Hmm, looks like one of the mechanics who supports Hamilton had a little play with Rosbergs car. Shocking really, you would have thought the mechanics would be there for the team, and not each driver.
A somewhat boring race, with only the last few laps really having an excitement. I did see Vettels interview, he really does come over as a very likeable down to earth sort of chap. Put his hands up and said Ricciardo has beaten him fair and square this year.
I think some bigwig from Sky has been reading my posts. I said they should get rubens in, and guess who turned up for a short stint on the sky pad? Good old Rubens.
Mr BigWig if you are still reading, can you give me a discount on my sky subs? Just send us a PM with details. Much appreciated
Hmm, looks like one of the mechanics who supports Hamilton had a little play with Rosbergs car. Shocking really, you would have thought the mechanics would be there for the team, and not each driver.
I guess a mechanic that supports Rosberg had been fiddling with Lewis' car in the races he had to retire in then?
In a similar vein I wonder if a rejigging of crews in the Red Bull garage means that the cause of Webber's unreliability got moved to Vettel's side? Do the teams track faults by personnel involved to spot possible patterns? If not, why not?
In a similar vein I wonder if a rejigging of crews in the Red Bull garage means that the cause of Webber's unreliability got moved to Vettel's side? Do the teams track faults by personnel involved to spot possible patterns? If not, why not?
I suspect all that stuff is very closely monitored.
Course, if there was anything dubious going on (and I'm certainly not suggesting there is), surely the person involved would be smart enough to ensure that they didn't flub their own work and would, instead, monkey around with stuff other people had done previously?
Kinda reminds me, I was once asked to "find a way" of stopping a client from filing a report for a few days to give us time to correct some problems.
He was working from a portakabin office, using a laptop attached to a 3G wireless router.
We had a similar router and I discovered that you could screw it up from a couple of feet away using a "stun gun" intended for personal defence.
I snuck around the back of the client's portakabin, to where he had his router on the window-ledge inside, and zapped it with the stun-gun.
A couple of hours later he came to see me to ask me to "fix his computer" and I dutifully took it away and reported that it'd take a couple of days to obtain the required parts.
Problem solved!
There's usually ways and means of doing stuff if you're of a mind to do it.
Realistically, I suspect the closest you'd come to incompetence would be that there might be certain mechanics who like to do things a certain way because they've found it gives better results than doing it a different way and that if those guys keep their little "secrets" to themselves it might result in poorer performance of the other car.
I was not meaning to imply anyone was doing anything underhand but doing things by the book but with their own unique twist on things (eg flick of the wrist as they remove a spanner) which neither they nor the team was consciously aware of or thought it made a difference anyway.
I whole heartedly agree. It is a totally unfounded moronic accusation to make. However when Hamilton was having problems people were posting the same, and others were nodding sagely. Yet when the opposite is said, its absurd. Just highlighting the hypocrisy of some of the posters on this thread.
I dont for one minute, believe that anyone has deliberately tampered with either car. In most cases its just bad luck, if you had a problem.
What a surprise that Mercedes are so opposed to removing the engine freeze. To all intents they designed the current one and threw their toys out of the pram to get it agreed. The march they stole is unedifying from a spectacle with manufactured and manipulated faux in team rivalry to endure to a thrilling season double pointer.
What has F1 become, a new game of politics and scripting.
I whole heartedly agree. It is a totally unfounded moronic accusation to make. However when Hamilton was having problems people were posting the same, and others were nodding sagely. Yet when the opposite is said, its absurd. Just highlighting the hypocrisy of some of the posters on this thread.
I dont for one minute, believe that anyone has deliberately tampered with either car. In most cases its just bad luck, if you had a problem.
I did wonder if that's what you were referring to.
Course, the point, at the time, was that while it's silly to suggest a team would deliberately hinder their chances of winning a constructors championship, it ignores the possibility that a misguided individual within a team might be prepared to do something dubious.
It's certainly unlikely but the fact that a team would be crazy to do it doesn't preclude the possibility of an individual doing it.
Funny thing is, with both Merc's suffering from unreliability problems now, I wonder if both drivers are comfortable that there's nothing dubious going on or whether they're both getting twitchy whenever a mechanic from the opposite side of the garage steps onto their turf?
