncture. I don't care if it wasn't his fault, I just want to get this out of the way.
Stroll... can't remember. I had something for this.
Vandoorne was just kind of nowhere all day.
Hartley... I'll just use his qualifying incident here.
Ericsson totally ran into the back of Grosjean. Haas are never wrong.
Gasly was just nowhere after the opening laps.
Same for Magnussen.
Bottas for the puncture.
Grosjean needs no explanation.
Verstappen for his part in the collision.
Ricciardo for his even bigger part in the same collision.
Huelkenberg... see Grosjean.
Ocon turned in on Raikkonen.
Sirotkin started all of this.

EDIT: I've decided to be generous and nominate anyone whose name isn't a derivation of Charles.

The shortlist is a biggy, but here are my main 3:

RB drivers - It's taken just 4 races for them to fall out of championship contention
Debris - COME ON, Valtteri didn't deserve that one bit
Romain Grosjean - This isn't even the first time he's done this - RG's still yet to score a point this season

And also Vettel, just a little bit for that SC restart, then again if he hadn't attacked at the restart, and Bottas' tyre hadn't gone down... you just can't tell with these things.

You know, a lot of drivers made quite a few mistakes that race - for a start the clash between the Red Bull duo felt like it was a matter of when, not if, it was going to come, as they were both going at it so hard under braking that you just felt that somebody would push it too far. Even before that, they had been a bit scrappy on track - Verstappen especially, as we saw him running wide quite a few times - so they were already having a bit of an off race before that.

Grosjean's accident under the safety car has the misfortune of making you look like a fool, and he threw away a golden opportunity to score a decent haul of points - maybe even a chance to challenge for that final podium slot given what happened to Vettel. The way that he also bizarrely tried to blame Ericsson for that was just even more embarassing - no Romain, you cocked up on your own there.

As an aside, does anybody know what happened to Magnussen? He'd been up in the points, but dropped back - did he make an extra pit stop? Mind you, he was already getting fairly thoroughly trounced by Grosjean before that.

Talking of hitting the barriers, for the second year in a row we saw Hulkenberg given a great chance to score and blowing it by throwing it into the barriers - I think that he might even have been in the same position as he was in 2017 when he hit the wall then.

Chaotic race....
Baku is clearly not suitable for Formula 1



More please!

1. Grosjean for binning it during the safety car
2. Hulkenberg

HM to Red Bull

Red Bull came into this race looking very competitive, and were tipped to be a threat for victory. Instead, they were off the pace in qualifying and were (relatively) trundling around 30-odd seconds behind the lead when Ricciardo took it too far - this after Verstappen himself was overzealous in defending earlier attempts. Objectively, they were the worst entity out there today - underperforming as a team, and due to driving efforts.

Grosjean is a classic choice for ROTR: a silly, bizarre error which cost himself and his team dearly.

There's a lot of other potential choices, sure, but those two are the clear standouts.

I would award it jointly to Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.

Verstappen made "one and a half" defensive moves, which was naughty and just barely legal, but it would've amounted to nothing, except that Ricciardo's fetish for late lunges under braking meant he'd left his braking too late to avoid a collision. Some people will see it as 50/50, others as 60/40 or 70/30 in favour of one or the other. But the point is they both push the boundaries, and when they push the boundaries in the same braking zone, that's the result.

(Tempted to refer to them as Divebomb Ricciardo and Max Verblocken, but that would be infantile)

I'm hard-pressed to decide between the Red Bull drivers and Romain Grosjean. Ricciardo and Verstappen lost a big chunk of potential points for the team, while Grosjean's error also lost him points, was totally unforced and really rather ridiculous.

As bad as the Red Bull collision was, it's gotta be Grosjean for me - that was reject comedy gold (including his reaction afterwards).

Just to put forward a different option (otherwise it would have to be Red Bull), I will nominate both Sergey Sirotkin and Romain Grosjean for having no points after all the chaos of four 2018 rounds. There are so many options to choose from (amazing, I know!) so I'll go for that.

