Just to pick up on that (again) the most obvious difference will, of course, be down to the regulations which say that teams are only allowed to use a specific number of engines, gearboxes and (AFAIK) battery packs per year.

And the condition of those items, in turn, will depend on how hard they've been used by the driver in previous races so, in this case, you've got a bit of a vicious circle going on whereby Hamilton is going to be driving the car harder to beat Rosberg, thus causing more wear to the parts and increasing the likelihood of further unreliability.

Including the results from Hungary, Rosberg is now averaging almost exactly 18 points per race.
So, although all the points he scores will help Hamilton, the only way he'll actually beat a guy who's averaging 2nd-place finishes is to finish ahead of him... which (usually) means finishing first.
Doesn't leave much room for complacency.

This has something I would expect from Forza Ferrari...a disgusting post. Yes, you have tried to cover your ass (poorly). If you dont belive it, why even post it? Its obvious whilst you may not believe it, there is a niggling though at the back of your mind, that this rubbish could be true.

A few facts for you, the team is based in England, most of the pit crew and mechanics are English. If anyone would be having problems its Rosberg, not Hamilton. You are also questioning the professionalism of the pit crews the mechanics, that in itself is poor form. These are the same guys that work long hours and work bloody hard. I would love to see their reaction, if you were to ever suggest such a thing to them. I would be surprised if you were able to walk away.

Hamilton has problems in two different areas. Thus this implies two different set of people worked in the area where a problem occurred. You dont have a team that works on say brakes and the electronics. You have specialist in each area, who work on that area. Two different areas, suggests two different people/teams that would mean one person would not be involved in both areas (in a hands on capacity).

As for one person tampering with the car, that is so absurd its laughable. I am sure, there are several camera trained on the cars and the parc ferme area, that would catch anyone tampering with any car. I am not sure how easy it is to tamper with the fuel line or change a break disc, but I would imagine its not a quick and easy task for one person to carry out. So if someone was tampering, they would have been spotted by someone.

As for saying people are narrow minded for dismissing conspiracy theories....how narrow minded are you to post such rubbish? A lot more so.

I never though I would read such a post from you. You really should be ashamed of yourself.

I get what you're saying but there are obvious differences between the two situations. Vettel put his and Webber's cars in danger by ignoring team orders, risking a 1-2 finish for the team. Hamilton may have compromised Rosberg's race by not letting him pass but he didn't put either car at risk at the time. Quite what Hamilton would have done had Rosberg actually attacked him is another matter. I suspect he would have defended and in so doing put both cars at risk and a direct comparison with Vettel/Webber would be justified.

I agree though that this probably ends any chance the team have of employing team orders for the rest of the season even if by some miracle one of the other teams mounts a serious challenge in the CC, which isn't going to happen, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

Apologies for an oldie like me going on about the good old days, but youre absolutely right, and so frustratingly I was yards away from it still waiting to get in but heard it over the PA. Really frustrating, and what made it even more unbelievable and that wasn't apparent unless you were there was that it started to rain pretty heavily just before he began the lap. The best I saw live was Keke's fightback through the fieldafter being involved in an accident caused by Senna at Brands Hatch in 85. And he was no youngster either. He didn't get his first competitive drive till he was well into his 30s.

To my recollection, at no point did Hamilton say he would not let Rosberg overtake, he stated that he would not slow down and that Rosberg was not close enough. After which he questioned the reason behind the call. Merc then did not request it to take place after realising they had cocked up.
Multi21 was a very different scenario. It happened in the 2nd race of the season where there was no justifcation, bearing in mind the point in the race, the point in the season or the loyality owed by Vettel to Webber, for the team order to not be followed.
This weekends race was taking place when the constructors is essentially wrapped up for Merc and the only thing to race for is the drivers championship which will be between Hamilton & Rosberg.
Comparing this with Multi21 is like comparing apples to oranges.

So he held back on purpose, knowing that LH would be letting him past, meaning more of a time penalty for LH because of the lag?

Actually Lewis complying would have been a huge PR disaster - it would seem the majority of people including the pundits are in agreement that LH did the right thing, Toto now agrees as did Lauder - if LH had acquiesced there would have been more PR issues than there currently is - imo

Hang on!. You've completely misunderstood what I wrote.

There were two separate points:-

1) people are dismissing these conspiracies on the basis that Mercedes wouldn't pay Hamilton millions and then set him up to lose and/or they want to win the Constructors title.

2) Hamilton might get it into his head that it's happening "cos he's black"

I simply said that the first point ignores the possibility that an individual within the Merc' team might be acting independently.

