"Did no one get the revised rule book? Our sponsors have said that unless you are Lewis or Max you will get punished"
*sigh* Anyway... So yeah, the penalty for Rosberg was both harsh and redundant. Good job! Not a bad race. Not a classic by any means, but not bad. Advantage Rosberg. Looks like he might actually do this one.
I didn't see anything worthy of a penalty in either incident, a fairly similar incident happened at Spa without the stewards giving out a penalty.
Certainly don't agree with the Vettel penalty. **** happens while racing. And he mostly penalized himself anyway. Hate penalties that just aren't needed with a passion.
Here's another question. Obviously today was disappointing from Hamilton's perspective, but who's position would you rather be in now? Hamilton: the faster driver 23 points behind, but you only have to win the remaining races to win the championship by at least 12 points, it's still in your hands effectively if you perform to your maximum. Rosberg: you're the slower driver, so potentially it's not yet in your hands, but you do have the points on the board.
I think I'd actually take Rosberg's position right now. He's basically got a race in hand and can still afford one more major guff where as Hamilton can't. One more bad race and it's all but done for him.
Yep, definitely Rosberg's. Keep your nose clean for 5 races and chances are that'll be enough. Hamilton has a lot more to do, and chances are he'll have at least one bad race or piece of poor luck.
yeah, I think the dog will get it's bone, unless he catches something from drinking out of Daniel Cinderellas shoe.
I don't believe Hamilton can have 5 clean races in a row, and win them all. The championship is in Rosbergs hands, if he does what he does it's his.
Well he won 6 out of 7 in a row earlier in the season and overturned a 40+ point deficit. But the pressure is much greater now of course. In reality while we work out the permutations of different combinations of 1-2 finishes it's unlikely that all the races will finish that way. One bad race either way (or one DNF as I mentioned above) can change things round much more quickly.
I missed the start of the race and haven't seen the highlights so can't comment on Vettel's penalty though the whole 1st lap unwritten rule seems like it should have been used based on what people here are saying. Nico's penalty was harsh I think. I can see why they gave it but I don't agree with it. It will just encourage people not to over take in the end. Thankfully it had no impact on his position in the end. Unlucky for Lewis but this is motorsport. As Toto has said, this is a mechanical sport and mechanical failures happen. I think it's unfair to say Nico is an undeserving champion if he wins as he has still been there to pick up the pieces when things do go wrong. A lucky champion? Sure, but undeserving? No, he's still had to drive the car over the finish line each grand prix weekend.
What did Verstappen get at Belguim for his first corner lunge? There is no such thing as an undeserving champion. Regardless of personality/luck/ability etc, if you have ended up in the no.1 spot over the course of a season in any sport, then by rights you are champion and a deserving one (unless there was blatant cheating going on that gave you an advantage i.e. illegal drug use, flagrant breach of regs/rules etc)
I feel that the disrespect on this board shown for Nico is a little hard to take, and I just don't get it. I feel if he had anyone apart from Lewis Hamilton as his team mate he would be, at least, 1 time world champion, maybe more. He has taken the fight to Lewis time and time again, most of the time failing at the last hurdle, or coming up short, but he still comes out fighting. So either Nico is a decent driver, who is unlucky to have an even better driver in the other car, and gets narrowly beaten. Or Nico is an average driver at best, and by extension Lewis is a slightly above average driver. You can only judge the man with who he is up against, and losing, narrowly to Lewis Hamilton in my opinion still makes he a fairly good driver. In other Nico news, this made me laugh please log in to view this image
I think the argument, "if you take Hamilton out of the team, then..." is flawed. You can apply that logic to other seasons and get Riccardo Patrese WDC, Rubens Barrichello triple WDC, Mark Webber multiple WDC etc. These are all decent race drivers, but I don't think history under thinks any of them particularly under achieved but not winning a single WDC between them. Maybe I don't see the same Nico you do, but I think he lacks the edge of a Champion. I've used this example a lot recently, but for me Monaco this year is a classic example. By that stage of the season he had Hamilton on the floor and it was already apparent that no one else was getting a look at the constructors or driver's title. If he'd never let him through Hamilton would have got past eventually but probably have been third at best, no winning bounce, 12 points saved and maybe no run of multiple victories without reply. He let him off the floor and with a bit of help from RedBull the momentum swung Hamilton's way. Look at Ricciardo yesterday in the same situation, RB need the points potentially against Ferrari, but he's stood his ground and it got him the win. You say if anyone else in the team would mean he would have one or more championships, but I'm pretty certain Alonso, Vettel, Ricciardo and probably Button would all be beating him 2-0 at this stage. There's drivers where you could make that argument, Grosjean, Bottas, Perez for example, but which group do you think Merc would hire from if they were looking to replace Hamilton? I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the championship, I think he's in a that group between those that do and those that don't.