2011 FORMULA 1 SANTANDER BRITISH GRAND PRIX: RACE *** SPOILERS ***

I totally agree with your first part and absolutely disagree with the second. Massa was told that Hamilton was on the ropes. If he didn't try, he would be a quitter.

I don't want quitters driving red cars.

 

Wasn't that the same "meeting of the minds" that Button had with Alonso in Canada that resulted in no penalty? Ham had the inside line, Massa went aggressively into the corner and LH didn't yield the position. At least Massa got to finish though.

I will agree that both incidents could have been penalized, imo, but the stewards must have a standard about overtaking in a corner and a driver's right to defend his position...by any means necessary.

 

The stop and go instead of a drive through was imposed because of the track and pitlane lay-out. The route through the pitlane is much shorter than the track itself.

Schumacher was screwed though. Noticed the penalty was for causing a collision? Usually one is penalized for causing an avoidable collision. I don't think Michael could have avoided it. Kobayashi looked like he had overcooked the corner but at the last moment did make the turn and Schumacher had nowhere to go. Massa also made the corner but was rewarded with a thump from Hamilton. I don't see why both cases should have been handled differently.

 

I thought it was an exciting race (of course, influenced largely by Alonso/Ferrari getting the top step on the podium), but the Red Bull chicken bleep move on Webber pisses me off. Webber was basically passing Vettel and they made him back off. I didn't like when Brawn did it to Barichello, I didn't like it when Ferrari did it to Massa, and I don't like what I saw today.

The FIA needs to do something substantial to deal with this (like a 5-spot grid penalty in the next race or the like) to stop this crap. I'm not even a Webber fan, but he should not have been denied 2nd place today.

 

I think that this is more than just McLaren taking chances. Hamilton himself has been advocating that they race on the edge and take more chances. This isn't the first time they have had fuel issues at the end of a race. It was really strange that there were no safety car periods in a race with a wet track. They gained by having the lighter fuel load and it would have ultimately paid off is someone had cooperated by having a crash that brought the safety car out. Good idea, just didn't work (thank goodness).

 

That's why at the end of Nico's career, he will be remembered as a midpacker and Michael is still Michael.

But the important story of today is FORZA FERRARI!! And on the 60th anniversary of the first F1 win ever to boot.

I feel bad for Webber. He is going to have to accept that he is #2 at Red Bull, just as Massa and Barrichello were at Ferrari. But being #2 at the #1 team isn't so bad, he could be #1 at Lotus.

 

The difference between the two collisions is that 1) Kobi had the inside/right to the corner when Schumacher hit him from the outside and 2) Hamilton had the inside/right to the corner when Massa took an aggressive dive. The incidents are different, but there haven't been 10 sec penalties for collisions in any of the previous races.

 

Congrats to Fernando and Milly Vanilly!

 

That car certainly looked like crap in the second stint to be on a lighter fuel load. Unless they were already in preservation mode, the McLaren was NO match for Ferrari or Red Bull. Good defensive driving by Hamilton delayed his demotion to 4th until after the pits.

 

Alonso is the hero of Ferrari. I don't think any driver could help pull them out of the pit they are in better than he is. The rest of the team is subject to question, however..

 

I am being intentionally harsh towards Massa... but he isn't a very skilled driver, IMO, not compared to much of the rest of the field. And passing seems to be his weakest suit, so when the team is telling him he can make the pass, I envision a kid who is scared to jump off a diving board for the first time... then when they finally work up the courage, it's a huge belly flop.

If it was Alonso in Massa's place - the pass would have been no issue. Not with Massa though.

 

Welllll, not to sound gloatey but it was Ferrari who precipitated the team orders rule, and Ferrari's breaking it that got it rescinded.

I totally agree that team orders are BS, but few here had much to say when it was Alonso that was benefitting (don't mean you, just mean many).

 

Alonso and Ferrari outclassed Redbull and Vettel today. The pressure manifested itself in the botched pit stop. F1 is a team sport and Scuderia Ferrari was the better team.

The BBC coverage of F1 is totally biased. Rather than rejoice Ferrari's historic win, they proffered just to talk about Mclaren and how Massa was shafted by Ferrari. The only person that shafted Massa today with his idiotic dangerous driving was Lew Senna Ham!

Of course of course... lest us all forget the great God of F1 Lew Senna Ham should ever be passed. List of mediocre second tier drivers that have passed Lew Senna Ham... Timo Glock, Vitaly Petrov and Pedro de la Rosa ... The great Lew Senna Ham was over taken by them... blasphemy... the Lew Senna Ham fan boys will riot now!

So true... Scuderia Ferrari has no quit.... The only team in F1 since the beginning!

 

I have no problem whatsoever with team orders. It is a team sport after all. I'm glad the FIA lifted the ban on team orders again.

Silverstone showed the world, what I've been saying since Turkey last year: RB is using team orders.

PS: There was a lot of mentioning the first Ferrari victory 60 years ago at Silverstone. In that era the #2 drivers had to come to the pits to hand over their cars when the #1 driver had a problem. Makes today's team orders look like child's play.