I'd certainly hope nothing like that is happening and I'd assume that Mercedes would have procedures which'd allow them to identify anybody tampering with a vehicle but the point was simply that saying the team wouldn't sabotage Hamilton's car ignores the possibility that an individual might.
It simply isn't the watertight argument that it appears to be.

Let's not forget that, to this day, Mansell claims that Nelson Piquet was paying people within the team to undermine him by any means possible, from making bad race-calls to sabotaging his car and fitting it with sub-standard parts.

It can happen.

As for the 2nd point, it was more about what might be going on inside Hamilton's head.

Can a driver reach a point where their position within a team might become untenable simply because they no longer trust their team to act in that driver's best interests?

Hamilton obviously does have it in his head (at times, at least) that there's racial prejudice in F1.
He's entering a new team which he has no special connection to, he's been the victim of a number of poor decisions and unreliability problems which don't seem to have affected his team-mate so much.
It certainly seems possible, to me at least, that he might be having some rather dark thoughts about the reasons for that.


Course, as I've also repeatedly said, the reality is more likely to be that the extra points Rosberg has been "gifted" as a result of Hamilton's DNFs means that Rosberg can race at "80%", where there's a fairly large margin for error and where he can afford to adhere to a race-plan that's been well thought-out whereas Hamilton is being forced to operate much closer to the limit, where there's no margin for error and where the team are forced to reconsider race strategy on the fly and with much less forethought.

Course, if you wish to ignore the vast majority of what I write and, instead, just wail about how I accused Mercedes of racism (which I didn't do) I can't stop you but it doesn't really make for an interesting discussion.

Lewis was initially told on the radio "not to hold up Nico" not "slow down and let him pass". When this was repeated, Lewis's response was "Ok, if we catches up I'll let him pass but I'm not slowing down".

Somehow, Nico and his race engineer thought that Lewis was going to slow down, and waive him past.

I'm not sure how there are double standards going on, except maybe in your own head. On reflection, Lewis didn't actually disobey any orders at all. He just didn't go out of his way to help Nico out at his own expense.

The team did ask Lewis to slow on a particular lap and let him pass on the main straight too. Can't remember if this was the trigger for lewis saying he was not going to slow down or not though.

Oh, really? I must have missed that then.

But even then, I don't see the issue. In much the same way that I felt Vettel shouldn't have been told to hold station with Multi21 and Rosberg should not have been told to hold station last year, I don't think that Hamilton shouldn't have been ask to compromise his own position.

Must admit (shows you how trivial this stuff really is), I can't really recall the exact circumstances of the whole "Multi 21" thing but I seem to recall that it was inarguably a disguised team order. It was used to tell one driver that the other driver was being favoured.

That, in itself, isn't really a big deal IMO.
The main reason that RBR and Vettel got criticised (again, IMO) was the way that they previously insisted that their drivers were free to race and, after that specific incident, the way both the team and Vettel tried to obfuscate whether or not an instruction had been ignored.

Course, you'll always get some people who take advantage of an incident to fire off a barrage of criticism about any driver/team they don't like and I suspect there was a fair amount of that happening as well.

In this case, there wasn't any obfuscation. Hamilton flat-out stated that he wasn't going to do anything that'd cost him time in the race so there's no slipperiness to be critical of.

As to the actual circumstances, if a team simply thinks one driver is "entitled" to the advantage, for some reason, (which, IIRC, was the case with "multi 21") then it's not something I'm particularly keen on but I guess it's up to the team to make that choice.

In this case, however, I got the impression the intent wasn't to give Rosberg an advantage and was simply to prevent his race strategy from being compromised.
Trouble is, Hamilton was right behind Alonso at the time so he would have had to slow down to make a gap that Rosberg could move into and, even then, there was no guarantee that Rosberg would quickly pass Alonso and disappear into the distance, thus allowing Lewis to resume his fight with Alonso.

So, even if Rosberg passed Hamilton he might've ended up stuck behind Alonso or, at worst, fallen back from Alonso, thus yielding no advantage for himself and also causing Lewis to lose time sat behind him.

Bearing all that in mind, it's pretty easy to see why Lewis thought it was a request that favoured Rosberg over him and the end result shows that he was right to make that assumption.


Really, the only thing that the critics have on their side is that, apparently, both Rosberg and Hamilton have a clause in their contract which says that they're free to race each other but also says they'll do what's required to yield the maximum amount of points for the team in each race.

In this case, we might've got Rosberg 2nd and Hamilton 4th rather than Hamilton 3rd and Rosberg 4th so, on that basis, you can argue that Hamilton was being naughty.

Trouble is, of course, that I doubt Merc' realised just how dominant they were going to be this season, to the point where they don't really have any competition for the Constructors championship, when they wrote those contracts and when you're so dominant and both of your drivers are fighting for the championship you create a situation where the clause that says they're free to race is likely to conflict with the clause which says they must gain the maximum possible points for the team.

