Completely agree, Grosjean interupted the leaders - it wasnt dangerous. Personally I’d like to see blue flags removed completely and let the leaders have to work their way through.
watching the highlights, its funny that the first lap crash was a yellow flag until just after vettel passes Verstappen, when due to where the car is its obvious from the start it will be safety car... Ferrari international assistance at work Perez was all over the shop today, should of been black flagged especially after coming together with Sirotkin ( i would love to see Perez's on board of that incident ) Sirotkin was going pretty well and i was impressed with him till he almost put hartly into a wall
To be fair, what would be the point of calling safety car immediately ? Track is 5km long. I takes around 1 minute and 40 seconds to get around. Calling a safety car immediately doesn't change a thing. Calling a safety car literally minute later still leaves good 30 seconds or so of empty track before the field reaches the finish line at all, and gets collected by the safety car. There is a point in calling safety car immediately when the field is more apart. But when everyone is within 15 to 20 seconds (= right after the start or end of a safety car period), there is a good reason to keep racing going until 2/3 of the race track.
I think Whiting grovelling to Hamilton just before the podium stuff was a bit pathetic tbh. 'Sorry sir for not clearing the peasentry out of the way fast enough'...
Perez not being penalised makes sense as they didn't punish Seb in Baku... But the problem is now they are forced to allow these "moments of frustration" or "misjudgements" to slide, just to keep up the appearance of "consistent stewarding". This is a seriously dangerous precedent, as the line of acceptable driving etiquette is slowly being shuffled more and more into the danger zone. The stewards need to grow some balls and hand out a ban immediately, instead of waiting for somebody to accrue enough penalty points over a season... Otherwise someone is going to lash out, safe in the knowledge that others have done it and got away with it, and someone will get hurt.
Seb in Baku was petulant and a little dangerous, but at very low speed. Perez on the otherhand did this at racing speed - totally agree no point waiting until after the race, black flag within minutes
Call me childish if you want but Perez was responsible for about the only interesting action in the whole race. I'd far rather see some crazy, dangerous action than a procession with some pit stops. These guys get paid danger money after all! Watch videos of legends like Gilles Villeneuve and they took positions with some utterly insane but spectacular driving. I'm not a shareholder in any F1 teams so I couldn't care less about the politics or cost, I just want to see something vaguely interesting like it used to be.
So next year's Toro Rosso line up looks like being Kvyatt and Werhlein, although not confirmed yet. That's... unexpected.
Get rid of blue flags and the outcome will be Sauber and Haas still moving out of the way for Ferrari while being di**s to Mercedes and on the other side Williams and NotForceIndia will still move out of the way of the Mercs while being di**s to Ferrari.
Red Bull has youngsters, but none of them can come to TR because of missing super-license criteria. Former RB/TR drivers mostly say "screw you" to RB when they have established careers elsewhere (Buemi and Vergne in Formula E, Bourdais in Indycar and endurance races) or completely retired from racing. So for a year, maybe two of F1 races in a team at the end of the grid they will not interrupt their current careers. Kvyat has no "career" to interrupt (after all, he is a simulator driver for Ferrari) and Wehrlein was bound by Mercedes until last few days. If Ocon was released from the Mercedes contract, Wehrlein would have no chance.
Merc updates for Singapore might have been the secret sauce to their success rather than just pure Hamilton brilliance. Kyvatt has been rumoured for a while but out of the burned RB drivers he was the only one that kept crawling back for more. Wherlin was released from his Merc contract already so it makes sense he would at least be approached. Merc seemed to want to hold onto him but not for F1 purposes.
It might have worked if Vettel got past Perez as soon as he encountered him or if Ferrari predicted Mercs tyre wear correctly and Hamilton couldn't push for that extra lap. Ferrari probably hoped Hamilton would go to the Ultras and overheat them but instead he went to the soft and was able to keep them up to temp even at the end of the race. Alternatively Ferrari stay out, a safety car comes and Merc pit with Ferrari still stuck behind Hamilton or worse case, Vettels tyres go off and they're forced to pit with no convent gap. I don't think Ferrari got it wrong, they attempted to take control of the race. Yes they underestimated the Merc (that article shows merc played their cards perfectly) but Vettel could of won it by getting past Perez. Once in front he could build up a lead or try and last til the end of the race. They tried to make something happen and ultimately Vettel failed
Yeh I can see what you mean. How many times did senna/schumi/et al dive up the inside from nowhere and force people out the way (or even just crash into them). Do you think these cars are so sensitive they can't take a little bop. Or is it the stewards/rules/our expectations that are overly sensitive?
The current batch of F1 cars are vastly stronger than the cars of the 90s and early 00s, a car from that era would explode into chunks if they clipped the walls the way a bunch of them did this year. Occon's car would have been fine at a normal circuit for example, it only broke because the wall was waiting with open arms. I think part of it is the width of the cars, part of it was the track (there's been plenty of crazy dive moves this year, some even worked) and part of it is the stewards lack of tolerance for ramming type overtakes. I also think the drivers collectively are more aggressive than they ever used to be. Senna got away with it because other drivers didn't think like him, the few that did (like Piquet and Mansell) he didn't try it on so much, because he knew they would have the crash. Nowadays Senna against Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Ric and Ves would result in piles upon piles of broken carbon. But that's the moving goal post of racing, Rossi bullied and barged his way to seven Moto GP titles, then Stoner, Lorenzo and Marquez rocked up and bullied him, because they'd all grown up watching him do it.
The basic car itself has gotten stronger yes, but the slightest touch sends all the stick on tat flying across the circuit, which in turn requires sending people on the track to clean it up to prevent punctures... because no one wants to see Hamilton lose a championship after some squabbling grid filler cars spread carbon fibre all over the track.
The problem is, as Anfield said, the various vanes and winglets and whatnot that fall off if you so much as look at them funny. And the front wings that seem to shed carbon or break off their mounting at the slightest tap. Nose/front wing changes seem a lot more common now.
But in the 90s impacts that chop front wings would be fatal to the car. Next year with the number of bits reduced I reckon there will be less winglet damage.
Main problem with the wings is they are built light as possible, so they are only strong in one direction, you knock them to hard in the wrong direction they crack. Also on Ferrari hoping merc would cook their rears which has been a weakness. Merc updated the rear brake hub and wheel, the brake hub had an air pocked to help reduce heat build up, an the wheels had extra teeth/fins to increase the surface area to aid cooling . Also, the FE cars look so so much better, even with partially covered wheels, less body aero, all about ground effect aero. Look at the size of this rear diffuser, you could loose children in it
