2018 Brazilian Grand Prix - Interlagos, 9-11 November

[XRayF1]

Reading through all the posts here, I wonder why nobody said anything about the fact that VER actually changed the line, defending his overlap.
If you look at OCO's onboard, you may see that VER must have seen OCO coming and moved to the inside before turn 1, leaving OCO only the outer line. (looking at previous laps of VER onboards you saw that VER moved to the inside without a question)

Two question thereof.
1) Why would VER do such a thing?
He was clearly in the lead to HAM, and there was no need to move to the inside.

2) Why did OCO not wait for turn 4 for his overtake using DRS?
If he was really that much faster it would not have mattered, would it?

[AGOW]

Ocon shouldn´t have tried to overtake Verstappen, it would have been better for him to wait through turn 1 and the Senna S and overtake him, Verstappen with drs. Even if he succeeded he would have lost time doing it this way.
On the other hand Verstappen knew Ocon was next to him, as soon as Ocon came along side Verstappen and even slightly in front him, Verstappen should have been more coutious, they easily could have gone through the first bend of the Senna S without touching. Verstappen probably did not suspect Ocon to fight him so fiercly since it wasn't for position, and therefore he took the bend to tight.
They were both fighting each other while they shouldn't, i think they are both to blame.
FIA should clarify more on how and when an lapped car may unlap himself. they should be allowed to but not in this way IMO.

[Manoah2u]

Why do 'you' guys can't see beyond the point where if Ocon is to blame, that equals that Max is like a saint that made no mistake?
at no point that is claimed, it is thrown in there trying to back up a point that makes no sense.

Yes, Max could/should have left more room for Ocon. Yes, Max did not play his race safe enough for the win.
Yes, Max should not have responded like he did in the FIA weighbridge booth.

All that takes nothing away from the, once again, simple fact, that you DONT FIGHT the race leader.
Also, if Ocon is fighting Max, that does not mean Max is fighting Ocon.

Ocon was lapped, a backmarker, and the issue is not that he tried to pass Max, the issue is that he COLLIDED with max.
HE made no attempt to leave Max any space, despite Max being the race leader fighting for the win.

even if Max could be just as much to blame not having left room for Ocon;
WHY ON EARTH should the RACE LEADER leave room for a kamikaza move from a BACKMARKER?

Imagine if the roles were reversed, or imagine for that matter, that it wasn't Max, but Vettel, or Hamilton.
And let's replace Ocon with Ericsson.

There would have been ZERO attack on Vettel or Hamilton, it would have been fully against stoopid Ericsson.

It's even worse that people act like this is a fight for position between a P1 and P2 driver.
Would it have been for position, yes, Max would have been fully to blame that he left no space.

Wake up call, it wasn't.

The fact is, Ocon's act did not have influence in his own outcome on WDC or WCC results.
it DID ruin Verstappen's race win and his potential outcome for WDC standings.

It's also severly hilarious and sad that a bunch of supposed 'fans' of f1 here cannot disconnect critisism to another driver and being supposedly 'fan' of a driver.
Orange glasses, lol.
Childish.

Same kindergarten comments as in Alonso vs Hamilton fights in the past. typical, but not unexpected.

The fact remains the same though;
Ocon got penalized for the incident.

[Phil]

All that takes nothing away from the, once again, simple fact, that you DONT FIGHT the race leader.
Also, if Ocon is fighting Max, that does not mean Max is fighting Ocon.

Ok, I'll bite Manoah2u.

I'll ask you two questions, lets see if you can come up with a reasonable answer.

1.) If Max wasn't 'fighting' as you are suggesting, why did Max move to the inside before T1? Was this not a "defensive-move"?

2.) Given Ocon is well within his rights to unlap himself, what should he have done with that very, very large speed advantage he was carrying down that long DRS straight + tow and after Max moved to the inside and he found himself ahead at the moment of turn-in into T1 (also considering T1 leads straight into T2 where the outside becomes the inside of the next corner)?

[Manoah2u]

All that takes nothing away from the, once again, simple fact, that you DONT FIGHT the race leader.
Also, if Ocon is fighting Max, that does not mean Max is fighting Ocon.

Ok, I'll bite Manoah2u.

I'll ask you two questions, lets see if you can come up with a reasonable answer.

1.) If Max wasn't 'fighting' as you are suggesting, why did Max move to the inside before T1? Was this not a "defensive-move"?

First of all, i'm not saying Max wasn't neccesarily 'wrong' in taking/cutting that turn so short.
But was it fighting? I'd rather think max simply did not expect Ocon to be there. Whether that is his own stupidity (and yes, it is a tad stupid to simply think a driver disappears), or a form of arrogance 'who dares to do that', is another story but i personally think, Max never let it cross his mind that there would be car there.
Point about that is that i personally don't believe max was 'fighting'. Was it unwise? hell yes, but Max is also
particularly known for having unwise moves and added to that, most drivers know Max doesn't leave you space.
Let's call it a trademark. Perhaps and in this case stupid, but a trademark.

