Saudi F1

[HPsauce]

Well......................

[RICKY D]

I’m really not sure what to make of it all

[sarg]

Max reminds me of Gilles Villeneuve when he lost his head, he is going to kill somebody soon

[tc4332]

I have lost a lot of interest in F1 due to Verstappen and Chris Horner.

[steamship]

I just hope that Adu Dhabi next week doesn't end like the Senna/Prost and Hill/Schmacher races, and we get a proper race 'on the track'.

I checked the F1 site earlier and Max has been given a further 10 second penalty for braking, which resulted in that shunt. Given the evidence they had, I fully support that.

Since we are only privy to what is broadcast and radio messages delayed, there is something that didn't sit right with me at the time, and still doesn't. Paul di Resta mentioned it a couple of times, but it wasn't followed up by any of the others.

Masi tells Red Bull to hand position back to Mercedes. We don't know the timings for this and assume that he also informs Mercedes. Max is told by his team to hand the position back. Max slows to let Lewis past (neither want to be first over the DRS line) and results in the shunt. We later hear a message from the Mercedes pit wall (my assumption) to Masi saying something like "you've told Max to let Lewis past, but he's not slowing down to do so". Now, that statement confirms that the pit wall knew Max was told to give the position back, so why did they NOT tell Lewis, since all the speculation was that Lewis didn't know.

With that in mind, had that order not been given by Masi, why didn't Lewis overtake a slowing Max, that Paul di Resta commented on? The various views of the incident don't show any indications (flags or lights) that would lead Lewis to think that there was a genuine reason why he shouldn't pass Max.

[sarg]

The timings of the radio messages are rarely coordinated with the on-track action, I think that's all there is to it, I believe the message about 'he's not slowing down' was after the shunt as he still hadn't actually let him past

[HPsauce]

Originally Posted by sarg

The timings of the radio messages are rarely coordinated with the on-track action

Definitely. And the Stewards will have everything in the correct sequence, unlike the broadcasters.
I read that they saw Verstappen definitely braked (pedal pressure and resulting G were stated in what I saw) while Hamilton was close behind him.

As I think I heard stated clearly afterwards, if both were out of the race that favoured Verstappen, so he had little to lose. Hamilton needed to finish.

The difference these days to the Prost/Senna or Hill/Schumacher era is the amount of data available to the stewards. Those sort of actions would undoubtedly be found out and severely punished.

Here's hoping for a clean and competitive final race. Seems a bit of a vain hope at present though...….

[steamship]

Originally Posted by sarg

The timings of the radio messages are rarely coordinated with the on-track action,

I'm aware of that as I indicated in my post. The reason they are delayed is because of Juan Pablo Montoya during the 2002 Spa qualifying session. Let's just say that the air was somewhat blue.

[sarg]

Originally Posted by tc4332

I have lost a lot of interest in F1 due to Verstappen and Chris Horner.

Twax Crashstappen and Christian Whiner? I quite agree.

Funny thing is, I didn't care much for Lewis before all this, now he has my full support, happy to see anyone win as long as it's not either of that pair.

It made me wonder recently if Horner was responsible for Vettel being a bit of a tw@t back in the day too, given what a thoroughly nice and genuinely funny bloke he comes across as now.

[Adrian E]

Wish the stewards had managed to engineer a penalty that meant Max was a point down on Lewis into the race next weekend - so long as he finished in front of Lewis he'd win the title, but as things stand if neither finish next weekend then Max wins, which just feels like this weekend's scenario will be repeated (whereby Max has nothing to lose if he doesn't finish, so long as Lewis doesn't either). Clearly if VB hadn't been so far behind due to his lockup and loss of 2 places, he might've been close enough to take points off Max post-stewards decision......

The whole situation in Brazil was poorly managed by FIA, and Saudi race has just reinforced that. Don't get me started on the 2 lap 'race' behind the safety car for half points at Spa......