I think early on the season he’s going to play the game and be the perfect Wingman.
He’s switched on enough not to push too soon but I reckon if he gets a chance he’s going for the win.
What did I miss I agree that Masi ‘may’ have been a naughty boy with the restart and lapped cars etc but I don’t know the chapter and verse of rules. I’m glad it didn’t finish behind the safety car. Lewis had a couple of chances to pit for tyres and didn’t. Max did pit and, his driving style was one of “I want it, more than you” which as a fan of the sport I like to see.
“No, Mikey No No Mikey that was so not right”
It will be interesting to see how far into the season Mercedes will let them race, if they are more competitive than redbull (who leats be honest have only just caught up with the last lot of rule changes).
But he didn’t really. Any additional pit stop would’ve meant giving Max the lead.
Especially at the end where Masi just made up his own regulations. If he had done either of the things that the rules allow him to do (let all cars unlap or no cars unlap) then Mercedes would’ve won the race, either on the track with Max having to negotiate the traffic or behind the safety car as the lapped cars went past.
Formula 1 is a strategic and tactical sport and when the sporting regulations are torn up by the race director because he wants the race to finish with racing you destroy the integrity of the sport and in this case you effectively manipulate the outcome…
The whole “we didn’t want it to finish behind a safety car” is just BS, if they didn’t want to finish behind the safety car they should’ve red flagged the race, let everyone change tyre while the debris was cleared and then race the last 8 laps with everyone on soft tyres.
Well said. I’ve heard a lot of people saying he only lost because they didn’t pit. But they didn’t pit because if the rules were stuck to, he would have won. If Merc had know the rules were going to be played out the way they did, then I’m sure they would have pitted.
Not strictly true - each time he would have lost track position which is the prime position - Golden rule for the person following do the opposite of what he does
Under VSC would have lost position to Max (so would he have been fast enough to catch/pass?)
Under SC if he pitted and Max did not and race did not restart he loses
The issue to me is that Masi let the lapped cars in between Max and Lewis through to put them together so we had a big finish - with Max on fresh boots, it was never a fair contest. But he did not let the rest of the lapped cars pass as this would have meant the SC doing another lap and race finishing under SC.
Rightly drivers further back could complain that they were not given the same chance to fight for position as they had lapped cars in the way
If Latifi had crashed 1 or 2 laps earlier and SC had operated as normal it would be ‘unlucky Lewis but you wins some you lose some’ - sure he has benefited a few times over his career.
But he crashed when he did and the rules were manipulated to make a ‘show’ finish
Still think Pit lane should be closed under VSC/SC
Unless the car was damaged in the incident that caused the VSC/SC, agreed.
Here. If done properly Sainz could have pushed for second place still…
And I reckon in those circumstance Lewis would’ve pitted as they would’ve expected a lap or 2 of racing and the Mercedes on fresh soft tyres would be much faster than the redbull on old hard tyres.
Exactly and for that reason for the rest of his career people will question the validity of this world championship.
Ah well, regardless of what we think and type, here is to next season.
I will be adding 3 dates before the start of the new season to go over each and every rule in the PDF file. Each session will commence at 0830 and finish at 2030 via teams and we must Follow the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at an object at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. Take a longer break of about 15 minutes after every 2 hours we spend staring at our screens.
I will send out an email to all regions with the dates and the join link, please do not respond by reply all as we do not need to have another round of cheese-gate going on
Interesting that Verstappen has made sure everyone knows that Lewis and Toto have both congratulated him. It really seems like everyone is working hard to show that the anger/appeals are directed solely at the FIA. Has Ross Brawn said anything?
I saw that one of there results of they were to go to the CSA is “the event must be rerun” now that would be hilarious.
I’m sure with this much publicity around the FIA and F1 there are going to be many more viewers next year. Which will do great for Liberty Media’s profits ;). The why behind all this, like why congradulate someone for a win you think they don’t deserve is more important than the what or how.
As funny as that would be, it won’t happen. the ICA can amend the results, add penalties etc but cannot order the race to be rerun.
Because he still raced it and won, because he put himself in that position through his performances the entire season, because it’s not his fault, and because it’s a traditional courtesy.
How spiteful do you think it would look if they trashed him, especially over something not of his doing?
Depending on how you interpret the rules it could be his fault, depending on weather all the lapped cars should of been unlapped given the interpretation of, “any” that RedBull have. As I’d say any would include all of them.
Even though the saftey car came in a bit urgent.
If this was football they would say play to the whistle
And that’s what RB did
If it was football, they also wouldn’t say to a team that was 4-0 down in the 89th minute “next goal wins”.
It’s not Red Bull’s fault and nobody sane is suggesting otherwise.
Next goal wins even though we know that the winning team is now full of injuries and the losing one has just brought on 4 fresh subs.
From what I can see, none of the reasonable anger is directed at RB, all towards Masi for what appears to be a momentous balls up.
Agreed, Merc’s appeal is based on the rules and procedures around the Safety Car not being followed correctly.
Max won the race fair and square based on the situation he was presented with. However that was a situation that never should have happened.
MB couldn’t afford to pit Lewis for new tyres, he would have lost track position and if the all the cars had been unlapped the race would finished under the SC. If they hadn’t unlapped any of the cars Max would have needed to push past them all to get ahead of Lewis.
Like I say, can’t see the race results being changed but I’ll be surprised to see Masi in charge for 2022
If they are so obsessed about not ending races behind the safety car they should scrap the safety car completely within 10 laps of the of the race. If they have a scenario where it’s too dangerous they should red flag the race and allow everyone to have fresh tyre from a restart.