So no, i don't think he was actively fighting. I don't think it was a defensive move. I - personally - think it was more of a 'nobody's there or nobody can be there' move. Which intself is inviting for a collision, sure. no doubt that Max COULD have been wiser like Hamilton in leaving space so the unexpected would not have happened.

2.) Given Ocon is well within his rights to unlap himself, what should he have done with that very, very large speed advantage he was carrying down that long DRS straight + tow and after Max moved to the inside and he found himself ahead at the moment of turn-in into T1 (also considering T1 leads straight into T2 where the outside becomes the inside of the next corner)?

braking, that's why there are brakes. he is in a force india, which carries higher top speed anyway. wait for the next corner. he's the backmarker, he's not for position.
thing is, it was not neccesarily wrong to go into that corner, but he had plenty of time to see he was behind max already there: he was with his left front wheel right in front of max rear wheel, no matter that he cut him off so to speak. in other words, he could/should have bailed, even if Max cut him off.

i'll quote some other sources on the matter.

Jaques villeneuve

Ocon is an embarrassment. That was ridiculous. And the worst bit is everyone has seen what happened, and on the radio not even a ‘sorry guys, I was wrong.’ It’s good to accept you’re wrong.

“You can unlap yourself, but do it properly. You’re not allowed to put the leader at risk at all. You don’t do something that loses time for the other driver, and is taking a risk. Overtaking on the straight and you’re in front is fine. But that looked like it was a battle for the lead.

“But also it shows he has no racecraft, zero racecraft whatsoever. All the incidents in the last two years where maybe it’s his fault, maybe it’s not, you can kind of think that maybe he was in the wrong, because he hasn’t read the race properly. And he never learns, because it’s never his fault, ever.”

church.

article on wtf1

it’s easy to forget to root cause of the whole scenario. Ocon attempting to unlap himself was a legitimate move that went very badly wrong.

there’s a huge difference between successfully making a move on the slowest car on the grid and trying to lunge up the inside of the race leader.

He may well have been faster at that point in the race but there’s a difference between making a clean move to unlap yourself and taking the fight to a race leader.

Plenty of other racing drivers also felt that Ocon was in the wrong, feeling that a lapped car had no right to be so aggressive.

Charlie Whiting

it should be done cleanly and absolutely without fighting. He shouldn’t be fighting to get past.

“If he’s got the pace then normally one would expect Red Bull to say ‘Ocon’s got the pace, just let him through’, that sort of thing. But it seemed that he just went for it and it was a bit unfortunate that he decided to fight for it which was wholly unacceptable.”

some driver quotes

Mark Webber
✔
@AussieGrit

Mental that a back-marker(P16) nails the leader of the race... At that level, total brain fade....

Casey Stoner
✔
@Official_CS27

What was @OconEsteban thinking?? That may the the most thoughtless move I have seen in racing. Doesn’t matter if he was unlapping himself, you don’t impede the race leader.

Ben Constanduros @BenConsty
· Nov 12, 2018

Wow @OconEsteban had some pace...Max knew he was there and defended - gives a very different impression than what we saw on the world Feed, TV has such important role in perception....

Antonio Felix da Costa
✔
@afelixdacosta

Thats not pace, thats DRS, i can see Esteban’s point of view, he has races Max in the past and wanted to prove a point.

On the other hand, that looks like a move for the race lead, way too far back, lunges around the outside, being a lap down. You cant race the leader like that

[turbof1]

Purely to add some other perspectives from different sources:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtbTi91AmpQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQDnb8kkI0

Please don't reply to these videos, I'm putting them here for information, not to be told that Windsor/Priestly has always been a Max/Ocon fanboy and has always hated Ocon/Max and they secretly get paid by Marko/Hamilton to lie to gullible fans.

Not replying to the videos; I just want to add a video I found on Driver61 who usually gives great insight:


I personally don't follow his opinion all the way through on this one, but his reasoning is quite correct. Ocon should have backed out of it the moment Verstappen got back ahead. At that point as a backmarker you are always going to be a loss of time to the driver that has lapped you. That is a safe assumption.

But, Verstappen also took risks by just assuming that. It isn't his responsibility directly to avoid collision (and therefore lose time by giving the space), but Verstappen had the opportunity to do so. It's a basic costs-benefits analysis: avoid damage, keep your 1st position and maybe loose a tiny bit of time momentarily vs the car in 2d place on which you have a very healthy margin already on and you are a lot faster compared to.