What a surprise that Mercedes are so opposed to removing the engine freeze. To all intents they designed the current one and threw their toys out of the pram to get it agreed. The march they stole is unedifying from a spectacle with manufactured and manipulated faux in team rivalry to endure to a thrilling season double pointer.
What has F1 become, a new game of politics and scripting.
Was there ever a time when that stuff wasn't a big part of F1?
As for artificially controlling the spectacle of F1, what if the situation was reversed?
What if we had a season where all the cars were pretty evenly matched and we had a different winner every race?
In that situation, if one engine supplier figured out how to make their engine more powerful, went to the FIA and said "Hey, we'd like the engine freeze lifted so we can provide better engines to our teams and help them win" do you think that'd be allowed?
Do you think that'd be a good thing?
Or, would you be happy with an artificial limitation if it was keeping all the teams competitive with each other?
Either we have these restrictions and, on some occasions, you'll get one team excelling or you abolish them and risk creating a situation where one team can make a big leap mid-season.
And then there's the expense of continual development, which seems to directly contradict Napoleon's plans to make F1 cheaper to participate in.
Not to mention, of course, that there's already a fairly big discrepancy between Merc', themselves, and all the other Merc' powered teams which suggests that there's more to it than engine design and would likely mean that all the teams would end up spending more money while very little actually changed.
Sounds, to me, like Ferrari are attempting to invoke the other meaning of "FIA", like they did back in the Schuey era.
Was there ever a time when that stuff wasn't a big part of F1?
As for artificially controlling the spectacle of F1, what if the situation was reversed?
What if we had a season where all the cars were pretty evenly matched and we had a different winner every race?
In that situation, if one engine supplier figured out how to make their engine more powerful, went to the FIA and said "Hey, we'd like the engine freeze lifted so we can provide better engines to our teams and help them win" do you think that'd be allowed?
Do you think that'd be a good thing?
Or, would you be happy with an artificial limitation if it was keeping all the teams competitive with each other?
Either we have these restrictions and, on some occasions, you'll get one team excelling or you abolish them and risk creating a situation where one team can make a big leap mid-season.
And then there's the expense of continual development, which seems to directly contradict Napoleon's plans to make F1 cheaper to participate in.
Not to mention, of course, that there's already a fairly big discrepancy between Merc', themselves, and all the other Merc' powered teams which suggests that there's more to it than engine design and would likely mean that all the teams would end up spending more money while very little actually changed.
Sounds, to me, like Ferrari are attempting to invoke the other meaning of "FIA", like they did back in the Schuey era.
That's the problem now, to keep the small almost pointless teams, the true sport suffers. It is now about the manufacturers in reality and to deter proper development and fairness leaves us with what is now in place. At least when Brawn stole the march, the others were able to develop and in the main reel them in.
It is Ferrari seeking the change, but it is strange that if you get it wrong and have a clue and ability to resolve the deficiency, you are barred from doing so.
I did wonder if that's what you were referring to.
Course, the point, at the time, was that while it's silly to suggest a team would deliberately hinder their chances of winning a constructors championship, it ignores the possibility that a misguided individual within a team might be prepared to do something dubious.
It's certainly unlikely but the fact that a team would be crazy to do it doesn't preclude the possibility of an individual doing it.
Funny thing is, with both Merc's suffering from unreliability problems now, I wonder if both drivers are comfortable that there's nothing dubious going on or whether they're both getting twitchy whenever a mechanic from the opposite side of the garage steps onto their turf?
To be honest I think its equally silly to suggest an individual. I think I posted my logic for saying so at the time. I will quickly go through them again. Hamilton had problems in different areas of his car. This would mean that that it had to be more than individual. As all/most F1 teams would have specialists in each area. No one person would work in more than one area. There was also some suggestion of cars being tampered with 'after everyone had gone to bed' again I would have though that the teams would have cameras recording everything. So little chance of that. If a car had recurring problems in the same area, then the team would look into it. The person who works in that area would get found out quickly.
