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On December 13 2021 05:37 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Exciting season! For all the complaining on the internet, I can only see this help F1 viewership, so from a long term fan perspective, it's been good.
Max is my 2nd favorite driver after Leclerc, so in a way I am happy. I've gained more respect and appreciation for Hamilton through the second half of the season, he really does compose himself well. Toto on the other hand, no so much.
For Masi, there would be an outcry with whatever happened. Red flagging the whole race was one option that probably would feel most fair when taking all stakeholders into account, but it wouldn't feel the most sporting either. At the end of the day though, it's a balance between sport and show, and that's probably what I would have done. However I think that safety car periods are too long, and they need to look at ways to lessen the time with breaks in racing. I think the rules should be changed to allow lapped cars to unlap themselves a lot sooner (as long as they drive under VSC speeds)... This would have removed the headaches today. The track was clear, I think delaying bringing the safety car in for another lap or two would be anti sporting.
I think Masi should have some kind of secretary, and the team communication should go through them, the race director has enough on his plate during chaotic events. I sided with Brundle on the first lap ruling as well, that was very clear cut to me, Hamilton should need to give the place back or receive a 5 second penalty.
I was pleasantly surprised this year that overtaking was reasonable in difficulty... I think making it much easier makes track position not mean much, though next year if passing on straights is a little bit more difficult, but in corners it's easier, that's good too.
My biggest complaint this year with F1 was the video feed. There's many drivers I like in the mid field, and too often the overtakes weren't shown at all, instead we would get 5 laps just zoomed in on Hamilton. Second biggest would probably be the need for more consistent rulings, but I think the severity was exaggerated a bit. Either way, awesome season, I hope we get one that comes close to this level sometime soon.
In this case, even if Hamilton got a 5s penalty, I don't think it would've changed the outcome. He would've pitted, served the penalty, come out ahead of Max and probably caught Perez like 2 laps later. If anything, Perez can't back him up as hard because he would've had even more laps on old tires and Hamilton might just breeze past.
Red flagging the race would've been the most sporting thing possible if they wanted a fight to the end. Doing what they did is just a joke for the integrity of the sport, because with 4 lapped cars in between, 6 laps to go, and a shunt in a very common spot, that has always taken 4-5 laps at minimum to clear out, the race always should've ended under yellow, or else restarted with cars in between the leaders.
You can argue that Lewis should've pitted under safety car, but quite frankly with so few laps to go Merc made the right call, the race should've been their's. Given Lewis's pace on the hards, if he pitted for new hards at the first VSC and gave up track position, he probably still leads this race at the last safety car, and maybe even wins the race. As it was he almost managed to keep Max behind despite having 40 lap old hards.
The safety car period was the absolute minimum possible, and was shorter than that according to the rules. You cannot let lapped cars pass until the incident is clear because they go around at racing speeds, and the incident wasn't clear. As far as I could tell all the safety car and VSC periods were literally as short as needed to clear the cars out.
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On December 13 2021 05:37 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Exciting season! For all the complaining on the internet, I can only see this help F1 viewership, so from a long term fan perspective, it's been good.
Spa this year was a complete disaster and I think races like that turn people off. All in all a very interesting close season and when you look at it from the side the sport is getting back to the hype of the cigarete sponsor days
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On December 13 2021 04:55 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2021 04:47 Zaros wrote:
Appealed again so not over yet. Toto is probably taking this to court. Wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton has had enough after this and calls it quits. If I'm not mistaken Mercedes has to present new evidence though, if they do not it is immediately denied.
Not if they take it to court, no. Actual contracts, rules and laws apply there. Not FIAs own interpretations of them. The "present new evidence" bit is when protesting to FIA itself.
Tho, that said, I highly doubt it would lead anywhere. At worst, if Mercedes actually does find some kind of breech, it would end up in a settlement. Max would still be champion
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On December 13 2021 04:47 Zaros wrote:
Wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton has had enough after this and calls it quits.
That would be very unlike Hamilton. If anything, this is more likely to fuel his fire to fight for a few more years. I have a lot of shit to say about Lewis, but quitter he is not
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Northern Ireland25339 Posts
On December 13 2021 06:51 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2021 04:47 Zaros wrote:
Wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton has had enough after this and calls it quits. That would be very unlike Hamilton. If anything, this is more likely to fuel his fire to fight for a few more years. I have a lot of shit to say about Lewis, but quitter he is not
I’d bloody hope he didn’t.
