But then Pastor could have just took stock behind Lewis and got the cutback mid-corner. Or even overtake on the next straight. And even then, Lewis was prey to Webber and Schumacher.

One point - all this has meant McLaren could very easily slip into 4th place in the constructors. I think Button's somewhat dismal performance has gone under the radar, despite the fact he scored points, but 8th isn't good enough. If McLaren don't iron out the mistakes, they'll be too far behind. For McLaren, it's reminding me more and more of 2005. They had a quick car but unreliability meant Raikkonen was denied what would have been a championship win. McLaren have failed to hammer home their early season advantage, and it's coming home to roost.

I'd say it was a racing incident on the grounds that Lewis is over defending when he has no ability to stay ahead. It was daft of him and he could have had a better result for him and the team but he is not prone to showing the good judgement required for that.

Yes a poor starting position for Jenson but he had a car to go forward. Despite this he was passed by a Sauber and other slower cars through the race. He put quite a lot of tyres on but was never very fast. Perhaps tyre warm up issue again.

Lewis said this >> "I don't think we did a bad job in terms of strategy, but I think a few people lucked into their strategies at the end there when they put new tyres on with 10 laps to go and nearly won the race."<<

But they did have a bad strategy because it saw him run out of tyres at the end. He was complaining of the rears having gone off for a long time so they had a window to pit him and driver feedback regarding the tyres. So a poor call from McLaren and if don’t realise it was a mistake then they can repeat that mistake.

I'm going to have to jump to the defence of the much-maligned stewards here.

The rules of F1 are complex and constantly changing with some of them open to interpretation. Often, things aren't quite as clear as they might appear at first sight, and the reason it takes a while to make a judgement when an incident is under investigation is because the stewards will study ever piece of data available. That data isn't available to the armchair experts! The stewards can determine if a driver braked a fraction later than on previous laps, or if there was more steering angle, or if the tyre temperatures might have affected the incident.

Often, it's a case of apportioning blame. One driver might have turned in fractionally early, and the other may have braked late. That may result in one of the drivers being penalised, but not severely, as the stewards might judge it as 80/20 or 70/30.

The stewards will also take into account the safety aspects. Vergne's hair-brained move this afternoon could have resulted in a horrendous crash if the cars had locked wheels, so it was a much more serious incident than the Maldonado/Hamilton one so it deserved a more serious penalty. Maldonando might have been an over-ambitious plonker, but he was unlikely to seriously injure anyone.

F1 fans tend to be a fairly partisan bunch, so we do often look at who's involved in an incident before apportioning blame! The poor stewards can never win. If they penalise "our" driver, they're wrong! If they penalise the other driver, they're wrong for not penalising him enough!

If it wasn't for so many drivers dropping out of the race, Button would have definitely outside the points.

I'll stick by what I said. You will never have a good word to say about Lewis Hamilton. The fact I said I would appologise if given evidence to show you had and you came back with nothing proves this. I'm even doubting that you're a 'real' F1 fan. We all have our teams/drivers we like, but the majority of us can give credit where credit is due or see things how they really are. The fact that any F1 driver is classed as probably the best drivers in the world (and for good reason) you can forgive someone for trying to fight their way to the finish line. That's not taking into account it wasn't actually Hamiltons fault anyway. Lets see how you react when your have the right off way and someone crashes into the side of you "oh sorry mate, I was just joining the road, you should have let me take your place"

This isn't even taking into account that he tried to steer going fully over the kerb.

I'm a Hamilton fan, no he isn't perfect but to put any blame on him for trying to fight to the finish line given there was two laps left is frankly idiotic, especually when someone drives into the side of him for no good reason at all.

Unless McLaren only have one script writer, I think that was Button.

It did strike me as a bit odd to say that others "got lucky" by putting on new tyres towards the end of the race (MS for example) as changing tactics to cope with a changing situation isn't luck! Button himself has won races on strategy calls, and I don't recall him saying it was "luck".

Sorry I should have clarified, not all decisions are bad and there hands are really tied at times but they do make some poor decisions

I also think most on DS can put aside their allegiances and see a good oor bad decision, of course some cannot as shown today.

Racing takes place on the circuit. It was not a racing incident. Pastor was not on the circuit. It was a dangerous re-entry to the track.

No matter how old your tyres are, no matter how shoddy your car is, you are entitled to defend your position.

You may decide that there is little point and let someone who is obviously faster than you pass, but with not long left in the race Lewis was well within his rights to stick to the racing line and leave little room for him to return.

After all, Pastor had failed to overtake as Lewis stuck to the racing line and Pastor ended up off the circuit.

So you're saying that because he failed at an overtake, and because he was off the circuit he should be granted an automatic free overtake via yielding?

Well, I do have to admit that they certainly confuse me at times! I'm struggling to understand why "Banzai" Kobayashi has been given a five place grid penalty. However, I might be missing something.


I can't think what you mean!

If you read the rules Hamilton should of allowed a cars width because Pastor was along side him in the attempted overtaking manoeuvre as they went into the bend. Hamilton didn't and pushed Pastor off the track, however Pastor was penalised because the rules also state that if you go off the track you must rejoin in a safe manner.

You know that's all correct but he will not concede it, it's really pointless following him into an argument, just ignore the dolt.

