My heart goes out to all those Lewis Hamilton fans who now know what it is like to support the Saints. Just imagine if they had to face that disappointment every week.
Schad, see my post above. Mercedes said the race was over to Lewis when he said shall we Box-Box. Mercedes said no, fives laps to go, we will finish under the safety car, if we come off now we lose track position. They played by the rules.
Agreed. It was a contrived finish, designed for maximum entertainment and not according to the rules. You either let all the cars unlap themselves or none of them.
They made an assumption that it would finish under yellow. There was zero guarantee of that; if the marshals hadn't spend 30 seconds dicking around, staring at Latifi's car before making the decision to use the extinguisher on his brakes, there likely would have been enough time to let the whole field through and get a racing lap in. Banking on it being a five-lap safety car was not clever. One note: the most rational way to re-sort cars under yellow is what Vettel suggested last year: allow cars to drop back and simply credit them with a lap. It's safer than having them fly past the SC to catch up a full lap, and would have avoided this entirely. Apparently, the reason they cannot is that the incredibly overengineered software that race control uses cannot understand the concept.
What choice did Mereceds have? Lewis was past the crash before the safety car came out, had he pitted he would have come out in the back of the field!!! The safest choice was to stay out, had the FIA said we are going to breach our own rules and have a free for all, Mercedes could have pitted.
It’ll be interesting to see what that does for all the casuals that F1/Netflix have pulled in. Does it enthral them and make them come back for more or does it turn them off?
My old man’s a Man Utd supporter and can not handle defeat at all, soon as Verstappen took the lead every tv went off and he’s still visibly fuming . I now have a 4 hour car journey with him…. Very very harsh on Hamilton, but I have to say Verstappen and Hamilton both deserved it on merit, just a shame it ended the way it did. FIA seriously bungled the full race not just the ending, but it will be good for headlines and coverage so doubt they care. Well done Max Verstappen!
Exactly. And while it's to some extent understandable that they didn't want to cede first in that fashion, it would have given Hamilton the best chance. As it stood, they were gambling on the race ending under safety car, but that would have taken an atypically long SC period for a one-car shunt. Just a completely bizarre set of circumstances though. But that was the risk Mercedes ran when they kept Hamilton out under the VSC...they were in good stead unless there was a safety car, in which case Hamilton was a sitting duck.
Hi. How is everyone!? I think Hamilton/Mercedes were MASSIVELY unfortunate today (and Lewis deserved to win it, as he was much the quicker driver today). I don't think it was cut and dried unfair or cheating or any of that. It was just very, very, very unlucky. And a little bit daft of Mercedes. One thing I will say though, massive credit to Lewis for behaving with such grace and decorum afterwards. Hats off to the man there.
One thing I will say that if you look back throughout the whole season, both drivers have had their bad luck. Lewis really should have taken advantage of Max's tyre blow out in Baku but screwed up the restart. Obviously Lewis got lucky with the Silverstone incident. He could have been knocked out of the race as well as Max. Hungary was just completely nuts all round. Monza I think Lewis would have won had Max not taken them both out. Spa was a joke. No points should have been given out there. But for luck, today was something else. 999 times out of 1000 Lewis wins that race.
Not sure how Lewis was so calm after that! Fair play to him. Hopefully it just makes him and Mercedes more hungry for next season. I do think if Mercedes carry on where they've left off in the 2nd half of the this season then it may well be a dominant season for Lewis next season. Mercedes have been so quick lately.
Not sure what can come of it though? Best they could hope for would be result declared null and void (or equivalent) in which case MV still wins?
Apparently the regulations state there should have been a lap between the cars unlapping themselves and the safety car coming in which didn't happen.
He was a wee bit iffy about saying he was racing next year in the post-race interview, but I'm sure a few days rest will sort that.
Michael Masi needs to be canned, there should be no room for in race lobbying and he clearly rushed the decision making at the end that changed the result of the race, along with the stewards. I feel like everyone went into mad panic at the thought of finishing the season under Safety Car. As the rules appear to be so flimsy they should have just called a red flag and let them race it out once the incident was clear, then at least Hamilton and Verstappen could have had 2-3 laps of close racing on fresh tyres to duke it out.
