Reject of the Race - Hungary 2023

[Londoner]

1. Alpine. Absolute clownshow. They looked like they were going to collide into T1 anyway before Riccardo gave them a helping hand.

2. Guanyu Zhou. 5th place on the grid totally wasted the moment the lights went out.

Honourable mention to Daniel Ricciardo for an utterly pointless return to F1 apart from bowling ball antics, Benjamin Pedersen for being legitimately 15 laps down on Josef Newgarden by the end of the Iowa IndyCar race last night, and Formula 1 itself. I watched half of the fourth series of One Foot In The Grave during this race, I think I had a better time.

[Enforcer]

Zhou: Did he forget to put his car in gear or something? Terrible start, which he then compounded by punting Riccy into the Alpines. Finished 16th after qualifying 5th. Out of 17 remaining drivers.

I won't nominate Alpine cos, as funny as it was, I genuinely think they were punted.

[FalconCapelli]

Zhou

He forgot how to brake in turn 1!

[RAK]

1) Zhou Guanyu: From sublime to ridiculous; threw away a great qualifying position with a poor start and ended up trundling around the back of the field as a result.

2) Ferrari: Proving once again that they're nowhere near championship material, having been outpaced by Mercedes and the resurgent McLaren.

[Ducktanian]

Zhou - Pretty slam dunk this one.

[rachel1990]

1- Zhou. By god that was painful to watch. Taking Lessons from his teammate about Bad starts and bowling at hungary.
2- The race- God that was painful. Again

Hm- Mercedes- all that Hype and yet nearly nothing
Hm Ferrari- Brundle- another painful race for Ferrari- Nha it was a Normal race

Btw the 4th series of One foot in the grave is hilarious

[Hermann95]

Zhou: forgetting how to start, and how to break into T1.

[Ciaran]

Minus 1 million social credit for Zhou for ruining a likely double points finish for Alfa.

I'll also nominate Haas for their crappy race pace.

[IceG]

ROTR team: Ferrari - the ship-to-shore radio tells you everything about how not to run a team, plus a slow stop and a time penalty

ROTR driver: Zhou - for forgetting to start and then forgetting to stop

ROTR anything else: that double DRS zone is not right

[dr-baker]

Zhou slam dunk for me, with an honorary 2nd place to Alpine.

[Meatwad]

Lap 1: Pretty much every surprise from yesterday was ruined from the start – Hamilton dropped to fourth, Alfa Romeo had a complete disaster and Verstappen got the lead even faster than I had predicted. Also Alpine getting taken out through no fault of their own.

[Alextrax52]

Zhou Guanyu: Hero to Zero in the space of about 750 yards (or something like that). He’d clearly been watching his teammates impression of a bowling ball 2 years ago and decided to try it himself and just like Bottas he ruined a single team’s entire day, at least Bottas can say it was wet at least.

The pre-grid hype: So much talk about Verstappen vs Hamilton and how the race was going to be spicy, and it was effectively over after 2 corners

HM’s

Ferrari: Another painful race for the Scuderia as both cars finished behind a man who started 18th

Alpine: While not entirely their fault, a 2nd double DNF in a row and a 2nd huge score for McLaren means they can kiss 5th place goodbye

Ricciardo comeback hype: I know he’s a popular driver with the Netflix fan and he was the story of the weekend but the F1 social media pages did get a bit too saturated for someone driving the worst car on the grid

[James1978]

Go for something a bit different - the British weather. Denied us an exciting finish to the Ashes (which would have been far more exciting than the race)!

Otherwise all Ferrari-engined cars - the works team for looking totally amateurish again, Haas just going backwards and Alfa Romeo scoring a massive own goal.

Alpine were just wrong place wrong time.

[Spectoremg]

An old chestnut from me - the Hungaroring. It isn't that bad a track, it's just that they haven't done that much to make it better in the thousand years (it seems like it) since its been on the calendar. Could someone tell me why it's still around? Or better still a conspiracy theory?

[Bleu]

Zhou - from qualifying hero to race zero.
Tsunoda - lost to Ricciardo in his first outing

[mario]

In some ways, there is an argument for the entire race deserving the award - the pre-race excitement from Zhou's high starting position evaporated before they even reached the first corner, where it instead turned into a farce, Verstappen comfortably drove off into the distance, Aston Martin have faded away and the high temperatures pushed everyone towards strategies that focussed more on tyre saving.

[dinizintheoven]

An unexpected entry for ROTR here: Lando Norris, for giving us a rejectful moment that Jenoch were always bound to pick up on back in t' old days.

Every time The Holy Father HRH Lord Sir Lewis won this race, he'd throw the porcelain trophy in the air... and catch it so flawlessly, he'd make Jonty Rhodes jealous. Every time I was thinking "NO! LEWIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and every time he would give me no reason to have any concern.

But at least it was his trophy to break, eh, Lando? You utter chav. I don't care if it's piffling small change for your dad to get the trophy replaced, what eventually goes into The Holy Dauphine HRH Jonkeheer Max's trophy cabinet isn't the one he was presented with on the podium.

A further dishonourable mention goes to Nico Rosberg's fashion adviser. Hideous! Hideous! And a further black mark is awarded to the rain at Old Trafford for putting a dampener on The Ashes. Maybe this is the reason they're going to Southampton instead of Oop North in 2027.

[Wallio]

1. Alpine. Absolute clownshow. They looked like they were going to collide into T1 anyway before Riccardo gave them a helping hand.

