The "impartial" view of the start Q: (Jens Nagler – Bild) Lewis, have you been surprised by Sebastian at the start, that he pulled to the left that far because it opened up some space for you? LH: He didn’t open space for me because I was behind Daniel. At that time, once I got to turn one I realised I was kind of alongside Sebastian but as I pulled away, I was only focused on trying to get away faster than Daniel. I saw Kimi so I was just keeping an eye on what’s happening on my left side and if some drama was going to happen I was just going to have to go straight at turn one and not get collected which I was conscious of. I think Sebastian… often - when you look at my last start at Monza – when you pull away, you can’t actually see the guy who’s in second place, they’re generally in your blind spot if they get as good a start as you and it’s difficult to know where they are so all you’ve got to do, you’ve got to start, your immediate thought is to cover your ground, get to the inside and cover and turn them down, so I assume that’s what he did. At least, when you do that, then all of a sudden they appear in your mirror so you can understand where they are or in your peripheral view. But sometimes you do it and you realise you’re ahead so you actually didn’t need to. I don’t if Sebastian felt that way or not.
When team mates go wrong Can you imagine the online fallout if Max hadn't got taken out? He deservedly gets some stick but he was fairly blameless this time.
Jos making his point The altered angle in the response is interesting to For the record, and we've all probably not acknowledged it but Lewis did a pretty good job today.
Lol. I was saying the same thing. Had he qualified higher up maybe Bottas would be smiling all now..lol
It's pretty much impossible to judge anything from stills, but I must admit I thought that could Max could have come out of that unscathed. It all happened so quick that he had very little time to respond though. Still firmly think it's just one of those things. These guys are paid crazy money to race hard, and that's what they were doing. Wouldn't expect anything less from them (except maybe Kimi who might be just better off with an ice cream on the go.)
Kimis good start was almost too good- he was daring up the inside and he hit Max rather than the other way around, with Seb trying to cut Max off. Racing incident. Ferrari just meet to stop crying about it, drama queens! Well done to Joleon Palmer today finally getting a strong finish.
I think what's amazing is some of the folks calling for penalties for Vettel on social media. Now I know that's not the best place to go to really gauge opinion of true race fans, but it does make me question what some of these people want to watch. I mean, do they want drivers to go for it, hand Hamilton the title on plate? Utter madness some of the response.
Just watched the start a few more times again and I think I'm at the point where Vettel has no blame in that at all. The collision between Max and Kimi happens before the door is firmly shut on Max. I know it's all opinions, but I'd say fair play to Vettel.
You'd be amazed at some of the anoraks on there. Some fans treat it like football really, where a driver/constructor is their 'team' ad they can't view anything objectively! I've seen it especially on both Hamilton and Vettel.
I think that's what got me. The anti Ferrari/Vettel agenda is pretty strong. As an F1 fan I get a bit embarrassed by it all. Brundle and Croft both immediately blamed Vettel which I thought strange. There is a difference between defending Max for instance and blaming Vettel.
From Max's view he is just sandwiched though. He can't move left or right. Yes, he makes contact with Kimi first, but only because he tries to back out. He can hardly move right to avoid Kimi, can he? It all depends on what camera angle you look at. From the front you notice that Kimi still had a foot or two of space between him and the wall, so you could equally blame him for not using all the space to his left. It would be just as silly. In reality it's so quick. As I said before, no-one did anything badly wrong, but Seb was the trigger. Not really his fault, but the accident wouldn't have happened without him. But not his fault!
It's particularly silly though this one. He blames Vettel for an aggressive move but you see way more aggressive stuff than this from everyone all the time. It is utter tosh.
Don't think the anti Ferrari/Vettel agenda is any worse than some of the anti-Max or Anti-Hamilton stuff that goes on. I think people were right to call out Vettel initially as at first glance as he does put the squeeze on the other two. They have to call it as they see it. 24 hours later, and after much analysis, sub-analysis, slow-mo replays, stills, 4k ultra-HD 1000x zoom images, its clear he doesn't move over as much as it seemed at first. Fortunately this forum has been very balanced over what happened. There will always be haters out there across a variety of media.
I agree although as some have pointed out, his real error was to miscalculate Risking his own car with a block - maybe/maybe not. Like you mentioned earlier the still shots are unfair as they don't reflect real time, but they do show that Vettel is always ahead and entitled to squeeze, like every pole man does - I actually thought Lewis's take on a generic start was pretty accurate. The catalyst here was the combination of Max (who is less risk adverse than most) and Kimi's start.
