He would have lost track position if he had pitted, then taken the risk of having to present the tire to the FIA. Nobody goes out there to crash, if the suspension had held up a lap more it would not have been an issue.
That is why Rubens was looking at the tire treads on the Williams and Renault cars after the race. he even pointed it out to the officials. He kept pointing to it but no would listen. A disgusting day for F1: 1) Flavio and renault provided Fisichella with a faulty car and clearly do not want any competition for Alonso. 2) The FIA and the race officials are clearly turining a blind eye to the rules regarding tires 3) The 1 tire race rule showed how dangerous it truely is and how the Mickey Mouse rules in F1 have made this year's championship a hollow championship.
Rubens is a whiner - look at his whining about MSC's pass! Ridiculous! They want to win as much as possible, it would be utterly ludicrous for a team to sabotage one car to let another one win. You know this, so why say otherwise? How? McLaren didn't replace the tire - their choice, nobody else to blame. If you mean the grooves, its always been a gray area and its said constantly by the commentators. I've never seen a car in trouble for no tread, INCLUDING Ferrari (which I've seen TONS of times in the past, even on (gasp) Rubens car. The rules are the same for everyone... but if you need to create an excuse as to why Ferrari isnt winning, it would be an easy out to say its the rules, rather than Bridgestones' ability to create a competitive tire. Wrong, but still an easy excuse I guess. I doubt 99.9% of the world would agree but, hey, if it makes ya feel better!
This tire change thing was done to save money? What's up with that. Kimi demolished a whole car to save a set of tires. If that tender wasn't there he would lost his head. If this is the premier racing change the stupid tires and lets get racing. I think it is just bull.
He had other choices to the pits. He could have reduced his pace to keep the car integrity and had opted to 2nd or 3rd place without entering the pits. If he had lapped 2 or even 3 seconds slower the last 4 laps, taking it easy at the braking, he probably still had ended the race 2nd and scored 8 points instead of none. But of course Kimi is not exactlly the best driver at keeping a car integrity If you remember Imola finish with Alonso vs MS. Alonso was running his engine at 15000 rpm. Alonso and Renault could had opteed to free the engine to rev higher and take the risk to not finish, however they decided to try to secure the points insted of risking for a DNF. Why Kimi and McLaren have not done that today I still don get it. I think he was to eager to win to stop and think, on TV it was pretty clear that that wheel wasn't going to hold till the end, and even if it would had hold, Alonso was going to be all over him in that final lap. - Julio.
I do not like the new rule about changing tires. I think a team should be able to change a tire anytime they want. It cost them time to do so, so there already is a built in disadvantage. I think this new rule leads to bad decisions. I think Kimi caused the problem with his tire and whoever decided not to change it contributed to the accident. This could have been a lot worse had he taken out another driver. They could see for several laps that they were taking an unacceptable risk with the suspension vibration. I hope they learn from this and change the rule back.
Regardless of how they feel about whether or not Kimi should have stopped to replace the tire, I think everyone must agree that the effect of the tire rules is to force the teams to push the safety limits on the tires. After all, Kimi was not the only one with tires coming apart near the end of the race today. Basically, it a bad rule, and if the tether had not been there or failed, it sure looked to me like Kimi would have been severely injured or worse. This kind of failure is no joke, and it is ridiculous that the rules promote a dangerous situation. Either they should equalize things with a spec tire that can clearly go the distance safely (at the expense of grip, obviously) or they should go back to letting the teams do whatever they want on tires. Otherwise they are dictating that what we saw today will happen again and again.
they all spent time off the track today incl. alonso. alonso was lucky kimi's shards didnt hole his tyres... but kimi did look a little "melted" today as they commented. thank God the wheel tethers worked well. boy those fewaji's are slow.
Alonso and Renault were handed the Championship today. I can't believe the error in judgement by McLaren Mercedes! You could visibly see the vibration on the tire/suspension... Bring him in and salvage some points; he even could have slowed down and let Alonso by and finished the lap. Not to mention the danger to himself and others. Instead Kimi's down another ten points. Stupid!
Agree, but the vibration was bad enough that I don't think slowing 3 secs per lap would make him to the finish line. This is debatable of course but IMHO the main probelm lies in the interpretation of the tire change rule.
I think Charlie Whiting would have allowed the tire change; if Kimi had come in with 16 laps to go when the vibration became clearly visible, I don't think Whiting would have objected to the changing of the tire on the grounds that the flat spot was a result of Kimi's braking; he would have figured that for safety reasons it was better to allow them to change the tire rather than have Kimi drive on with a bad tire and possibly create an accident that would have involved others. Kimi's suspension let go in a most explosive manner that almost took out another car IIRC. Whiting did the same thing for Felipe Massa near the end of the race when Massa's tire began to shed strips of tread. If Kimi had lost 2 or 3 spots he would have still salvaged 5 points or so.
There have also been races where drivers retired because of worn tires, yet their cars were still perfectly functional. Barrichello at Sepang, for example.
A spoiler is something that "spoils" somebody else's fun. In this case, it means that you're giving away details about what happened in the race which will ruin things for somebody who hasn't seen the race yet. Anyway, I see the topic title has been edited already.
I have to say that when I saw the suspension disintegrating and the tyre (and the bits on it ) dancing around in front of Kimi's face .... it made me remember Senna and how he died. very lucky for Kimi to walk from this.
If Bridgestone would make tyres with immense grip but that only last 20 laps, they would be excused to change them anyway? Is there a loophole in all this?
I think I'm changing my opinion on the tire rule: After some more reflection I would say it has become dangerous to not allow tire changes. I dismissed it when Rubens had not threads left in Sepang, I started to wonder when I saw the slicks on the Renault in Monaco and I was shocked to see the consequences on Kimi's suspension yesterday. True, Kimi should have changed that tire and the rules would have allowed it. But I'm not so sure anymore people would actually err on the side of safety. Mc Laren and Kimi didn't and arguably the gamble might have worked. Not replacing the engine and pushing the luck there (as did Alonso in Imola) normally doesn't have as dramatic consequences as pushing your luck on the tires. So far we could argue, that the tire manufacturers will have to come up with a tire that lasts the distance. No problem with that. But yesterday it has become quite obvious that even such a tire could quite easily be flat spotted to the point that it becomes a safety issue. Would be interesting to know what the officials think after yesterday.
Should the officials have black flagged Kimi in the interest of safety? I bet they are asking themselves quite a few questions.
I think this whole 1 set of tires per weekend rule is terribly ridiculous. Someone mentioned that drivers have been forced to retire due to worn tires. Terrible. If you were winning the race by a minute, had lapped EVERYONE but the guy in second, and punctured your tire just before the pit entry with a few laps to go, you could normally just enter the pits, get the tires replaced and go back out to win. But with these rules, you would be forced to lose. That just shows how ridiculous this rule is.
