Sebastian Vettel has won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, retaking the lead 5 laps from the end. An eventful race saw Hamilton in last position after the first lap, and two safety cars making for a tense end of the race. Lewis Hamilton recovered to finish second, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen.
Such incidents happen in the midfield every race and no one cares about penalties given there.
The drivers at the front of the grid are supposed to be the best of the best, hence the reason they are in the best cars. However, over the last season and a 1/3 we have seen a lot of clumsy mistakes from them.
After the bad start P2 was the beat he could have gotten anyway. So next time he maybe should concentrate more on his mistakes than only overreacting because of mistakes of others.
I disagree with this, Lewis had much better pace coming through the field than Bottas did at the front. If Lewis had been at the front, Vettel would have been under more pressure, because he would have had two opposing cars to deal with when he pitted. Don't forget the reason he pitted was because of a blister. Imo if both mercs had been at the front they could have made him pushed his tires even harder.
IMHO Hamilton needs to calm down and focus on his weakness - his starts! Ferraris are known to have amazing starts. He lost the race there. Yeah it sucks he got hit by Kimi but it could happen. Take it on the chin - regroup and move on. The fact that in such heat the Mercedes was still a weapon is actually signs of progress. Or it could be down to the tires. But I can't deny it despite being a Hamilton fan and totally hating this prima donna attitude - this season has been a peach!! the cars are effing ugly but they are so incredibly quick. I can't wait to get F1 2018 and get a taste of those cars!
Such incidents happen in the midfield every race and no one cares about penalties given there.
The drivers at the front of the grid are supposed to be the best of the best, hence the reason they are in the best cars. However, over the last season and a 1/3 we have seen a lot of clumsy mistakes from them.
In all honesty, the top drivers lock up fairly often. But that usually happens during the race with nobody around.
These aren't Grosjean mistakes. We shouldn't make a huge deal about this. Yes they unfortunaly had grave consequences, but lockups happen to even the most experienced ones.
Such incidents happen in the midfield every race and no one cares about penalties given there.
The drivers at the front of the grid are supposed to be the best of the best, hence the reason they are in the best cars. However, over the last season and a 1/3 we have seen a lot of clumsy mistakes from them.
After the bad start P2 was the beat he could have gotten anyway. So next time he maybe should concentrate more on his mistakes than only overreacting because of mistakes of others.
I disagree with this, Lewis had much better pace coming through the field than Bottas did at the front. If Lewis had been at the front, Vettel would have been under more pressure, because he would have had two opposing cars to deal with when he pitted. Don't forget the reason he pitted was because of a blister. Imo if both mercs had been at the front they could have made him pushed his tires even harder.
This was the same situation as in Canada. Vettel was managing his tyres and fuel consumption in the beginning of the stints and the commentators misinterpret that as "lack of Pace". This situation was seen in Austria where Ric & Hamilton were quick at the beginning of the stints when the Ferraris were clearly managing their pace. Horner confirmed this during the in-race interview with Sky. When questioned about this by Croft he mentions Vettle seems to be managing his pace.
The safety car helped Ferrari breathe a little easier but clearly not as much as it helped Hamilton & Mercedes.
It closed the field up, cut down hamilton's deficit to the leaders, gave him 10 easy laps on those tyres when it was decided he was not going to pit.
This was the same situation as in Canada. Vettel was managing his tyres and fuel consumption in the beginning of the stints and the commentators misinterpret that as "lack of Pace". This situation was seen in Austria where Ric & Hamilton were quick at the beginning of the stints when the Ferraris were clearly managing their pace. Horner confirmed this during the in-race interview with Sky. When questioned about this by Croft he mentions Vettle seems to be managing his pace.
The safety car helped Ferrari breathe a little easier but clearly not as much as it helped Hamilton & Mercedes.
It closed the field up, cut down hamilton's deficit to the leaders, gave him 10 easy laps on those tyres when it was decided he was not going to pit.
He blistered his left front tire, so if he was managing them, what he was doing wasn't working. It doesn't matter if you have 5 seconds a lap in hand, if you can't use it because you will destroy your tires. You are specially vulnerable if the two cars directly behind you are on the same team. They have a lot of options to attack you, as has been mentioned many many times over the years, by many people.
Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene says the team's former technical director James Allison needs lessons in how to be a gentlemen after suggesting Kimi Raikkonen intentionally knocked Lewis Hamilton off the road at the start of the British Grand Prix.