The mechanics are professionals, and they work for the team. I cant see them doing anything to damage the 'other' car. There have been a lot of rule changes this year, so reliability was always a bit of an unknown. I am sure next year Merc will have ironed out a lot of their reliability issues and there will be less issues. Its a part of F1. Merc have pushed the envelope a lot more, hence why they have the best car by far. The more you push the envelope, the more chances of reliability issues. The fact both are suffering reliability issues, for me confirms there is nothing underhand going on.
What a surprise that Mercedes are so opposed to removing the engine freeze. To all intents they designed the current one and threw their toys out of the pram to get it agreed. The march they stole is unedifying from a spectacle with manufactured and manipulated faux in team rivalry to endure to a thrilling season double pointer.
What has F1 become, a new game of politics and scripting.
The rules were set at the start of the season. I am not a fan of changing any rules part way through a season (unless for safety reasons).
No big surprise Merc are dead against a lift on the engine freeze and no big surprise renault/ferrari powered teams have been trying to get it lifted. Thats part and parcel of F1. Nothing new here.
I will add that when Ferrari and RBR try something people always think they are cheating, being dodgy arent playing fair, yet when another team does it, its more acceptable.
To be honest I think its equally silly to suggest an individual. I think I posted my logic for saying so at the time. I will quickly go through them again. Hamilton had problems in different areas of his car. This would mean that that it had to be more than individual. As all/most F1 teams would have specialists in each area. No one person would work in more than one area. There was also some suggestion of cars being tampered with 'after everyone had gone to bed' again I would have though that the teams would have cameras recording everything. So little chance of that. If a car had recurring problems in the same area, then the team would look into it. The person who works in that area would get found out quickly.
The mechanics are professionals, and they work for the team. I cant see them doing anything to damage the 'other' car. There have been a lot of rule changes this year, so reliability was always a bit of an unknown. I am sure next year Merc will have ironed out a lot of their reliability issues and there will be less issues. Its a part of F1. Merc have pushed the envelope a lot more, hence why they have the best car by far. The more you push the envelope, the more chances of reliability issues. The fact both are suffering reliability issues, for me confirms there is nothing underhand going on.
Mercedes have a history of unreliability in relation to many of the other teams in F1. It's not just this season.
To be honest I think its equally silly to suggest an individual. I think I posted my logic for saying so at the time. I will quickly go through them again. Hamilton had problems in different areas of his car. This would mean that that it had to be more than individual. As all/most F1 teams would have specialists in each area. No one person would work in more than one area. There was also some suggestion of cars being tampered with 'after everyone had gone to bed' again I would have though that the teams would have cameras recording everything. So little chance of that. If a car had recurring problems in the same area, then the team would look into it. The person who works in that area would get found out quickly.
The mechanics are professionals, and they work for the team. I cant see them doing anything to damage the 'other' car. There have been a lot of rule changes this year, so reliability was always a bit of an unknown. I am sure next year Merc will have ironed out a lot of their reliability issues and there will be less issues. Its a part of F1. Merc have pushed the envelope a lot more, hence why they have the best car by far. The more you push the envelope, the more chances of reliability issues. The fact both are suffering reliability issues, for me confirms there is nothing underhand going on.
As I said, I'm sure that such a person would be smart enough to not sabotage anything they were supposed to be working on.
And, as I also said, Piquet is supposed to have paid members of the Williams team to do dodgy things to Mansell's car so it can happen.
I don't really want to get drawn into trying to argue in favour of something which I also think is very unlikely but I was just making the point that the whole "Mercedes would never do that" thing is a bit of a fallacy.
What a surprise that Mercedes are so opposed to removing the engine freeze. To all intents they designed the current one and threw their toys out of the pram to get it agreed. The march they stole is unedifying from a spectacle with manufactured and manipulated faux in team rivalry to endure to a thrilling season double pointer.
What has F1 become, a new game of politics and scripting.
Its their job to do whats best for them. Besides, it was Renault who pushed for the new engine regs.
But, to play Devil's advocate, he could have just come in on his own volition.
If Magnusson had come in, without being told too, wouldnt it have seemed a bit wimpy? (even though it wasnt)
Have any other drivers done anything like that? Ive only ever seen them wait to be told they can come in.
I suspect all that stuff is very closely monitored.
Course, if there was anything dubious going on (and I'm certainly not suggesting there is), surely the person involved would be smart enough to ensure that they didn't flub their own work and would, instead, monkey around with stuff other people had done previously?