2. Guanyu Zhou. 5th place on the grid totally wasted the moment the lights went out.

Honourable mention to Daniel Ricciardo for an utterly pointless return to F1 apart from bowling ball antics, Benjamin Pedersen for being legitimately 15 laps down on Josef Newgarden by the end of the Iowa IndyCar race last night, and Formula 1 itself. I watched half of the fourth series of One Foot In The Grave during this race, I think I had a better time.

You do realize Ricciardo wasn't at fault......right?


ROTR goes to Alpine

Your Team Principal got sacked so you repond by double DNF'ing at the first turn.
When was the last time that happened? Australia 2001? Germany 1994?

And yes, I realize Zhou was ultimately responsible, but Gasly going three wheels off and careening into turn 1 would have wrecked him anyway.

[Batty]

Zhou - Hero to Zero

Alpine - I feel like he (Gasly) was gonna hit Ocon anyway even if Zhou pushed into Ricciardo who pushed into them. Plus Rossi is out too and not a great week for Alpine

S/O - Lando Norris champagne bottle antics - Broke a trophy and the trophy wasn't his.

[Forti]

Zhou Guanyu, obviously.
And Lando Norris for the podium antics.

[Rob Dylan]

I'll have to say Lando Norris for breaking Verstappen's trophy on the podium. Accident or not that's really bad behaviour and I don't think I've ever seen it before.

[noiceinmydrink]

We're giving ROTR suggestions for hypotheticals now? Because Gasly might have collided with Ocon? 'Mon now lads.

It's gotta be Zhou - he ultimately caused that collision, had a horrific start anyway and didn't do much after the race to redeem it. After he qualified 5th, I was rooting for him super hard. You don't crush my hopes and dreams and get away with it.

An unexpected entry for ROTR here: Lando Norris, for giving us a rejectful moment that Jenoch were always bound to pick up on back in t' old days.

Every time The Holy Father HRH Lord Sir Lewis won this race, he'd throw the porcelain trophy in the air... and catch it so flawlessly, he'd make Jonty Rhodes jealous. Every time I was thinking "NO! LEWIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and every time he would give me no reason to have any concern.

But at least it was his trophy to break, eh, Lando? You utter chav. I don't care if it's piffling small change for your dad to get the trophy replaced, what eventually goes into The Holy Dauphine HRH Jonkeheer Max's trophy cabinet isn't the one he was presented with on the podium.

I'm warming to this suggestion actually. I'm making this my second suggestion - kick the dog when he's flying high.

[Miguel98]

Zhou - Ruined his great qualifying with an awful start and then proceeded to torpedo everyone ahead of him, ruining both Alpine's into retirement and Ricciardo's race as well. That takes skill.

Everyone not named Max Verstappen - Y'all suck

[Vassago]

Not much of a contest for this race with Zhou Guanyu going from his best F1 grid place ever to a pinball tool come Turn 1. I haven't seen someone made such a bad start in the electronic clutch era in a veeeery long time

[dr-baker]

Miguel98 seemed to like the qualifying tyre experiment, as per their post in the IIDOTR thread. But I suspect that it will reduce strategy variance over time and teams will quickly optimise the best way to run the sessions to these constraints, thereby immediately negating the intention.

I say let the teams decide their own tyre usage and then they only have themselves to blame if they get their tyre allocation wrong.

[Wallio]

Miguel98 seemed to like the qualifying tyre experiment, as per their post in the IIDOTR thread. But I suspect that it will reduce strategy variance over time and teams will quickly optimise the best way to run the sessions to these constraints, thereby immediately negating the intention.

I say let the teams decide their own tyre usage and then they only have themselves to blame if they get their tyre allocation wrong.

I did find it funny that the number 1 argument against refueling again is "everyone will just run the same strategy and not mix it up" so to mix it up we put in a tyre system that forces the same strategy.

[takagi_for_the_win]

As much as the "both Alpines being involved in the same first corner shenanigans and the entire team's race being over after 5 minutes" thing would undoubtedly pass my personal "would Jenoch have found this funny?" threshold test, I don't think it's fair to nominate them because their afternoon unravelled for reasons outside of their control.

My sole nomination has to be Zhou - a fantastic qualifying performance, but one that was completely undone within two seconds of the race starting thanks to a start that would've made Mark Webber blush. Compounding that, he then caused the aforementioned first-corner pinballing, which effectively ended Alpine's weekend there and then, while also compromising Ricciardo's race beyond repair.

Shout-outs have to go to Norris for the trophy shenanigans (Jenoch would've approved), and F1 in general - while it's admirable that the team with clearly the best car on the grid have decided to partially hamstring themselves by whacking a midfield level driver in one car, the fact that their second car is driven by someone consistently competent only serves to make the weekends a foregone conclusion before a wheel has been turned in anger. Coupled with the mind numbing predictability on show, the racing on track this hasn't been stellar - last season may have been a bit of an abnormality unfortunately, as teams adapt to the new regs and work out how to surreptitiously whack on all sorts of aero dependent flicks and winglets back on the car.

[noiceinmydrink]

*the post above*

Very well put, 100% agree with pretty much everything in this post.

As for the current state of F1 - I have found myself enjoying qualifying more than the races this year and I'm putting it down to the field is so close that qualifying is exciting but there isn't enough performance differential for cars to pass each other in the race.

[Rob Dylan]

The poll is up for the Hungarian Grand Prix! You have 48 hours to decide the Reject of the Race

[James1978]

Lando - comedy vote

[Londoner]

We're hungry for some GPR Awards in Hungary