If Russell can deliver even half of the hype, and Red Bull and Merc are somewhat evenly matched less season could be a really fascinating battle up at the top
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The way I see it, Red Bull took a gamble with their pit stops and won (or got lucky, whatever you want to call it), Mercedes played it safe and lost. I understand why Mercedes is salty because all the advantage Lewis built over the whole race was nullified in just 1 lap under the safety car. I dont have an opinion on it because I dont understand the rules in this case, if it was fair or it wasn't, if something could have been done differently or not. With such a dramatic ending, Im pretty sure we'll have lots of experts from the F1 world weigh in with their opinions in the days to come, perhaps then I can form an opinion when I know more about the rules, were they applied fairly or not. Until then, gratz to Max, even though I've been vocal critic of his reckless driving in some races, tonight he drove clean and fair.
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I won't be surprised, if McLaren and Ferrari are in much better shape next year. With the championship being so close until the end, it is very likely that Merc and Red Bull are behind them in development of the new car.
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On December 13 2021 06:45 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2021 04:55 Penev wrote:On December 13 2021 04:47 Zaros wrote:
Appealed again so not over yet. Toto is probably taking this to court. Wouldn’t be surprised if Hamilton has had enough after this and calls it quits. If I'm not mistaken Mercedes has to present new evidence though, if they do not it is immediately denied. Not if they take it to court, no. Actual contracts, rules and laws apply there. Not FIAs own interpretations of them. The "present new evidence" bit is when protesting to FIA itself. Tho, that said, I highly doubt it would lead anywhere. At worst, if Mercedes actually does find some kind of breech, it would end up in a settlement. Max would still be champion
Yeah, I know, I was talking about the appeal to the FIA. And I doubt Mercedes takes this to court (as I posted right after). I hope Mercedes decides against appealing soon, they don't seem to have much to win as you mentioned as well. It just makes them look petty imo.
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My opinion is that Max deserved the championship, he's arguably been the better racer throughout the year. In this race though, Lewis 100% deserved the win, he was robbed.
If the stewards and race direction hadn't been so godawful previously, it might not have come down to this, but unfortunately, it's a tainted championship in my books alongside the other collisions which decided championships but with no fault for drivers.
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Both drivers would have been deserving champions. But the FIA really needs to address their consistency issue. I'm also not a fan of the exchanges between Masi and the team principals being broadcasted, because it puts too much pressure on Masi. The stewarding this season has been god-awful.
I'm a bit sad that it ended this way. Max had an amazing season and basically got REALLY lucky in the end. Lewis had the better car today (and in the last few races) and got robbed. On the other hand, the incident when he left the track after being pushed wide went to his favor. It has been a mess over the last few races.
The real hero of the day is Perez. He was the one who brought Max into the race and he was the main reason why Mercedes couldn't pit under the safety car. His fight vs. Lewis was outstanding.
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Ironically, Max won the championship while (today) Hamilton was stronger, and Mercedes won the constructor title while as a team they sucked a long one today and didn't do anything to help their driver really.
I was rooting for Max to win it in the end, but not like this. I really feel for Lewis, it really slipped through his fingers and there was nothing he could do on that last lap, while prior to that he had a near perfect race ...
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So many bad decisions but I believe it should be mentioned that Hamilton even though on inferior tires made a piss poor attempt at defending. That was the actual raceline, no attempt to block or drive hard defensively. The mercedes showed on the straight whats its capable of even when on worse tires. Would it have been enough to keep Max behind him?
I dont know. I only know he didn't attempt it at all. Probably not super fair to call it like that since he cant risk a collision yet I was suprised to see him defend so poorly. I do think the race win was robbed by FIA but I still prefer this and the drama over ending the championship under yellow.
Overall I can only hope that we get a season where 3-4 teams manage to produce at least competetive cars and we have a more leveled field. Formula 1 most of the time has been about the car but in the past years its really boring to watch utter dominance.
NOTE: Not saying Hamilton only wins based on Mercedes, but it sure does help having a car outperform the field
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Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of GOAT discussions in general and for F1, because of how big of a role the car plays, even less so but if you'd had to have one Hamilton, of course, deserves mentioning. Not because of how much championships and races he has won but, for instance, how competitive he immediately was vs Alonso, his maiden championship comes to mind among many other things. But for most of the hybrid-turbo era he really only had his team mate as a serious competitor. Not his fault, not Mercedes' fault, of course not, they just build the best car, the power unit in particular, but let's be honest; There are several drivers who probably would've collected a similar amount of prices if they'd be the ones driving that Merc.