Kinda reminds me, I was once asked to "find a way" of stopping a client from filing a report for a few days to give us time to correct some problems.
He was working from a portakabin office, using a laptop attached to a 3G wireless router. We had a similar router and I discovered that you could screw it up from a couple of feet away using a "stun gun" intended for personal defence.
I snuck around the back of the client's portakabin, to where he had his router on the window-ledge inside, and zapped it with the stun-gun.
Blimey, wish we could use a stun gun on some of our clients!
I wonder if they've kinda got the wrong end of the stick?
Sounds like it might've been something like WD40 or, perhaps, electrical contact cleaner.
Thing is, once the fault appeared, somebody might've decided to try and fix it by squirting it into the assembly and now they're assuming it was the cause of the problem.
As a Ducati owner, I'm quite familiar with electrical faults () and the one thing I've learned is that there's always, always, always a definite reason why they occur.
When you're just saying "this is a bit odd so it probably had something to do with it", what you're really saying is "I haven't yet found the exact fault so I'm hoping it's something to do with this".
Hopefully, an F1 team is a bit more thorough than that and they'll investigate until they find out exactly what happened so it can be fixed for sure.
They would not be so careless as to re-use a cloth that was already contaminated with an electrically conductive substance, would they? Aka an oily rag?
They would not be so careless as to re-use a cloth that was already contaminated with an electrically conductive substance, would they? Aka an oily rag?
Course, that might've been deliberate too.
If one of the mechanics looked at, perhaps, the wiring for the steering column and thought "Blimey, that looks like it could chafe!", they might've applied something in an attempt to help with that.
Comments
What an absurd accusation.
I guess a mechanic that supports Rosberg had been fiddling with Lewis' car in the races he had to retire in then?
I suspect all that stuff is very closely monitored.
Course, if there was anything dubious going on (and I'm certainly not suggesting there is), surely the person involved would be smart enough to ensure that they didn't flub their own work and would, instead, monkey around with stuff other people had done previously?
Kinda reminds me, I was once asked to "find a way" of stopping a client from filing a report for a few days to give us time to correct some problems.
He was working from a portakabin office, using a laptop attached to a 3G wireless router.
We had a similar router and I discovered that you could screw it up from a couple of feet away using a "stun gun" intended for personal defence.
I snuck around the back of the client's portakabin, to where he had his router on the window-ledge inside, and zapped it with the stun-gun.
A couple of hours later he came to see me to ask me to "fix his computer" and I dutifully took it away and reported that it'd take a couple of days to obtain the required parts.
Problem solved!
There's usually ways and means of doing stuff if you're of a mind to do it.
Realistically, I suspect the closest you'd come to incompetence would be that there might be certain mechanics who like to do things a certain way because they've found it gives better results than doing it a different way and that if those guys keep their little "secrets" to themselves it might result in poorer performance of the other car.
I whole heartedly agree. It is a totally unfounded moronic accusation to make. However when Hamilton was having problems people were posting the same, and others were nodding sagely. Yet when the opposite is said, its absurd. Just highlighting the hypocrisy of some of the posters on this thread.
I dont for one minute, believe that anyone has deliberately tampered with either car. In most cases its just bad luck, if you had a problem.
See comment above.
What has F1 become, a new game of politics and scripting.
I did wonder if that's what you were referring to.
Course, the point, at the time, was that while it's silly to suggest a team would deliberately hinder their chances of winning a constructors championship, it ignores the possibility that a misguided individual within a team might be prepared to do something dubious.
It's certainly unlikely but the fact that a team would be crazy to do it doesn't preclude the possibility of an individual doing it.
Funny thing is, with both Merc's suffering from unreliability problems now, I wonder if both drivers are comfortable that there's nothing dubious going on or whether they're both getting twitchy whenever a mechanic from the opposite side of the garage steps onto their turf?
Was there ever a time when that stuff wasn't a big part of F1?
As for artificially controlling the spectacle of F1, what if the situation was reversed?
What if we had a season where all the cars were pretty evenly matched and we had a different winner every race?
In that situation, if one engine supplier figured out how to make their engine more powerful, went to the FIA and said "Hey, we'd like the engine freeze lifted so we can provide better engines to our teams and help them win" do you think that'd be allowed?