For me it's either Romain Grosjean, for a fine example of brain-fade under the SC (and intially attempting to shift the blame for him crashing to Ericsson over team radio), or (just to avoid going for the obvious options) Nico Hulkenberg for doing the same thing only under green flag (and with a very decent chance at scoring the podium that has eluded him) in almost an exact repeat of 2017.

1. Grosjean, no ifs and buts about it. Completely idiotic move.
2. Baku stewards, not very good at handling out penalties or punishments.

Hülkenberg and the Red Bull drivers and Grosjean all looked like they had choreographed plans for winning ROTR. That's Baku.™ And the winner completely threw away the win mid-race. So what does that say about everyone behind him?

I'm honestly surprised there was no action (that I'm aware of) against Raikkonen for, in my opinion, driving straight into Ocon and knocking the latter out of the race. I'd therefore support the nomination of the stewards that some others are talking about.

What can I say other than either Grosjean blowing a great result after that silly error or Red Bull colliding together? Well I also say the badly timed debris that cost Bottas the win and also debris of the tree branch. When does a tree branch ever have a chance for ROTR?

I think the only correct answer is Romain Grosjean, but I would also like to nominate the tree branch

Grosjean was last in qualifying and then crashed under safety car. That should do it.

Gotta give it to Red Bull. Verstappen with that stupid defending, Ricciardo with the divebomb moves, the crash and the team failing to do anything about it, despite the warning signs of a clash with their antics proceeding for a number of laps beforehand.

Normal32 wrote:1. Grosjean, no ifs and buts about it. Completely idiotic move.
2. Baku stewards, not very good at handling out penalties or punishments.

Overall , I'd go with that.
I feel sorry for Romain- easy enough mistake to make, but at the end of the day , crashing under safety car when in a good position..
And the stewards- really there was some very poor driving at times , but they seem to have been a bit hesitant to do what was needed.

Rob Dylan wrote:I'm honestly surprised there was no action (that I'm aware of) against Raikkonen for, in my opinion, driving straight into Ocon and knocking the latter out of the race. I'd therefore support the nomination of the stewards that some others are talking about.

They investigated it, but declared it to be a racing incident and there would be no further action against either driver.

To be honest, when looking at what Magnussen did to Gasly, I'm tempted to nominate both Magnussen - for what was an extremely reckless move that seemed to have the sole intention of ramming Gasly into a wall - and a decision by the stewards that was arguably rather tame when you look at how he was behaving. https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/head ... aijan.html

The Red Bull drivers, especially Max Verstappen.

Dishonourable mentions for the two insecure turds: Alonso (nobody else could drive on 2 wheels) and Hamilton (nobody else would celebrate as less as I did for such a fortunate victory).

#blessed #SamuraiIchiban

wsrgo wrote:The Red Bull drivers, especially Max Verstappen.

Dishonourable mentions for the two insecure turds: Alonso (nobody else could drive on 2 wheels) and Hamilton (nobody else would celebrate as less as I did for such a fortunate victory).

#blessed #SamuraiIchiban

Did our cereal taste suspiciously like urine this morning?

Simtek wrote:

wsrgo wrote:The Red Bull drivers, especially Max Verstappen.

Dishonourable mentions for the two insecure turds: Alonso (nobody else could drive on 2 wheels) and Hamilton (nobody else would celebrate as less as I did for such a fortunate victory).

#blessed #SamuraiIchiban

Did our cereal taste suspiciously like urine this morning?

I sure hope not, given that I posted this yesterday night (my local time).

I'm just upset with Alonso and Hamilton's constant self-posturing. Alonso did a great job on Sunday, but on saying that he alone is capable of such feats, he simply reduces himself to a petty man.

Hamilton's poise and tact post-race was nice, as was the Bottas gesture, but saying that others celebrate fortunate wins more than him makes me think he's more worried about his image than actually being a good person.

David Coulthard doing the interviews down in the pit lane rather than up on the podium felt a lot more like ITV4's coverage of the BTCC than an international FIA event.

Changing my vote from debris to Magnussen, for that ugly bit of driving, as well as effectively causing Bottas' puncture. The FIA/stewards ought to have thrown the book at him, I'd give him a 10-place grid drop for Spain at least, never mind a time penalty.

wsrgo wrote:I'm just upset with Alonso and Hamilton's constant self-posturing. Alonso did a great job on Sunday, but on saying that he alone is capable of such feats, he simply reduces himself to a petty man.

