Ferrari have a huge number of fans at every race, so Michael was guaranteed a good reception no matter how one-sided the race was.

I don't see anything especially arrogant about Vettel. There is some arrogance, but I think that is needed to compete at the highest level in any support. There has to be a part of you that thinks you are the best.

The fact that he seems to enjoy winning seems to annoy some. But no matter what he does, some people will fault him. I guess you could say, he just can't win...

Yeah I don't like people who support a team and act like all the others must die or something. That sort of thing is OTT. Especially the Italian fans.

They come across as bad as 1D or Bieber fans!

But saying that I do think people should be able to cheer and boo whoever they like though it does seem to have become a bit panto like.


LOL have you been hanging out with Crofty?

Thought Vettel had already won a race in the Toro Rosso, so he has already done a stint in a non front-running car

Good drive from Kimi, McLaren gamble didn't work, Mercedes 50 seconds off the lead (time for another illegal test methinks), Williams just missed out on a much needed point

And stop booing Vettel on the podium (stay quiet and let people think you are an idiot rather than open your gob to boo and thus prove it)

I bet there'll be some head-scratching at Merc' in the next few days.

Seems like RBR didn't pit Vettel during the s/c cos they knew he had the life in his tyres to just bugger off into the distance again after the s/c came in.

God knows who, at Merc, decided that Hamilton and Rosberg had the same sort of pace and would be able to do the same thing... which they obviously couldn't.

Seems like, if they'd pitted at the same time as everybody else, they would, at worst, have ended up on fresh tyres right behind those in front of them when the s/c came in rather than staying out for a bunch of laps on older tyres while the cars behind were on new tyres and then, when they did pit, ending up almost an entire pitstop behind the people who'd they were supposed to be racing with.

I bet Hamilton thought that was the kind of half-assed strategy that he was leaving behind when he left McLaren.

He's never suffered a bad season (car-wise) at a front-running team. That's a whole different pressure.

Webber's got himself a 10-place grid penalty for hitching a lift with Alonso. What a load of shite.

Un-f**king-believable. Completely unnecessary.

Though technically by definition if the car is bad then the afflicted team will no longer be front-running

What??????? That's complete and utter crap, plenty of drivers have done that in the past!

It's his last season, he's not contending for the championship and he deserves a few more wins - give the guy a break. Disgusting treatment

Not true, they're still considered a major team - McLaren and Ferrari over the past few years are obvious examples. That's the pressure I meant.

Amazing... Penalty completely against the spirit of the sport. why didn't they penalise Alonso as well then? Takes two to tango [one to give the lift, one to accept it]

'Major' and 'front running' are different concepts [pedant's hat on]. I mean to my mind, given their history, Williams are still a major team

Rosberg criticised this during the race - after the race he was remarkably back on message on course

They did - both got reprimands. Just happens that it's Webber's 3rd of the season and so incurs the grid penalty.

The issue was Alonso stopped in the middle of the track, causing both Mercedes drivers to take 'avoiding action' and this was what was deemed dangerous by the officials (especially as marshals had told Fernando explicitly not to stop).

You're looking at the longer term though - Ferrari didn't suddenly stop being a front-running team just because they started a championship with a rubbish car. Being a front-running team in terms of reputation is different to the actual possibility of winning a race with the current machinery.

Certainly for the fans and the sponsors the pressure is the same, and it's how drivers cope with that, and their ability to produce great performances from sub-par machinery under the pressure that comes from driving for a top team that makes a great driver in my opinion.

And there's no need for pedantry, it's very clear that I'm talking about a different situation to Vettel at Toro Rosso!

And how, exactly, did Webber force Alonso to stop in the middle of the track? Even if he indicated he wanted a lift, it was Alonso's choice alone to stop where he did, so there's nothing in that to merit giving Webber a penalty.

Umm.. Webber could have refused the lift too! He didn't have to jump on the back on the Ferrari - should have just waited for the proper vehicle to take him back. Wasn't like Mark was in a rush; he didn't have a podium ceremony to get to

(The rule Mark broke was going onto the track without permission)

Interestingly, Webber probably has more latitude to object.

It's against the rules to stop on track without good reason and it's also against the rules to go onto the track without permission too.

It's incontrovertible that Alonso stopped without good reason (if you're a jumped-up little safety-nazi jobsworth, that is) but Webber DID have permission to be on track, racing, and he could probably argue that nobody had made him aware that his permission had been revoked after his own car stopped on-track.

Course, Webber is probably beyond really caring now.

One of the pettiest, most flat-out retarded decisions that's ever been made in F1 IMO.
One hopes that Derek Warwick was opposed to it but, somehow, I fear not.

Ah

To my mind Vettel served his apprenticeship at Toro Rosso, now he has a well-designed car... seems a lot quicker in it than Webber incidentally. But remember Vettel hasn't been TOTALLY dominant for 4 years. Last year's car was not the class of the field in the early races - he just got on with it, extracting the maximum from it [sub par machinery?] and kept making the podium and scoring points until the car got better. I am expecting a closer championship next due to expected engine unreliability issues...

Once you watch the onboard footage it shows why the stewards felt they had to act it was a pretty dangerous place for Fernando to stop and Webber to run onto. Take a look...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXMCLiAvzg8

(until FOM get it taken down )


Drivers need to respect the marshals whether they are waving yellow flags or telling them to stay off track.

Wasn't the best place to stop can't argue with that but all the cars are crawling round so its hardly super dangerous.

Notice it was Hamilton that came up behind them. I wonder if he complained.

Don't think I'd want to be hit at 60kph that might be crawling by F1 terms but it's still a little bit more than crawling in reality.

Doubt it would have been Lewis the stewards saw what happened live (as did everyone else) and knew that was a breach of the rules. They would then have looked at all the telemetry/onboards they had access to whist deciding the punishment.

Remember this only resulted in a reprimand which is probably fair just Webber had 2 previous reprimands (one of which was for not obeying yellows something incidentally I would prefer an automatic 1 race ban for).