Hamilton's driving

[Ray]

Obviously McLaren are too stupid to make the right decision, but only when it comes to Lewis. Why don't you drop a note to them in the mail and offer to take over the responsibilities of his race engineer then? It's frustration to watch, I agree. But seriously. It's not Lewis against McLaren, McLaren against Lewis, or Lewis vs the world. Get over it.

[ringo]

What are you reffering to?

I'm talking about the driving, and the championship.

The driving is exceptional. Owning Vettel in the wet, etc etc, only to have it thrown away by stupid in team decsion.
it's not that the team is against the driver. It's that the team needs to up their game.
The strategy splitting is more harmful than good.
Ferrari don't split strategies and neither do redbull.

These team issues can't win championships.
The last time something like this happened to redbull was coincidentally in hungary last year with Vettel not being able to communicate with the pits.

vettel fell back to far from the safety car and was penalized. He whole race went down the drain and his teammate was gifted the win.
moment of madness according to richard.

Almost the same thing, but a lesson learned. Mclaren doesn't seem to learn though.

[Ray]

McLaren know what they are doing, you do not. You aren't there sitting on the wall making decisions so I don't see how you have more pertinent knowledge about what needed to be done and why at the moments decisions were made. No one can know more than McLaren at any given moment. Things happen, they'll come around. Don't worry Lewis will get more chances, a driver like him won't be down for long. Lewis isn't faultless however. I wish more people would take off their bias every once in awhile. His driving is second to none, his off track behavior is not. By a long way.

[nacho]

He lost as much time with his spin and penalty which he created for himself. I don't know why they now say it was a team call when in the BBC broadcast they had the info that Lewis made the call himself. Not to take anything away from him, he was brilliant before it all went wrong!

[Mr Alcatraz]

It was clearly the teams decision to put on the softs.
I am yet to see a driver, even Button, diagree with the team's choice. You can't blame a driver for agreeing with the engineers.
The most choice a driver has is when to pit, not what to pit for.

The team messed up his race.

Good point about The Boss not wanting to steal Bunsen's thunder!
But are you suggesting that he (Bunsen) is talking out of his @$$ when he was quoted as saying:

Meanwhile the team were trying to decide whether to bring them in for intermediates. Webber had already done so, and Button explained both were told to come in for intermediates at the end of the lap.

“I didn’t answer back because I was never going to,” he said afterwards. As they neared the end of the lap Button was told to stay out while Hamilton came out: “They didn’t want to queue us,” Button added.

Button explained his decision to stay out, saying: “I was never really going to come in for inters anyway. I didn’t think it was the right choice personally.

“We weren’t going slowly enough, to start with. We were struggling on the tyres, it was difficult keeping the car on the circuit but we weren’t that slow, it wasn’t inter pace really.
“And when you put the inters on, you’ve got to put the dries back on as well, so you’ve got to stop twice. For me, it wasn’t the right decision.”

This was the call that won Button the race. As the track dried again he increased his lead over Vettel to almost ten seconds before backing off.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2011/08/01/2 ... x-mclaren/

[ringo]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Webber said the complete opposite. But i'm not talking about the inters. That was long after the race was messed up.
I'm referring to the decision to go on the super softs.
It wasn't feasible at those track conditions, and contrary to ray, at team doesn't always know everything. If they did then the strategy would not have backfired.

Listen to the race, even Brundle and Coulthard started to question the deciosn right when it happened.

The #1 rule this year is to never relinquish track position.
Risk is good sometimes, but when you try to hard it back fires. The didn't want to win when they went on the ss. They wanted to blast everyone out of the water with 2 more blazing stints on the SS tyres.
That was a little too greedy. I hope they learned from it, as too many Championship points were wasted from pit wall decisions.

Vettel is out of reach bar a retirement.

[ringo]

McLaren know what they are doing, you do not. You aren't there sitting on the wall making decisions so I don't see how you have more pertinent knowledge about what needed to be done and why at the moments decisions were made. No one can know more than McLaren at any given moment. Things happen, they'll come around. Don't worry Lewis will get more chances, a driver like him won't be down for long. Lewis isn't faultless however. I wish more people would take off their bias every once in awhile. His driving is second to none, his off track behavior is not. By a long way.

Why people keep bringing up this straw man arguement?
Who said he was faultless. Not because the team is criticized do you have point to the driver not being perfect to justify a weakness in the team.
In the same way you say some people think a driver is faultless, i can say the same about what some think a team is. mclaren is not perfect.
Hamilton is not faultless, but faults don't have to be brought up every time to appease those who would rather not have a discussion with something postive or neutral when his name is mentioned, especially when faults aren't the topic.

It doesn't apply to Button who has a few more faults when it comes to actually challenging for a title.

Call it intuition, but Mclaren's mistake was obvious to the comentators and a few fans. The inters decision is understandable but the options was a glaring mistake.

[Richard]

Ringo,sorry if I upset you when I called Hamilton's Monaco incidents moments of madness, but that's part of his style we see a few moments like that every season and that's the topic of this thread.

My point was that Hamilton has a higher risk threshold, that brings rewards, but also brings mishap. The combination with Button means the team have another top level driver capable of filling the gap when Hamilton has a mishap. It plays to Hamilton's strengths.

[Ray]

Why people keep bringing up this straw man arguement?
Who said he was faultless. Not because the team is criticized do you have point to the driver not being perfect to justify a weakness in the team.
In the same way you say some people think a driver is faultless, i can say the same about what some think a team is. mclaren is not perfect.
Hamilton is not faultless, but faults don't have to be brought up every time to appease those who would rather not have a discussion with something postive or neutral when his name is mentioned, especially when faults aren't the topic.