Perhaps someone should tell him his drivers need some lessons in how to not run into people on the first lap of the race! It is getting rather ridiculous now, two times in the last 3 races is not a good statistical trend!
Maybe you don't remember Bottas taking out Raikkonen and Vestrappen in Barcelona 2017 (Double DNF - NO Penalty for him),and taking out Raikkonen in Baku 2017 (destroied Kimi's race meanwhile Bottas finished P2 - No Penalty for this).
Last edited by turbof1 on 09 Jul 2018, 18:15, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:Removed stigmating/provoking parts.
Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene says the team's former technical director James Allison needs lessons in how to be a gentlemen after suggesting Kimi Raikkonen intentionally knocked Lewis Hamilton off the road at the start of the British Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel's win at Silverstone, ending a run of four straight Lewis Hamilton wins (and five in a row for Mercedes), controversy arose from comments made post-race. Hamilton called his Turn 3 clash with Raikkonen an "interesting tactic" from Ferrari before Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff also raised questions about the incident.
Wolff said: "In James Allison's words, 'do you think it is deliberate or incompetence?'. So this leaves us with a judgement."
Allison left Ferrari mid-way through 2016 and joined Mercedes ahead of last season. Arrivabene has criticised his former colleague for what Wolff suggested was said.
Speaking to Sky Italia after the race, Arrivabene said: "I came here to clarify, if he [Allison] actually said something like that, I mean, he should be ashamed of himself, because he worked many years in Maranello, he took quite a bit of money from Maranello aswell, today he's doing his job, you have to be elegant and know how to lose.
"Also, we're here in England, sometimes they want to teach us how to be gentlemen, he should start first. Really, this annoyed me so much.
"Also incompetent, who? Kimi? Who's he to judge what a driver is doing in the car, I can accept it from Jacques [Villeneuve, Sky Italia pundit] because he's been a driver, but that person? No."
Arrivabene said Mercedes should spend more time focusing on why Hamilton was defending third position in the first place, having had a sluggish getaway from pole position which put him on the defensive for the first few corners.
"First of all [Allison] should look the telemetry and understand that his driver unfortunately for himself had a bad start, so having a bad start he immediately lost 2 positions. Kimi had a good start, we have the telemetry data, so he found himself immediately on top of Hamilton.
"I want to remind everyone that in China we had a situation between Vettel and Verstappen and nobody said anything, all fine. But I mean, I want to give them a message: it's been a beautiful battle, a battle that I think the audience appreciated, there will be other battles where most likely Mercedes will win, this is a lesson for us to stay classy, a thing that they haven't done today."
"Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system." - Rupert Sheldrake
After the bad start P2 was the beat he could have gotten anyway. So next time he maybe should concentrate more on his mistakes than only overreacting because of mistakes of others.
I disagree with this, Lewis had much better pace coming through the field than Bottas did at the front. If Lewis had been at the front, Vettel would have been under more pressure, because he would have had two opposing cars to deal with when he pitted. Don't forget the reason he pitted was because of a blister. Imo if both mercs had been at the front they could have made him pushed his tires even harder.
Lewis lost time vs the front runners, which is to be expected as he didn't run in clean air. The disadvantage was kind of lessened by the 3 DRS zones and the face that none of the opposition put up a fight against Hamilton (fighting would cause them more time loss than letting him by)
Vettel was not pitted because of a blister, but because of wear. Wear can be reduced by stressing the tire less by not maxing out its performance in every fast turn - which Vettel did on the mediums. He was never traction limited at the rear, it was the front givin in, so during his escape he would never have been vulnerable in an acceleration zone onto a straight.
Given all of the above it would have been highly unlikely for either of the Merc drivers to pass Vettel, there was not enough of a performance gap between them.
Such incidents happen in the midfield every race and no one cares about penalties given there.
The drivers at the front of the grid are supposed to be the best of the best, hence the reason they are in the best cars. However, over the last season and a 1/3 we have seen a lot of clumsy mistakes from them.
If you look closely at Hamiltons start, in T1 he slightly loses the rear of the car when crossing through Vettels draft. Same thing happened to Grosjean when Sainz drove round the outside. The cars are so dependant on aero and clean airflow that in traffic the cars frequently run into trouble. And it gets worse with every development of the cars.
This is also what happened to Vettel in France, clean air for Hamilton and Bottas, dirty air for Vettel and his car is then just unable to make the turn (with such late braking)
You know what I really loath about all of this? Kimi and Vettel made mistakes where others fell victim for. That's racing, incidents happen. The drivers got criticism and accepted blame. That should have been the be all, end all of it.