I mean, Let's say Rosberg is in 2nd place and Hamilton's in 3rd in some race.
If Hamilton catches Rosberg, does that mean Hamilton can get on the radio, invoking the "maximum points for the team" clause, and say "I can win here so get Rosberg out of my way"?

Seems like either of them could do that whenever they want to overtake, which kinda demonstrates how flawed the idea is.

Not sure he would have been as far up front if they had put him on slicks though. With that in mind, how much as the tyre strategy to blame for him finishing tenth?

On top of which, it is called "defending your position," which he is perfectly entitled to do.

Absolutely agree, it is like a more mature version of his rookie and sophomore season.

But, more than most drivers, he is ready to admit that it was he who made the mistake.

But then, he has more than ably proved he is perfectly capable of making up grid postilions, following any potential penalties. Someone earlier asked why he even bothered turning up on a Saturday, as he it doesn't seem to matter where he starts from; I am beginning to agree.

That's true and it makes for some great TV... but he needs to win win win now, and he won't be doing much of that from 10 place grid penalties!

I'm a bit concerned about the following F1 rule on power unit components, if it's still valid:


Because if it is still a current rule, and it's on the F1 website, Hamilton may have to take the part of his grid penalty that he couldn't take (because he was already almost at the back anyway) at the next race. I haven't heard that mentioned anywhere, and I don't know if this applies to a pit lane start, so hopefully that's not correct in Hamilton's case this time but does anyone know?

What Lewis has going on in his head, nobody but Lewis can control. If he thinks the team are against him, then surely he would be looking to leave? I for one cant see him moving to another team at the end of the season. Another point is that what Lewis thinks, and what is fact may well be very different.

I agree with the amount of DNFs for Lewis, Rosberg hasnt has to push his car as much as Lewis has had to.

I didnt say you accused Merc of racism, however you did hint an at least one individual may well be a racist. However I did explain, if that was the case, it would be difficult for one person to sabotage the car and not get caught.

As for the Mansell/Piquet issue, that wasnt even in this century. The sport has moved on a lot since then. Does it still happen? I doubt it. Only because it would extremely difficult for one person to sabotage a car. So whilst individuals may want to, they wouldnt be able to.

The drivers drive for the team. If the team gives them an order, they must obey it. Its as simple as that. You really cant argue with that. Especially when most were dead against Vettel when he obeyed team orders.

The driver and his fans may not like the idea, but an order is an order. Like I said, I bet the book was thrown at Hamilton behind closed doors. The consequences of his disobedience will have repercussions.

In general, I don't think you need to be too concerned about that screwing up the rest of Hamilton's (or any other driver's) season.

Hopefully the teams (the fast ones, at least) will realise that the prospect of a 10 place grid penalty means that if there's any doubt about the engine it'll always be better to fit a new, extra, engine, qualify well and then be pushed back to the midfield rather than fit a clapped-out engine which fails during quali', resulting in a poor grid position and then fitting an "extra" engine yields a 10 place penalty, part of which also affects the subsequent race.

As for this specific incident involving Hamilton, none of this stuff applies because Hamilton hasn't (AFAIK) used more than 5 power-plants this year.

What might apply would be a 5 place grid penalty if his gearbox was damaged in the fire and had to be replaced.

The last part of that summary is the important bit though. It says that if a team can convince the FIA technical delegate that a gearbox change was necessary due to circumstances beyond the control of the team or driver they can change the gearbox without any penalty being applied.

So, if Hamilton's fire was down to sloppy spannering, he's probably going to be taking a penalty in Spa. If it was down to a ruptured fuel hose or failed seal he shouldn't have a problem.

Blimey, that sounds ominous.

"Un oder iz un Oder! Ze conskvences off hiz dizobedienz vill haf repercussions! Gott Im Himmel!"

Where's the rolleyes smiley when you need it?

There is noway the team can let Lewis get away with disobeying them. It will set a dangerous precedence, if they do. Toto has no choice but to do something about it.

May I draft a statement that Mercedes may wish to use?

"Mercedes has a team competing in F1 with 2 objectives ...

1 To win the Constructors Championship
2 To take first and second places in the Drivers Championship.

As to Item 2, Mercedes has no preferred driver and under current conditions will not issue Team Orders. Both drivers are free to race.

However should a situation arise where either objective is at immediate risk then the Team will issue suitable orders which will be obeyed or the driver will be deemed in breach of contract"

Anybody want to predict the top 5 drivers at the end of the season? My own guess was based purely on female intuition . Any experts out there want to give a slightly more educated guess?