 

I try to look at it from the driver's perspective. A driver who feels he has a shot to win is a driver who will give you max performance every time out. A driver who feels he can only win if his teammate retires in the race is going to be up-and-down. I'm not arguing whether Vettel or Webber is the better driver, because I think it's been proven that Vettel is a great qualifier who is very difficult to catch in a race.

OTOH, it would have been no skin off Vettel's teeth if Webber finished in front of him, yet it would have provided an IMMENSE lift to Webber's sense of 'purpose' had he been allowed to duel his teammate. I don't see how a driver stays motivated if his team won't allow him to win. It's total horsebleep.

 

Why congrats to Vanilly? He ran a horrid race. He was struggling passing cars he should have walked all over and was half a second slower to Schu the entire race.


Regarding the earlier posts on Schu basically getting shafted, I can see if Schu intentionally forced Kobayashi to go wide and Kobayashi just refused to move then yes it's Schu fault. But this was not the case. Kob went very wide into the turn, Schu took the inside line and the back end on Schu's car slipped and he went into Kob's rear wheel. The point is, Kob was very wide already and Schu was just taking advantage of Kob's situation. Total BS that the stewards called that anything other than a racing incident. They act is if the man wanted to plow his front wing into Kob. Even Coulthard and all the BBC commentator's (except Jordan) said it was a bogus call.

 

Were you wearing you glasses ? MS continues taking drivers out with his rookie moves. The penalty for taking Kobi out was absolutely deserved IMO. And statistics continue piling up in Nico's favor, and at the end, that's what matters . Wonder when people will stop making excuses for MS; it's been almost 2 years. Enough already.

That's an understatement .

Again, didn't you watch the race? You were not correct. RB handed the race to Ferrari; it had NOTHING to do with the rule change.

First of all, it's legal now. And second of all, MW is 80 freaking points behind SV, and you don't want your #2 driver with nothing to lose potentially taking out both cars. Not a fan of team orders at all, but now that they're allowed, Horner would have been stupid not to call it. It's like not taking a tax deduction that was illegal last year; if everybody else takes it, why the hell shouldn't you benefit too?


More than Alonso winning the race, Redbull lost it, but that's racing. And it was great to see a Ferrari win and shake things up a little. The WCC is pretty much impossible for Ferrari to win. And the WDC with 90+ points, an extremely long shot too for Alonso, but let's see what happens in the next 2 to 3 races. He could easily get 2nd place though. Good day gang.

 

One the other hand it looked very good early on. By the time of the second stint the track conditions were less of a potential contributor to a crash and safety car so they undoubtedly had to start conserving at that point. Still it wasn't enough they had to send the radio call to Ham to conserve. He probably got orders to cut back on the second stint while in the pits.

 

Let's agree to disagree.

The way I saw it was that MS lost it and took out an innocent Kobayashi. The penalty was deserved. Or as Speed TV said: Third time this year MS is driving into somebody.

Meanwhile Nico drove a clean race, fought hard and ended up with a bunch more points than MS and is clearly leading him again in the WDC standing (not that I doubted that).

Nothing has changed: Nico remains #1 at MB

 

Absolutely NOT the point. RB screamed it would never do anything like this ever. Ooops. I guess never say never.

 

Where was he in the first lap? What does he ever do other than float with the pack? Qualifying means nothing when you give up so many places before the 3rd corner. Hes driving a car than is slowly being developed by MS and will soon be fitting MS. You can see it more and more each race. BTW MS would have finished ahead of Nico except for a illcalled penalty.

 

Its a win but more because Vettels car is being dumbed down to keep it interesting.

 

I agree that Schumi should not have been penelized.

As for the stop-and-go, fair enough now that he was penalized. He would not have lost anything really by a drive through. There were stop-and-go for all in this race because you get through the pits quickly.

 

All the more kudos for Nico: He is driving a car that's being compromised to fit the driving style of a long begone era and driver.

Only makes me wonder how fast the MB really could be if they'd develop it for Nico instead.

 

We we watching the same race on the same planet?? Are you serious? No one agreed with that penalty except for the few Schu haters out there. Coulthard immediately called it out as a bogus call. Did you watch the numbers and see Nico was half a second off Schu's pace the entire race??????????? Did you see Schu had a minimum of 40 second of down time limping to the pit with a broken wing and then being handed a 35 second stop and go penalty yet still end the race only 16 seconds behind Nico while being stuck behind substantially slower traffic???? Are you blind or just a Schu hater???? This is objective information, I'm not making this stuff up.

Schu's back end slipped out a tiny bit under braking, and that happened to most every driver out there today at least once. Didn't you see how nervous Vettel's car was on braking and how many times he had to correct a slip? Hamilton and Alonso having the same issues. The microscope is utter insanity on Schumacher yet he drove the wheels off the car compared to his teammate and the lap times are there to prove it. Care to prove the lap times wrong? Care to explain how Michael made up 20+ seconds on Nico (who was in clean air most of the time) in 40 laps while in traffic? Nico has good qualy pace but his race pace is nowhere near Michael's nor is his passing ability.