Instead, we have team bosses and other team figures with a high public profile throwing mutt at eachother like kindergarden toddlers. The mistakes that were made did not deserve this disgusting moronic show being put by both team bosses (I am not singling out Arrivabene, just to be clear). This is so unworthy for the sport.
With that being said, I fully expect higher standards in this topic than what we have seen from both team bosses. Criticism for mistakes is fine, but a lot of what I have seen up until now is just gratuitous negativty to the ferrari drivers, and other people defending with gratuitous negativity towards mercedes. If you guys want to settle scores, go meet up a place where you can baseball club eachother. But here we expect a decent level of debate.
I need to ask a question, especially to those whose opinion was that Ferrari most probably was cheating on engine side because in the last few races their qualifying gap to Mercedes was gone. What's the explanation of Kimi on a 5 (or 6?) races old spec 1 engine being just a tenth slower than Hamilton on a relatively fresh spec 2.1 engine on a track which a.) is quite power sensitive, b.) suits/has been suiting Mercedes over the last years and on top of that c.) Hamilton is dominantly fast at?
It's interesting that in Silverstone Horner (if I'm not mistaken) told that Ferrari was the most powerful PU. Why was the PU a talking point this time, but not the last couple of races? Had Ferrari been using less of the engine and once they were sure being within the limits of reliability they started to go all in again?
Given in the first stint Vettel had to pit due to front left blistering, I strongly believe was it not for the safety car, Hamilton would have won.
He was over a second a lap faster and on fresher tyres... in a car that for once was being kind to the tyres.
You know that without the SC Vettel had time to pit and still come out infront of Hamilton.
I've looked at some onboards and Vettel was really saving his tires big time and taking it easy in the 2nd stint. Massive lifts trough most high speed corners. Hamilton had no chance of catching them. Not to mention he'd have to go trough RAI and RBs first.
I've spotted him lifting into T1 which should be super easy to do flat no matter how much fuel, he was playing it to the end rather than trying to maintain/increase the Bottas gap.
Bottas on the other hand played it poorly, had no tires by the end of the race, even with SC to help him cool off the tires.
But then again, he had to defend against a hungry Vettel at the end which may have been worst for his tires.
I need to ask a question, especially to those whose opinion was that Ferrari most probably was cheating on engine side because in the last few races their qualifying gap to Mercedes was gone.
This can be considered as provoking. Instead of focussing your answer solely "especially to those whose opinion was that Ferrari most probably was cheating", I know there were some and those got reprimanded for that, why not aim the question to the general public? Really, I do consider this close to instigating, which is a shame because the question itself has a lot of merit. So I am going to ask everyone to ignore the part where you adress the 'opinionated ones' and just formulate a sensible and logical answer to your question.
What's the explanation of Kimi on a 5 (or 6?) races old spec 1 engine being just a tenth slower than Hamilton on a relatively fresh spec 2.1 engine on a track which a.) is quite power sensitive, b.) suits/has been suiting Mercedes over the last years and on top of that c.) Hamilton is dominantly fast at?
It's interesting that in Silverstone Horner (if I'm not mistaken) told that Ferrari was the most powerful PU. Why was the PU a talking point this time, but not the last couple of races? Had Ferrari been using less of the engine and once they were sure being within the limits of reliability they started to go all in again?
First off, can you confirm he was effectively driving his spec 1 engine? This is the first thing I heard about this.
Second, the reason why we are hearing about this now is because Silverstone is now a mid- to low downforce circuit, with 82% on throttle. It effectively has become a power circuit like Monza.
Third: your question boils down what Kim was actually driving for PU components. I really can't imagine his full spec 1 PU being that competitive, but I can if the spec 1 ICE was coupled to a spec 2 turbo, a spec 2 mgu-h and/or spec 2 mgu-k.
What is clear, is that Ferrari is now roughly on equal grounds with Mercedes concerning the power unit.
I need to ask a question, especially to those whose opinion was that Ferrari most probably was cheating on engine side because in the last few races their qualifying gap to Mercedes was gone. What's the explanation of Kimi on a 5 (or 6?) races old spec 1 engine being just a tenth slower than Hamilton on a relatively fresh spec 2.1 engine on a track which a.) is quite power sensitive, b.) suits/has been suiting Mercedes over the last years and on top of that c.) Hamilton is dominantly fast at?
I don't think they where cheating, but In Austria and Silverstone, I believe all but the very back markers where limited by the tires.