Hamilton's poise and tact post-race was nice, as was the Bottas gesture, but saying that others celebrate fortunate wins more than him makes me think he's more worried about his image than actually being a good person.

You may have a point there... but, the way I see it, is that's just how those guys are. I'd prefer that they express themselves in that way, even if they are just being douchebags in various ways, than just be boring corporate cutouts.

dr-baker wrote:David Coulthard doing the interviews down in the pit lane rather than up on the podium felt a lot more like ITV4's coverage of the BTCC than an international FIA event.

That's happening for everything now. We scrapped podium interviews for F2 at the start of the year, instead we have Rosanna Tennant down there with questions when the drivers pull into parc ferme. It's basically what MotoGP does...

My nomination goes to the Soviet era truck sent to recover Grosjean's car. I've feared for the worst

Ataxia wrote:

dr-baker wrote:David Coulthard doing the interviews down in the pit lane rather than up on the podium felt a lot more like ITV4's coverage of the BTCC than an international FIA event.

That's happening for everything now. We scrapped podium interviews for F2 at the start of the year, instead we have Rosanna Tennant down there with questions when the drivers pull into parc ferme. It's basically what MotoGP does...

What's the rationale for it? It makes it look cheap, like there's nowhere else for them to go. I know FE has done it for a while too, I just don't get it.

dr-baker wrote:

Ataxia wrote:

dr-baker wrote:David Coulthard doing the interviews down in the pit lane rather than up on the podium felt a lot more like ITV4's coverage of the BTCC than an international FIA event.

That's happening for everything now. We scrapped podium interviews for F2 at the start of the year, instead we have Rosanna Tennant down there with questions when the drivers pull into parc ferme. It's basically what MotoGP does...

What's the rationale for it? It makes it look cheap, like there's nowhere else for them to go. I know FE has done it for a while too, I just don't get it.

I guess they want the drivers' comments to be even more immediate and "natural". Giving them less time to think about their responses allows for a greater chance of more "heat of the moment" comments which create headlines, thus bringing more publicity to the sport.

novitopoli wrote:My nomination goes to the Soviet era truck sent to recover Grosjean's car. I've feared for the worst

Alonso was pretty vocal about it over the radio

Nuppiz wrote:I guess they want the drivers' comments to be even more immediate and "natural". Giving them less time to think about their responses allows for a greater chance of more "heat of the moment" comments which create headlines, thus bringing more publicity to the sport.

In which case, why not go even further down the BTCC route, and have interviews over the pits-to-car radio on the return lap back to the pits?!?!?

IceG wrote:

novitopoli wrote:My nomination goes to the Soviet era truck sent to recover Grosjean's car. I've feared for the worst

Alonso was pretty vocal about it over the radio

He wasn't the only one either, as Hamilton was also asking Whiting over the radio whether it was unsafe for the truck to be parked there too.

The poll is up! Sorry for the slight delay---now that I know how to do this, the new system should be up and running for good by Spain!

I took the three most popular choices for the poll, plus my favourite left-field choice. Sorry to those of you who picked Vettel, Hulkenberg, the stewards or Magnussen, but the picks for this weekend were many!

The Red Bull drivers were battling hard and crashed. They were teammates, but it happens. Hülkenberg crashed at a street circuit. It happens, and he didn't even make the poll. The debris shouldn't have been there, but I only disliked it because of who it affected. Grosjean crashed under the safety car. That's ROTR.

The results are in!

After our poll, trying to single out just one of the candidates who deserved the Reject of the Race award more than any other, you picked Romain Grosjean. Crashing behind the safety car, nearly blaming Ericsson for it, and this not being the first time that he has crashed behind the safety car, makes him a prime candidate for the award!

The Red Bull drivers were a close second, with a topsy-turvy season for the team and its drivers culminating in a smash-up between Verstappen and Ricciardo. Many saw it coming, but that does not diminish the rejectfulness of it all.