It doesn't apply to Button who has a few more faults when it comes to actually challenging for a title.

Call it intuition, but Mclaren's mistake was obvious to the comentators and a few fans. The inters decision is understandable but the options was a glaring mistake.

Many here, including yourself, always blame McLaren and any number of other things when Lewis doesn't succeed. You have called for Button to be demoted, replaced, and he has the same number of wins that Lewis does. There seems to be irrational hatred and criticism for this team, and it's centered completely around Lewis and his performance (wins/points/mistakes/whathaveyou). I think it's absurd all the things that are being thrown around about McLaren around here. They are better than any of us here and if one aspect of the team is to be criticized it's only fair to look at the big picture. Not once has anyone called for Martins head on a platter for the failures on Buttons car, dare I say every Lewis fan would be doing just that if it happened to his car experiencing failures (mechanical).

The issue for 99% of the people in various threads is because they think Lewis is better than everyone and everything in Formula 1. That is completely false. McLaren deserves criticism, they have made mistakes, but every single time something goes wrong it's always someone elses fault in respect to Lewis. This is probably the most hilarious thing I've seen on these boards. The amount of contorting that goes on here to excuse Lewis of any and every part of the blame, not matter how big or small, is comedy gold. The man is human, the team is human. Get. Over. It. Nothing you complain about nor the accusations you level at McLaren being stupid will change anything. If you and anyone else thinks they are better suited and have better information to be Lewis' race engineer, mail McLaren a letter. Tell them how much better of a job you could be doing. That is the only way you can improve the 'failures' of McLaren.

Wether you like to admit it or not, Lewis went through a short and intense hothead spell this season and has shown it very briefly in the past. At one point he and his father were threatening McLaren of leaving due to performance. They threatened McLaren. And people laugh at the tantrums Alonso has thrown. At least McLaren let their guys race, and the both of them have been class acts. If anything we should be shouting from the rooftops for everyone in Formula 1 to emulate that. Championship winning team or not, watching Lewis and Jenson go toe to toe is awesome in my book.

[Ray]

And I don't mean to act or sound like McLaren didn't eff that call up royally. They did and they deserve to be called on it. Just not to the level some people desire.

[ringo]

It's a forum for discussion.

If we ignore everything there would be no F1 technical.

There wouldn't be Mercedes GP thread even.

And I don't mean to act or sound like McLaren didn't eff that call up royally. They did and they deserve to be called on it. Just not to the level some people desire.

That's the point. And it deserves criticism.

F1 is not a show, it's a sport. Teams are in it to win championships or improve from last year.

The issue for 99% of the people in various threads is because they think Lewis is better than everyone and everything in Formula 1. That is completely false

This is not accurate. It wasn't even brought up in the thread.

What i will say is that the driver is doing more than enough, but the team isn't in sync. Button is a victim as well, but less so as mclaren messed him up when he was already out of the runnings for a win.
It doesn't have to do with who's better than who. It's more to do with the driver doing his part of the deal, and the team messing up at the most critical times.

It may sound like people are blaming the team more. But the truth is that the team mess up more.
Name 1 incident this year where you can say the driver was 100% responsible for throwing away a win.
Now if you can name one, i can bet you can name 10 more that the team has made.

The fact is, Mclaren mess up more than Hamilton does. It's obvious. Hamilton hasn't cruised to a win since Hungary 2009. All wins since then were bat out of hell barnstormers. A cruise to a win is ussually when the strategy works as planned.
We need to see more of that from Mclaren and Hamilton's side of the garage.

The problem is not the driving. The driving is good, as Germany demonstrates, and even Hungary.
It's not even about the driver's personality or media comments. Those are after the fact.
It really boils down to poor decisions, or out of sync decisions that the team makes in the pits; most of the time in tyre choice.

I'm watching the points going down the drain. As good and clean as Button is, it doesn't help if the other half of the team has to have a bad race for one to do well. You can't win a drivers or constructors tittle with a seesaw performance.

You need both getting full support strategically, with maybe a little for effort on the top gunner (which is proven to win championships, especially when the car is not the best).

The half and half thing is just gimmicks. Having phil prew out of the pitcture was a bad move. Petrov and Kubica whinged and got their engineers changed for the better; i think Mclaren need to reavaluate the new structure that they are using.

[Mr Alcatraz]

The didn't want to win when they went on the ss. They wanted to blast everyone out of the water with 2 more blazing stints on the SS tyres.
That was a little too greedy. I hope they learned from it,

Now I have found something I can definitely agree with you on, although I find it hard to believe that McLaren wouldn't be satisfied with just letting the boss win the freakin' race. Everyone made such a big freakin' deal about Hamilton saving a set of super-soft’s that may have helped in a dry very close race. But really all he saved was about 2 laps which meant nothing because the race wasn't dry and the primes were pretty good, which is one of the reasons he was able to save a set of SS. I do think the move to put him on inters really killed him though.

[red748]

When interviewed after the race, Lewis said that he hadn't
seen Paul Di Resta coming, hadn't seen Paul's racing car
on track when he spun his McLaren around.

What I like about Hamilton's 'win at all costs'
personality is that, he often loses.

[Steven]

Excuse me the wording, but the last few idiotic posts were removed.
The topic is locked as well, thank you all for trying to make it sensible.