2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix - Hamilton vs Vettel incident

[NathanOlder]

Personally, id ban the pair, Hamilton was clearly trying to back up the pack however something slowed him. Vettel with his road rage was dangerous. Id ban both for two races, bring both drivers to both races, send VET to anger management classes, send HAM to drivers standards classes. Place WHE in the Mercedes, place GIO in the Ferrari and then Sauber can get a pay driver for two races, maybe bring back NAS for them?

These standards need to be stopped as this will now bubble away. This will now bring bad blood into the championship, both are gonna wrong each other more than once. This will end badly, this could get worse than HAM/ROS. The FIA need to nip it in the bud, ban both, apportion blame equally, both are the victim, and it sends a message into the paddock for all to see and be heeded.

Bad driving standards and practice needs to be sorted now. Id like to see a rule on when the safety car leaves the pack, the leader must apportion to a delta all safety car line 1 or some line on track when they can go hell for leather, maybe 1KM from turn 1?

Ban both lol yeah ok. Please explain where Hamilton did anything wrong ? He was backing the pack up for the safety car to go clear as you will see every leader do in pretty much every race anywhere in the world.

[Wynters]

No end result is that you can drive deliberately into an opposition drivers car and a drive through will be your punishment as long as you are annoyed and have made an incorrect assumption.

In all seriousness, I suspect it strongly depends who decides to smash into who, sadly. If that's a correct assumption, then nothing has really changed on that front.

[Shrieker]

I think HAM was -5 today. But VET was at least -15.
HAM braked shortly after the apex, unecessarily. Borlerline dirty.
VET went batshit. And just Platin disgustingly silly. Easy black flag. just heard that HAM now wants a manly fist fight? OMG, this Telenovela never fails to deliver. : D

The Hamilton fistfight quote from was as a reaction on Vettel’s opinion that this is how men settle it on track. “If he wants to settle it like men, meet me outside”.

Hamilton is a pretty decent amateur boxer by the way. Vettel plays batminton.

[Edax]

Personally, id ban the pair, Hamilton was clearly trying to back up the pack however something slowed him. Vettel with his road rage was dangerous.

Stewards looked at telemetry and found that Hamilton "Did not brake or lift off completely. Maintained more or less constant speed." Interesting that you apportion this as being equally bad as deliberately sideswiping a car, on a street circuit where there are walls rather than run off areas.

Suppose Ham's front left suspension had been damaged, popped under braking and he went straight into the wall? I suppose that's just as dangerous as not getting out of Vettel's way under a safety car.

That would have been ugly. And not that far fetched, as it was a decent shunt and I was actually surprised that neither of them picked up damage.

[turbof1]

No end result is that you can drive deliberately into an opposition drivers car and a drive through will be your punishment as long as you are annoyed and have made an incorrect assumption.

In all seriousness, I suspect it strongly depends who decides to smash into who, sadly. If that's a correct assumption, then nothing has really changed on that front.

I remember back in 2012 when Grosjean rammed Alonso and Hamilton at the start of the GP of Belgium. In their motivation about Grosjean's race ban, they explicitly mentioned as reason that Hamilton and Alonso were title contenders. So sadly, yeah: the stewards do take action depending on where you stand in the ranking. I think the thought of a race ban/DSQ hurting Vettel's title chances has played a role in not giving him that kind of penalty.

There are a couple of people who raised the point that if it was for instance Lance Stroll who made the hits, we would not have this conversation and Stroll would have gotten that DSQ/race ban. Highly unfairly, but I do think that would have been the case.

[WaikeCU]

No end result is that you can drive deliberately into an opposition drivers car and a drive through will be your punishment as long as you are annoyed and have made an incorrect assumption.

In all seriousness, I suspect it strongly depends who decides to smash into who, sadly. If that's a correct assumption, then nothing has really changed on that front.

I remember back in 2012 when Grosjean rammed Alonso and Hamilton at the start of the GP of Belgium. In their motivation about Grosjean's race ban, they explicitly mentioned as reason that Hamilton and Alonso were title contenders. So sadly, yeah: the stewards do take action depending on where you stand in the ranking. I think the thought of a race ban/DSQ hurting Vettel's title chances has played a role in not giving him that kind of penalty.

There are a couple of people who raised the point that if it was for instance Lance Stroll who made the hits, we would not have this conversation and Stroll would have gotten that DSQ/race ban. Highly unfairly, but I do think that would have been the case.