Compare it to an ordinary traffic incident: you are at a cross roads, you have green lights and you drive further while suddenly someone coming from the right drives through the red lights. You are going to try to avoid a collision despite the other driver being in the wrong. Because even if you are in the right and therefore you should be fully refunded for the damages caused, you want to avoid the risk of physical harm, you want to avoid the waste of time, you want to avoid not having a car to drive around until you have a replacement, etc. And I feel if you had the time, the reaction and the attentiveness to avoid it, and you don't, there should be criticism towards yourself as well.

[Wynters]

HE made no attempt to leave Max any space, despite Max being the race leader fighting for the win.

At the point of impact, Max had his front right wheel almost touching the white line of the apex. This means that Ocon had left him almost the entire width of the track. Ocon's own front right wheel was on the large yellow 'sausage' half a car's width further off the track and his nose is over the white/green/yellow rumble strip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LSAaVq4Dsw
See the 'from above' shot at 26 seconds into this video, as well as Max's onboard at 13 seconds and Ocon's onboard at 53 seconds.

How much more room should Ocon have left him in order for you not to deem him as making "no attempt to leave Max any space"?

Whether Ocon should've been going side by side through the esses is one thing (other posters have pointed out, and I agree, that he should've waited for the second DRS and blown past him there), but it's not as if he was understeering across the track into Max's sidepod or was deliberately running him wide.

[Phil]

but i personally think, Max never let it cross his mind that there would be car there.

So you're telling me that Max going into T1 and already covering the inside line, is not seeing that big pink elephant (sorry Force-India) ahead of him and he is assuming that Ocon who is on the outside into T1 which will become the inside into T2 will simply go full on the brakes and wave him through?

Also: If Max had not covered the 'inside' into T1, Ocon would have gone there instead and made the move stick.

What the above shows nicely is for some unapparent reason, Max was in fact 'battling' for position with a car he shouldn't have and had a sense of entitlement to a corner that wasn't really his. And quite frankly, if the roles had been reversed and Max were the one coming through traffic a lap behind, I think it's pretty clear he would have done exactly the same thing too.

With that sense of entitlement and zero margin racing, I really expect to see more collisions like this in the future.

[Alexf1]

Ocon could only get side by side just before the end of the straight due to his DRS. So I wonder: Why does a lapped car also get DRS from the cars that have already lapped him? I thought DRS was there to help overtake, not help unlap. Timing systems can see when a car is a lap down so shouldn't be too difficult to copy this to the DRS activation system.

I think Verstappen defended because he didn't want this Mercedes junior and soon to be announced 2019 Mercedes reserve driver to get in front of him to give him the chance to do his employer an extra favour for a 2020 race seat by backing Verstappen up into Hamilton 'DTM style'.

[turbof1]

I think Verstappen defended because he didn't want this Mercedes junior and soon to be announced 2019 Mercedes reserve driver to get in front of him to give him the chance to do his employer an extra favour for a 2020 race seat by backing Verstappen up into Hamilton 'DTM style'.

I really don't think he was able to consider that in the short amount of space between the unlapping attempt and the collision. Racing and managing your car will pretty much occupy most of your brain.

Also, can we please stop with the tin foil hat ideas. Each time a collision happens, it's plastered over with stickers screaming "CONSPIRACY!"

[Alexf1]

You're right. That only leaves the more general question: why DRS for a lapped to unlap himself.

[WaikeCU]

I think Verstappen defended because he didn't want this Mercedes junior and soon to be announced 2019 Mercedes reserve driver to get in front of him to give him the chance to do his employer an extra favour for a 2020 race seat by backing Verstappen up into Hamilton 'DTM style'.

I really don't think he was able to consider that in the short amount of space between the unlapping attempt and the collision. Racing and managing your car will pretty much occupy most of your brain.

Also, can we please stop with the tin foil hat ideas. Each time a collision happens, it's plastered over with stickers screaming "CONSPIRACY!"

To me it's kind of the arrogancy that Max is showing towards Ocon maybe. Like saying:

"I'm the next best thing and the no.1 driver of Red Bull next season, you're just a nobody and you don't even drive F1 next season. So why do you have the right to overtake me?"

I know they have sort of a beef against each other from since the F3 days.

[NathanOlder]

Reading through all the posts here, I wonder why nobody said anything about the fact that VER actually changed the line, defending his overlap.
If you look at OCO's onboard, you may see that VER must have seen OCO coming and moved to the inside before turn 1, leaving OCO only the outer line. (looking at previous laps of VER onboards you saw that VER moved to the inside without a question)

Mentioned that sunday night.

[NathanOlder]

Mods, please shut this c**p down. Its going nowhere.

[Phil]

You're right. That only leaves the more general question: why DRS for a lapped to unlap himself.

Why do cars receive DRS on cars that have been lapped?