Finally this season that changed and we got 4 drivers with comparable material instead of just the 2 most of the years prior. Ferrari put up a bit of a fight for 2 but not like Red bull did in this one. I was actually contemplating to quit following F1 before this season but thankfully 2021 turned out to be great to watch. Still, we really need more teams to become competitive. Even though this season was exciting and tense af, to see Ferrari's and McLarens being so outclassed is something I'd really want to see less of.
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On December 13 2021 07:13 Vinekh wrote:
I won't be surprised, if McLaren and Ferrari are in much better shape next year. With the championship being so close until the end, it is very likely that Merc and Red Bull are behind them in development of the new car.
It'll be interesting for sure. A bunch of the teams either stopped developing the current car quite early into the season or, in the case of at least Haas, never did any development on this year's car at all and used the entire year for developing their car for next year. The whole field could be shuffled next year.
I'm curious to see what happens with Mercedes when they're forced to use an all-new car that isn't built from a base car they created when they had 2-3x the budget of other teams. Their 2020 car was an evolution of their dominant 2019 car, and the regulations made it so this year's car was based heavily on the 2020 car, so they've always had a very strong car by default for nearly 3 years in a row. Their built-in advantage might be completely gone next year and as a team used to consistently being at the top no matter what, it might be a struggle for them to adjust.
Mercedes always talks big game about wanting competition with other teams but as we've seen recently, when they're actually pushed competitively they seem to get uncomfortable. Mercedes choked badly when it came to strategy this year in a way that was uncharacteristic of them. Many more mistakes were made since they could no longer consistently rely on their cars being right up front. They also seemed to be resorting a lot to legal challenges against Red Bull in a way that made it seem like Mercedes were nervous. There was that span of like 5-6 races in a row where Mercedes tried to get the FIA to kneecap Red Bull for various things (their rear wing, their engine, their pit stops, etc.) but it never worked out and ultimately ended up backfiring on Mercedes.
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Only just seen it now, wow, don't begrudge Max getting the title but that was a bullshit way for him to get it.
Anyway, congrats to Max on his first title, im sure he will get more.
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On December 13 2021 08:23 TaKeTV wrote:
So many bad decisions but I believe it should be mentioned that Hamilton even though on inferior tires made a piss poor attempt at defending. That was the actual raceline, no attempt to block or drive hard defensively. The mercedes showed on the straight whats its capable of even when on worse tires. Would it have been enough to keep Max behind him?
I dont know. I only know he didn't attempt it at all. Probably not super fair to call it like that since he cant risk a collision yet I was suprised to see him defend so poorly. I do think the race win was robbed by FIA but I still prefer this and the drama over ending the championship under yellow.
Hamilton couldn't defend at all. His tyres were shot after more than 40 laps on it.
Even if he tried, a crash with Verstappen would have likely caused both of them to crash out giving Verstappen the title on countback.
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On December 13 2021 11:59 LennX wrote:Show nested quote +On December 13 2021 08:23 TaKeTV wrote:
So many bad decisions but I believe it should be mentioned that Hamilton even though on inferior tires made a piss poor attempt at defending. That was the actual raceline, no attempt to block or drive hard defensively. The mercedes showed on the straight whats its capable of even when on worse tires. Would it have been enough to keep Max behind him?
I dont know. I only know he didn't attempt it at all. Probably not super fair to call it like that since he cant risk a collision yet I was suprised to see him defend so poorly. I do think the race win was robbed by FIA but I still prefer this and the drama over ending the championship under yellow.
Hamilton couldn't defend at all. His tyres were shot after more than 40 laps on it. Even if he tried, a crash with Verstappen would have likely caused both of them to crash out giving Verstappen the title on countback.
Yeah Hamilton did an absolutely stellar job to not just get passed instantly, and fight for a few corners. He was on 40+ lap old hard tires, which after the safety car period were cold (once the rubber gets thin, and stops being used it cools down very quickly if not being run hard), against what is effectively a qualifying trim Red Bull. Every driver on the grid can win the race from that position. He was lapping ~1:27 before the safety car, and with cold tires against a RB that had gotten pole with a 1:22.109. Using every bit of track and pushing the car to the absolute limit, I don't think Hamilton could've done better than a 1:26 on such worn rubber. Even at Monaco, I think Lewis loses with that level of tire differential.