Do you think that'd be a good thing?
Or, would you be happy with an artificial limitation if it was keeping all the teams competitive with each other?
Either we have these restrictions and, on some occasions, you'll get one team excelling or you abolish them and risk creating a situation where one team can make a big leap mid-season.
And then there's the expense of continual development, which seems to directly contradict Napoleon's plans to make F1 cheaper to participate in.
Not to mention, of course, that there's already a fairly big discrepancy between Merc', themselves, and all the other Merc' powered teams which suggests that there's more to it than engine design and would likely mean that all the teams would end up spending more money while very little actually changed.
Sounds, to me, like Ferrari are attempting to invoke the other meaning of "FIA", like they did back in the Schuey era.
That's the problem now, to keep the small almost pointless teams, the true sport suffers. It is now about the manufacturers in reality and to deter proper development and fairness leaves us with what is now in place. At least when Brawn stole the march, the others were able to develop and in the main reel them in.
It is Ferrari seeking the change, but it is strange that if you get it wrong and have a clue and ability to resolve the deficiency, you are barred from doing so.
To be honest I think its equally silly to suggest an individual. I think I posted my logic for saying so at the time. I will quickly go through them again. Hamilton had problems in different areas of his car. This would mean that that it had to be more than individual. As all/most F1 teams would have specialists in each area. No one person would work in more than one area. There was also some suggestion of cars being tampered with 'after everyone had gone to bed' again I would have though that the teams would have cameras recording everything. So little chance of that. If a car had recurring problems in the same area, then the team would look into it. The person who works in that area would get found out quickly.
The mechanics are professionals, and they work for the team. I cant see them doing anything to damage the 'other' car. There have been a lot of rule changes this year, so reliability was always a bit of an unknown. I am sure next year Merc will have ironed out a lot of their reliability issues and there will be less issues. Its a part of F1. Merc have pushed the envelope a lot more, hence why they have the best car by far. The more you push the envelope, the more chances of reliability issues. The fact both are suffering reliability issues, for me confirms there is nothing underhand going on.
The rules were set at the start of the season. I am not a fan of changing any rules part way through a season (unless for safety reasons).
No big surprise Merc are dead against a lift on the engine freeze and no big surprise renault/ferrari powered teams have been trying to get it lifted. Thats part and parcel of F1. Nothing new here.
I will add that when Ferrari and RBR try something people always think they are cheating, being dodgy arent playing fair, yet when another team does it, its more acceptable.
Mercedes have a history of unreliability in relation to many of the other teams in F1. It's not just this season.
As I said, I'm sure that such a person would be smart enough to not sabotage anything they were supposed to be working on.
And, as I also said, Piquet is supposed to have paid members of the Williams team to do dodgy things to Mansell's car so it can happen.
I don't really want to get drawn into trying to argue in favour of something which I also think is very unlikely but I was just making the point that the whole "Mercedes would never do that" thing is a bit of a fallacy.
Its their job to do whats best for them. Besides, it was Renault who pushed for the new engine regs.
If Magnusson had come in, without being told too, wouldnt it have seemed a bit wimpy? (even though it wasnt)
Have any other drivers done anything like that? Ive only ever seen them wait to be told they can come in.
Imagine a router that fails the stun gun test.
Dam sloppy and unusual I think.
Sounds like it might've been something like WD40 or, perhaps, electrical contact cleaner.
Thing is, once the fault appeared, somebody might've decided to try and fix it by squirting it into the assembly and now they're assuming it was the cause of the problem.
As a Ducati owner, I'm quite familiar with electrical faults (
When you're just saying "this is a bit odd so it probably had something to do with it", what you're really saying is "I haven't yet found the exact fault so I'm hoping it's something to do with this".
Hopefully, an F1 team is a bit more thorough than that and they'll investigate until they find out exactly what happened so it can be fixed for sure.
Course, that might've been deliberate too.
If one of the mechanics looked at, perhaps, the wiring for the steering column and thought "Blimey, that looks like it could chafe!", they might've applied something in an attempt to help with that.
Better to stay at Ferrari next year, car could be quick under Alison. If not hes got the pick of the litter for 2016.