General Sports Thread

Fascinating seeing what this rivalry has done to people.

Initially most people had a preference for who won - but now it's got to the point of causing people to actively 'hate' the other driver.


I have said a few times I hope Max Verstappen wins - if only because I think it would be good for the sport for it to be someone other than Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. But it doesn't mean I hate LH, unlike how many of the LH fans seem to view MV

 

Possibly, but it didn't go unnoticed by a man who lost six members of his family;

“I am very disappointed that someone who says he supports us, wants to advertise Kingspan, who contributed to the loss of innocent lives,” he said. “He should not accept it. You can’t support the community and say you respect the deceased and families and still take sponsorship like this.”

Admittedly, Kingspan's part in the fire was relatively small but their attitude and practices stank;

The public inquiry into the disaster has heard that prior to Grenfell, Kingspan changed the composition of its plastic foam boards, and tests showed that they burned “like a raging inferno”.
But the company continued to use a previous test pass and sold them for use on buildings across the UK, including Grenfell, where a small amount were used. The public inquiry has heard that Kingspan executives also dismissed customers’ concerns about the boards’ fire safety, with a manager in one case saying: “[They] are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic].”

I put all this because Hamilton likes to promote himself as a campaigner for human rights and an environmentalist. He gets asked questions about Kingspan and the ethics of racing in a country with a cruel, oppressive regime purely because of this moral flag waving. When I first posted on this the other day, Laces asked me "what more do I think he should do?" Well, he could be a lot more vocal than he has been up to now. Be a bit more forthright on his views to his employers and lobbying the FIA, use the media, get some of his fellow racing drivers involved. He's the world champion for goodness sake, that has to have some weight.

If he is not able or not willing to take action on things like who he advertises, where he races or for that matter the carbon footprint of motor racing he should really just shut the **** up and get on with his racing. Then he can turn a blind eye on human rights in the UAE too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates#:~:text=According to human rights organisations,number of fundamental human rights.&text=The government restricts freedom of,government officials or royal families.

 

I'm in the same boat. I want Verstappen to win, but I don't at all dislike Hamilton, either as a person or a driver, and I won't be upset if he wins. I just happened to be introduced to F1 in an era where the greatest drivers tended to race like Verstappen (or frankly, more aggressively than Verstappen), so I find the gnashing of teeth and constant demands for penalties a bit silly.

 

I don't dislike Max really although I think he's an unnecessarily dangerous ****. It's not really his fault as he's being enabled by loads of people.

Horner though I can't stand the horrible prick. I'd have actually been happy for Max to win it up until Silverstone.

 

"forthright on his views to his employers and lobbying the FIA, use the media, get some of his fellow racing drivers involved. He's the world champion for goodness sake, that has to have some weight."


That's exactly what he does and has done though? Massively. Far more than any other driver in the history of the sport.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the first time he'll have heard of any new sponsorship on the endplate of a front wing was when all of this blew up too. He also, I'd be pretty certain, wouldn't have known who Kingspan were (after all, how many of us did?) even if he had been told "oh we have a new sponsor called Kingspan".

 

Yeah, Horner really hasn't covered himself in glory. He actually offered me a job once, when he was in charge of Arden in (what was then) GP2. Was 'commission only' though, so I didn't take it.

I think he's become a prick, rather than always having been one. When you decide to marry Geri Halliwell and think that's normal is the time to start asking questions of where you're really going!

 

Don't think there's any question that Horner is a prick. Regrettably, I think you'd find a fair few of them in F1 paddocks...there have been a lot of dinguses behind the wheel over the years, but their numbers are dwarfed by the number of dinguses that have served as owners and team principals.

 

As always, Twitter is a cesspool of Max vs Lewis. It's pathetic.

 

Hey Jos...let's talk about you though, yeah?!

 

Prick. He probably doesn't even respect Lewis as a driver but you can't exactly say that about a 7 time world champion without sounding like a bitter, angry, sad little man.

 

So not usually an F1 fan, my grandad used to watch it when I was a kid and I hated it then whenever he had it on and never really tried to watch it since, but think I’ll try watching this race. If I can’t get into this one then I doubt I ever will.

Is it true that if they both don’t finish then Verstappen wins? Why doesn’t he just ram straight into Hamilton? Or is that not the done thing?

 

He'd get disqualified from the whole Championship if he did that (on purpose).

 

It would be incredibly ****ty, and I don't expect Verstappen to do it, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been done. Ayrton Senna later admitted to intentionally crashing into Alain Prost off the start in 1990 to win the title. Michael Schumacher almost definitely crashed into Damon Hill on purpose in 1994 to win the title after running wide and tapping the wall. Michael Schumacher definitely intentionally crashed into Jacques Villeneuve in 1997...which knocked him out of the race, but not Villeneuve, and also saw Schumacher disqualified from the Championship.

But the stewards now have access to far more information than they did then. All of the on-board telemetry, all the cameras, it's really difficult to intentionally hit someone without it being apparent that you intentionally hit someone. And frankly, if Verstappen wanted to do it, he'd have done it a couple races ago, because he could have largely put the title to bed in so doing.

 

Yeah i'm going to as well, I got into it when James "The Shunt" Hunt won in '76 and insisted that my mum brought me some F1 shoes with cool tyre tread soles!
Then I watched it all through the '80s when when British winners were pretty thin on the ground but the epic battles between Prost and Senna were enthralling and then through the '90s when Mansell and Damon Hill won a chamionship each.
I started to lose interest when the races started to become a procession with Schumacher dominating for Ferrari and never got back into it until last weekend, what an incredible race, so much drama.
I'm rooting for Lewis to make history but Max drives like Senna used too and that makes it very intriguing as anything might happen and that's what got me interested in the sport initially.

 

I was going to say I remember Senna shunting Prost to win, couldn't remember the year though.

 

Apparently the option of deducting World Championship points is a viable penalty option for stewards. So if Max is found at fault for causing a collision but not enough evidence of a deliberate act then they could go down that route. They would only consider this if Lewis couldn't continue in the race I would think. And vice versa of course. If Max couldn't finish the race Lewis would only need a point which he would almost certainly get.

 

Does anyone honestly believe the FIA would have the bottle to essentially strip him of the title?

i certainly don't. The sport needs a new world champion and that's far more important than anything in LM's eyes.

 

I think that's absurd, frankly.

 

It needs a world champion who wins on the track not by driving the opposition off it. Yes if Verstabben's driving warranted it, or Hamilton's, then deduct the points.

 

I am hoping for Lewis to win, simply for patriotic reasons, as well as him being one hell of a great driver.
I was reading this morning that Sundays track has had some revamping done to it, making it quicker and having more passing points, with no one yet knowing if it will better suit Mercedes or Red Bull, so it has the makings for being a classic.