It's almost matchfixing tbh. If Vettel ends up winning the Championship by a margin, I could expect people to look back on this very decisive moment meaning if he would have been DSQ'ed or received a race ban or some sort, he wouldn't have won the Championship, but yeah it's been done and dealt sadly, so we have to move on now.

[dans79]

Per the stewards Hamilton did nothing wrong, so I'm willing looked at the real Telemetry and determined Hamilton did not brake like so many are saying based on the world feed.

http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/355047/

But stewards cleared Hamilton of any wrongdoing after going through telemetry data, coming to the view that he drove consistently at all restarts.

"It emerged that Hamilton did correctly, maintained a consistent speed and behaved in the same manner on that occasion as in all other restarts during the race," read a note from the FIA media delegate.

[Phil]

Sadly i think it would have been far less controversial to disqualify him in this race than have all the discussion over a too mild punishment which IMO is a bit of a farce...

[TAG]

Seeing as the data shows that Hamilton didn't have any type of dramatic slow/brake as Vettel claimed, the ten second stop & go is laughable. Silver lining, given the oil burning issue, I expect Mercedes to more consistently lock out the front row and the championship is going to start leaning in the Mercedes direction faster still.

Have to keep you eye on the big picture on days such as this.

[ZakB]

I follow F1 for 20 years and I haven't seen anything like this; purposefully crashing into someone behind the safety car and getting away with a 10 stop-and-go penalty? It's a joke. I'm not a fan of Hamilton, but he didn't do anything wrong.

[torpor]

I cannot believe that I'm writing this. I'm German und usually I'm a Vettel fan.

But it's clear to me that if Vettel wins the driver championship it will be just because he and Ferrari received special treatment this season.

He wouldn't have any chance in the championship anymore if FIA didn't banned Mercedes' sophisticated chassis at Ferrari's request.

And now this very disproportionate reaction to Vettel's inappropriate behavior. He should have been disqualified in this race.

[ScottB]

For me, it's an irrelevance as to whether Lewis brake tested Seb or not.

Vettel's reaction to what happened is entirely separate. This is like a footballer suffering a bad tackle, getting up and punching the defender. Doesn't matter how bad the tackle was, he's getting sent off!

To me, either Seb pulls alongside and deliberately turns into Lewis, or he loses control because he's too busy waving his hand around. Both are dangerous driving, and worthy of more than a stop go penalty. Even if you assume Lewis did brake test him, that's not some sort of free pass for Vettel to inact some revenge! Given his usually outspoken nature about driver conduct, I'd imagine Vettel would be calling for tough action if another driver had behaved like this.

He should be disqualified from the race and placed on probation; another angry outburst resulting in a race ban.

[komninosm]

HAHA! At least Schumacher tried to cover it up when he deliberately crashed into his opponents :p
FIARRARI strikes again!

[PlatinumZealot]

Funny because when schumacher did it he did it with a dignified air! And he never pretended to forget!

[Wynters]

It's almost matchfixing tbh. If Vettel ends up winning the Championship by a margin, I could expect people to look back on this very decisive moment meaning if he would have been DSQ'ed or received a race ban or some sort, he wouldn't have won the Championship, but yeah it's been done and dealt sadly, so we have to move on now.

Yes...and no. As long as you treat the people in competition with each other the same then it shouldn't impact the result. So, if Ham does the same (or effectively the same) in the next race, they could issue the same penalty and it would all even out. Or at least, I'm guessing that's their thinking.

However, the problem for me lies in the gray areas and the precedent. Is RIC, BOT, VER or RAI the same as Vettel and Hamilton? If Bottas had done this to Verstappen, would the penalty have been the same? Or, even worse, can the 'bigger' drivers now just bully the little drivers? Grosjean doesn't get out of the way of 'insert big name driver here' as fast as that driver would have liked and, as a result gets deliberately rammed off the track and into the wall in a display of childish petulance. No meaningful penalty because 'insert big name driver here' is involved in the championship?

During the race, just after Hamilton's pitstop, Perez blocked him for the whole lap, despite the blue flags, and Vettel got out in front of Hamilton. Let's pretend that Hamilton, feeling agrieved, sideswipes Perez on the main straight (knowing that Perez isn't involved in the championship and he is so he'll only get a slap on the wrist). That's the part that most worries me. It's only a matter of time before that sort of move does serious damage. I remember Buemi's front suspension failing at the end of the long straight in China '10. Suppose a 'but muh feelz' revenge ramming causes a crack in someone's suspension and triggers that sort of accident, but this time there isn't enough run off area?