Geez, What the hell happened to Ferrari’s race...
One interesting aspect of the "follow closer" rule changes: Now you get a bunch of cars running nose to tail, so the guys with grid penalties have a harder time making up spots at the start. Hard to pass the car in front of you if there's no room in front of him. Parade mode.
The safety car cost them 2-3 spots. After that (this is speculation on my part), LEC got stuck behind Carlos, the team refused to ask Carlos to let him through, and Carlos predictably made no progress. I suspect they just said F it halfway through and turned the engines down. Also, Ferrari are slow and unreliable.
It really was, the excuse I heard was the GPS showed it on track. WTF, GPS? Even my cheap phone would have had more accuracy.
For once an appeal was successful. Usually the stewards stick to their guns and never admit mistakes. The penalty was really excessive.
Meh, that's how F1 works. Being faster isn't always enough to allow for a pass to be made, especially when tire deg is a problem. I did say I was speculating, and it sounded to me like LEC was told to stay put. Separately, it is just a fact that LEC is consistently faster than SAI.
I think he just said "to hell with this," and stopped pushing when he came to the realization neither of them had any pace.
I think it came down to what constitutes working on a car. The FIA should change the regulation to say the car cannot be touched.
Monday morning at the Ferrari dealership: Salesperson to customer, did you enjoy the F1 race yesterday. Customer, yes, I wish Ferrari won but they scored points. Can you put me on the list for one of those new Roma Spiders? Monday morning at the Honda or Acura dealership: Salesperson to customer, did you enjoy the F1 race yesterday, Honda came in P1, 2, 11 and 14 with Max starting at P15 and blowing past the field to reach P2. Customer, no I didn't watch and you don't have any passion inspiring cars that associate with Honda' s racing dominance.