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Huh. My opinion is moving around on this as I think about it through the day. At first I was just excited to have a non-Merc champion, then learning more about the safety car rules this all left a really bad taste in mouth. But now I’m kinda thinking Masi made the least bad call he could (this post will be a long one, sorry about that).
It was just worst case scenario timing for an incident. Maybe they should have red-flagged the race (and by lap 57 I bet Masi wished they had) but the incident didn’t really call for it. Were it not 5 laps before the end of a title-deciding final race of the season it would have seemed completely unremarkable for them to go under safety car for 4 laps or so, let the field unlap, and start racing again on the sixth lap.
But that would mean ending the race under safety car here. Maybe they should have, but I think there’s normally pretty wide consensus that the stewards should go out of their way to avoid that whenever possible. If it’s necessary for safety then absolutely, don’t restart racing on the final lap with debris and marshals and cranes on track. But the track was clear by lap 58, and there was no need to still be under safety car. It’d be very hard to defend staying under safety car to the checkered flag.
Then there’s the unlapping business. The rules seem pretty clear on the procedure and that procedure wasn’t followed. The FIA’s ruling makes references to some vague “the Director has discretion” statements elsewhere in the rules, which is pretty slim grounds. Something I’m not totally clear on is whether allowing lapped cars to unlap is a requirement under safety car, or just common practice, but at least if you do you’re supposed to unlap everyone, and then bring the safety car in the following lap.
But again, that would mean ending the race under safety car. So the choices at this point are: end under safety car even though the track’s been clear for maybe a couple laps, start the race again without letting anybody unlap, or do what Masi did (I’m not clear whether there wasn’t enough time to let the other backmarkers unlap or something, but I’m not sure anybody actually cares that much about whether their final placement says “+1 lap” or not).
I don’t know what would have happened if they restarted without letting those 5 cars unlap. Obviously it would have disadvantaged Max somewhat to have to clear 5 backmarkers before clearing Lewis. He would still have tried, somewhat frantically in order to get it all done in one lap, and the backmarkers would be obligated “not to impede” him, but what the fuck does that mean when the field is bunched up and you’re racing for position with 4 of the 5 cars next to you? There’s pretty obvious safety concerns, which is the reason unlapping is done in the first place: to avoid situations where, for instance, five backmarkers are all supposed to let some impatient frontrunner by, while trying to race each other, and nobody is interested in being patient or waiting their turn.
Some people (mostly Max fans) praise the decision for letting us decide the championship with a “fair fight” (or some similar wording). That’s ridiculous, Lewis didn’t stand a chance with fresh softs vs. extremely old hards. As soon as the safety car came out, Lewis stayed out, and Max pitted, it was pretty clear that if racing started again Max would win, and if it didn’t Lewis would. It maybe wasn’t *totally* predetermined, but not far from it. If Lewis had pitted and Max stayed out the inverse would have been true: Max wins under safety car, or Lewis probably passes him with fresh rubber if the race restarts.
So I don’t know. The championship was decided by a pretty flimsy race direction call. But I’m not sure there was a way it wouldn’t be (other than a pretty unnecessary red flag on lap 53 or so). Mercs bet their strategy on safety car staying out, Red Bull bet on it coming in, either way the decision would decide the championship.
At the end of the day, a crash that required a safety car, right before the end of a championship-deciding season-ending race. Race control opted to bring in the safety car as soon as they could to avoid finishing under safety car, and they went a little off book in order to get that done safely before the checkered flag. At the end of the day I’m not sure I can point to something they should have done differently.
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Lando made an interesting point regarding the whole situation
https://streamable.com/i1loq9
If Mercedes made their decision not to pit Lewis because of the initial decision about the lapped cars which was later changed and left Lewis robbed of a pit stop, then I can understand why Mercedes is salty. But then again, I don't know how the communication went between FIA and the other teams and how that might have influenced their decisions. Perhaps more info will be available in the coming days.
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I saw that take, but isn’t that normal procedure? You put out the safety car, while the marshals and debris and such are on track you don’t let people unlap, then once it’s safe you let people unlap, then you restart the race.
There was no guarantee they’d clear it fast enough, betting on safety car staying out to the end was a reasonable call. Apparently they maaaaaybe could have pitted and stayed ahead of Max anyway, but they played it safe. It just didn’t pan out.
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EPT