He had the racing line and wasn't entitled to give Pastor the space. Same as Kimi in Spa. He had the racing line and didn't need to allow the car's width.

If you read the rules, Lewis was perfectly entitled to take the racing line into the corner, which is exactly what he did. There is no obligation to move off the racing line in order to allow a car's width - that's in essence called letting someone through, and Lewis was well within his rights not to do so.

I can think of several examples from last year where the same accusation could have been levelled at Massa but Hamilton took the blame.

Do you all think Hamilton should have 3 stopped? His tyres were in such poor condition that he would have been mugged easily by Webber and Schumacher.

In the last few laps?
No, probably not.

I know it's not really in Hamilton's nature but I think what he needs to do, at some point, is simply drive the car within it's limits,allow other cars to take positions off him and then use that performance to demonstrate to the team how things (whether it might be tyres, aero, mechanical grip etc) are compromising his race.

I said earlier that I thought, maybe, McLaren were planning on one-stopping and by going slowly Hamilton was, effectively, forcing Vettel to try and pull out a 20 second lead so he could manage the "extra" pitstop without losing position.

Obviously, as it turned out, this wasn't the case at all and, as usual, McLaren had no clever strategy and they were just relying on their drivers to magically go faster but also make their tyres last sufficiently.

This is something the McLaren race team have a history of doing.
They did it with Prost, Senna, Hakkinen and now they're doing it with Hamilton.
They are, basically, at best incredibly conservative with race strategy and at worst they're downright incompetent... and then they just rely on having a superb driver to pull it all back into shape for them.

And with these tyres you simply can't ask a driver to put in a whole series of "quali' laps" to recover after a screw-up cos all that'll happen is that they'll catch up but then fall away again before the next pitstop.
As Horner is so fond of saying; "Plan the race then race the plan".

With hindsight, Maybe if McLaren looked at all the times during that race where Hamilton was driving cautiously to preserve his tyres and make it to the next pitstop window, putting in 1:45s and 1:46s rather than 1:43s and 1:42s, they'd decide that they SHOULD have opted for a 3 stop strategy right from the start in order to let Lewis thrash the tits off the car for more of the race.

Trouble with that, of course, is it means Hamilton having to put his trust in the chrome-hatted oompa-loompas more often each race.

*EDIT*
After reading that back you have to wonder why anybody would actually stay with McLaren if it's the case but the fact is that the factory DOES keep on making brilliant(ish) cars.
It's just that the race team rarely seems to do anything which actually adds to the overall package.

I imagine that if Ross Brawn ever found himself working for the McLaren race team he'd be absolutely stunned at the lack of initiative and inventiveness he found there.

I'm not sure that Hamilton would want to visit the pits more often than was absolutely necessary! He'd have probably lost 2 minutes while they put the car up on bricks!

I can't help but think that McLaren set the car up for single-lap pace, and forgot that it would be fairly hot on race-day. Mind you, it's easy to be wise with the benefit of hindsight as history suggested that grid position was key to winning the race.

Just going back to the Maldonado/Hamilton incident (which I think has been mentioned before! ), it's interesting to compare how Kimi dealt with Hamilton. He initially tried to outbrake him round the outside but quickly backed out of it, then set himself up to go round the inside. That was the smart thing to do. Maldonado could see that Hamilton was losing grip and running wide at every turn, so why he tried to go round the outside is beyond me.

I must admit that as soon as I saw Maldonado and Hamilton together, I was fairly sure it would end in tears! I wouldn't be surprised if Ross had been on the radio to tell Michael that Maldonado was challenging Hamilton up ahead, "so watch out for debris on the track"! It was all but guaranteed!

Well for once an eventful race in Valencia and I think Kwikfit may be getting a call from McLaren and Maldonado needs to go to Specsavers. A lucky win for Alonso but he drove very well.

Not sure if this has been posted

Maldonado penalised over Hamilton clash

No, definitely not that late in the race, he would have dropped back too far. There was only one DRS zone and only a lap and a bit left, so chances are that Webber and Schumacher would not both have got past Lewis if he positioned his car correctly through the lap. He might have avoided losing any other position except to Maldonado.

What’s quite interesting is that McLaren appear to think Lewis got this wrong. Whitmarsh makes half an attempt to be tight lipped but in the end is more critical of Hamilton than we are used to hearing.


http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/100724
Whitmarsh makes quite a good point and it has been said before that the best racing drivers are always mind full about who they are racing when getting close to another car to anticipate what they are likely to do.

Also found it quite interesting the way Lewis was talking about Ron Dennis. The man who ensured Hamilton’s career was being described by Lewis as nothing more than somebody to be negotiated with to ensure his next increase in life style. Even stating that Ron says stupid things.

I meant if they should have switched from a 2 to a 3 stop during the race once it became clear that Hamilton couldn't put the softs on in his second stint and had to put the mediums because they would have probably worn too much. Maybe two short soft stints instead of one long medium stint.

Lewis doesn't have time to be singing Ron Dennis's praises. It's a tough business, is F1, and there's no time to be stating personal allegiances. The topic in hand was a purely financial situation about Hamilton's contract, and so it wasn't appropriate for Lewis to go off on a personal tangent. And he is right - Ron does say stupid things. It's called Ronspeak.