Grand Prix Rejects

Aside from the existence of this event and this bathplug deathtrap of a track, there was plenty of rejectworthy action today.

1. Nicholas Latifi. Pathetic low speed crash, vintage ROTR moment

2. Alfa Romeo. Getting Zhou a second penalty because his team didn't correctly serve the first one is galaxy brain material. Bottas meekly losing a good finish through unreliability was the cherry on top.

Yeah, when people are discussing whether to race or not because of a military assault nearby, the race itself and the events within it kinda fade out of attention.

Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is the premier candidate.

1. Latifi. Mazzy not being in f1 anymore brings Nicky back into the spotlight for being slow and accident prone. 2 crashes in one weekend. Not looking good if he wants to be in f1 in 2023. I know he has a large bank balance but I'm sure Willams can get another driver with that sort of cash in 2023

2. Alfa Romeo. How can you not serve a penalty correctly. You wait 5 seconds then you change the tyres. 5 seconds. Poor Zhou. Got a drive through for no fault of his own. Yes he messed up with the 5 second penalty but nothing else.

1) Nicholas Latifi: Back-to-back crashes in qualifying and the race.

2) Saudi Arabian Grand Prix: A hellishly unsafe track for modern Formula One, an objectionable geopolitical connotation, poor marshalling and a military attack nearby. And we have 15 more years of this?

Saudi Arabia weekend: Let this hopefully be the last time we ever go near this place. The track and it’s surroundings are the biggest death traps since the Life L190

Alfa Romeo: Haven’t entirely stamped out the operational errors of last year. Just how do you neglect to serve a penalty? Bottas retiring ensured a pointless visit.

Lewis Hamilton: His worst weekend since the bad old days of 2009. Out in Q1, missed the window to pit under VSC resulting in 10th which would have been 13th without DNF’s

Williams: Another sobering season on the cards then and this time I don’t feel anything because we know this team is Williams in name only now. With Mazepin gone Latifi is now comfortably the weakest driver on the grid and Albon must be wondering if this has suddenly become a complete waste of time

HM:
Latifi, for crashing out all weekend long
Alfa Romeo, for throwing away possible good points with penalties and unreliability

FIA/F1/Saudi Arabia (the race organiser) for delivering that shitshow on Friday. Racing here wasn't right, and we all know this, but their showing of greed on Friday is just disgusting

Off track I'm afraid.
Cancel Russia because of you know what but keep this one with the brutal and disgusting Saudi regeme.
Off the scale double standards.

Saudi Arabia: The race was an exciting one, sure. But not much positive to say other than that. Several big crashes that could have been even worse, missiles near the circuit, and drivers and teams allegedly being threatened if they refused to drive. This should be the last Grand Prix weekend there.

+1 on having the race here in the first place. Between the track itself and where it is. A few laps of fun racing between Verstappen & Leclerc at the end doesn't change that.

Other mentions:

EDIT: Originally I said Alfa Romeo here, but I'm dropping it. Alfa jacked Zhou up and then waited 5 seconds before working on the car. The stewards then issued a drive through because you're supposed to wait 5s before jacking the car up. But I'd guess any time advantage gained from jacking it up first is so small that it'd be eliminated by variations in how long it takes to change the tires.

Williams. Poor pace and a double DNF does not bode well. They can only hope that Aston Martin stay in the doldrums long enough for them to somehow get a result that elevates them ahead.

Jenson Button Terrible, boring commentator with a voice that'd kill a witch. The Michael Owen of F1.

I see only one clear cut winner - the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix as a whole.

Given the potentially life-threatening shenanigans within eyeshot and a tremendous crash highlighting the track's inherently unsafe design, this stupid race shouldn't have been greenlit in the first place.

If not for that, honorable mentions Alfa Romeo and Nicholas Latifi would've been the top two. Screwing over Zhou for improper penalty handling and Bottas breaking down was pretty bad. Then there's Latifi's two crashes in qualifying and the race itself by simply losing the car. How the hell did he get thru last season?

There's also Jenson Button's frankly appalling commentary. Blech. Button in the booth made the commentary sound like I was watching a NASCAR Truck race. Maybe he should get put in that booth instead.

Enforcer wrote:
Jenson Button Terrible, boring commentator with a voice that'd kill a witch. The Michael Owen of F1.

I actually quite enjoyed him. But then again, I am a bit of a Button fan.

And for me, I will nominte lap 35. All three mechanical failures all on the same lap. Brilliantly rejectful.

I'm beginning to wonder if Max has hired Latifi as a secret agent to crash every time he needs a safety car

1. Saudi Arabia Grand Prix - Race being good does not salvage this shitfest of a weekend and the broken moral compass it follows suit.

2. Nicholas Latifi - Man is truly having a Pedro Diniz moment of having a breakout season where you almost assume he's good and then he proceeds to do this. What the hell.

Honorable mention to Jenson Button for making me want to punch him throughout most of the weekend. What a terrible commentator

(1) The circuit - terrible and dangerous layout in the wrong country. I was not looking forward to the race after the F2 Sprint race and Schumacher's qualy incident. We were very lucky.

(2) Hamilton - a 7-times world champion lucking into a single point whilst his just-promoted teammate finished five places ahead

HM to Williams and Ricciardo but these are the results we have come to expect.

The GP is the obvious one but excluding that

1. Alfa Romeo pitting Zhou on the jack which turned out to be a mess - You don't see that every day.

2. Latifi - Dude had a mare of a weekend.

I'm gonna go with Yuki Tsunoda's car after being heavily curtailed in throughout the weekend. Little running in practice, didn't even get out in qualifying or the race - poor Tsunoda-san barely turned the wheel all weekend. One of the more disasterous weekends in terms of one car's reliability in my recent memory anyhow.

noiceinmydrink wrote:I'm gonna go with Yuki Tsunoda's car after being heavily curtailed in throughout the weekend. Little running in practice, didn't even get out in qualifying or the race - poor Tsunoda-san barely turned the wheel all weekend. One of the more disasterous weekends in terms of one car's reliability in my recent memory anyhow.

You’re making Alpha Tauri sound like Andrea Moda,,,

1. Grand Prix being held

2. Nicholas Latifi

I don't have anything to add which hasn't been mentioned yet.

1. Nicholas Latifi - Looking even more behind his new teammate than he was behind the old one. Year 3 and still no real improvement capped off by a rookie error and another crash. With Mazepin gone and Schumacher showing pace in a better car there's nowhere for ole Nicko to hide anymore. Good early bet for ROTY winner.

2. Alfa Romeo - Anti-stall kicked in for the second race in a row. Huh? Do they know they maybe have a setting problem? Zhou's double penalty and Bottas DNF just added to the nonsense. I believe Alfa didn't have a mechanical DNF until the very last race of the season? Now they had one in the second race already.

ROTR must be "war in general". You shouldn't host a professional international sporting event in a war zone. If you do anyway, your event becomes a target inevitably. Why would you expose your guests to this kind of risk? If you do anyway, you're not being hospitable and you should not be surprised when your guests don't visit again.

I guess FOCA will honour the contract with Saudi Arabia next year because it pays well but really, F1 should not race in a war zone nor anywhere near it.

Before I forgot to mention it, here's our race report and announcement of ROTR in Saudi Arabia. I took the liberty, under the grim circumstances, of bypassing the vote and awarding it to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix itself for a second year running. Read all about it through the above link.