Well that must be enought of the whole pitting car 44 debacle for now.

What about the Grossjean Verstapine crash which caused it all? Roman's car positioning looked ok but not sure if he braked to early.

Should Verstapine have anticipated Roman braking early or is this the first time his inexperience and youth have shown?

Not sure they'd be allowed to tell him what other drivers were doing.

I guess the new rules about radio comm's are likely to add to the confusion of situations like this.
I guess there's no time for Lewis to ask if the others are stopping and then, upon being told that they're not allowed to tell him, ask "Okay then, tell me if the weather is nice right now" like he has, apparently, done previously.

Thinking about it from the "team" POV, I guess it might be that Hamilton was a victim of his own succcess.
He's built up a significant lead.
Safety car is deployed.
Merc' figure that they can pit Hamilton for new tyres to challenge Vettel if he decides to pit and they can leave Rosberg out to take the win if Vettel doesn't pit.
Hamilton's lead gave them the best opportunity to split their strategy and take a win regardless of what Vettel did.

Kind of a crappy thing to do to Hamilton but it could have been a smart team decision.
I don't think it was planned that way though. I think they just screwed-up.


Grosjean didn't brake early.

The stewards found that he braked 5m later than previous laps when Verstappen went into the back of him.

Verstappen screwed-up.

That info isnt included in the restrictions.



Although Roman did change line at the last moment before braking, think thats what caught Verstappen out. He had used the move successfully a few times during the race.

The issue that Merc had, from what I can tell from the various reports, is that Vettel was sufficiently behind Hamilton for the Ferrari pit crew to wait until after Hamilton had passed the pit entrance before they would have had to be anywhere near their pit positions ready for Vettel to come in.
During commentary it was mentioned that the tyres are not designed to drop to the temperatures they hit and then be fired up once again, meaning no one knew how well they would cope on the restart.
However, the likelihood was that even on poor tyres Hamilton would have been able to stay in front of a chasing Vettel who would have had to get past not only Rosberg but other drivers too that would have gone past during his stop.

As far as I can see, the errors fro the team were as follows:
1. Not appreciating the diminishing gap that Ham' had over Rosberg/Vettel caused by the VSC/SC situations.
2. Not understanding that a stop for Vettel would have moved him down the order, forcing him to overtake 2-3 other drivers before even getting to Ham', which in Monaco is always going to be next to impossible.
3. Not realising as the stop took place that it was about to go very wrong & then failing to request Rosberg to slow the pack down on the start/finish straight.

The decision to make the stop itself was rational given the circumstances they based the decision on. Sadly, the way they understood how the forthcoming sequence of events would evolve, was based on flawed & inaccurate data & comprehension of the events immediately before the Ham' pit stop.

The flack that some have been giving Ham', I personally think is a bit unjustified. As a driver he is able to relay his own perspective of what is happening to the pit wall, which is what he did when he said his tyres were cold and not gripping & asked for a pit stop. This request may have been partially down to him seeing his own pit crew in the pits & being concerned about Ros/Vet getting fresh rubber.
Had the pit wall had all the correct information &/or correctly ascertained there was a risk of losing first place, the request/suggestion from Ham would have been shut down and this situation would not be being debated.
I also fail to believe that Ham' would have followed an order to come in at that point in time if he knew there was a chance he could come out behind Ros/Vettel. He has the race craft to know that at Monaco, position is king & that he had the rear gunner of Rosberg holding up Vettel.
There is no way Merc would have allowed Rosberg to challenge Hamilton in the closing laps as it would likely lose them the 1-2

If thats the case then I think they need to start keeping an eye on Verstapine. He made a pass at Malaysia which looked spectacular because it work. Personally at the time I thought it was a which went one or two ways pass or crash.

Smashing in to the back of another car like that has got to gain a penalty, far to lax if the FIA take no action.

I think the line change is fine because when you are to the right of the pit straight you aren't lined up to enter Saint Devote so any body behind you has to expect you will move over to the left.

Roman did a lovely peice of driving when he tactically let the traffic through at the hairpin. Shame he go nothing out of it.

You might, at least, make an attempt to spell the drivers' names correctly.

I mean, it's right there in the post you're quoting.

Yeah great F1 comment there thanks for that.

He moved to the right.

Nothing wrong with that, just thats what caught him out. He is young and inexperienced, especially at Monaco, but its good to see young drivers giving it a go.

It's not great to see one F1 car climbing over another that is the sort of thing that gets people hurt.

Irrespective of whether he pitted or not, could others have passed Hamilton had he stayed out. Clearly not, in this particular GP, so there was no reason to pit.

Senseless, stupid decision.

With all the controversy from the race, the interesting bits coming out of the strategy group meeting before the weekend have got somewhat lost. It sounds like the mood has swung against refueling again as team bosses realise that it did little to improve racing before and was just expensive and dangerous.

The more interesting stuff has been around customer cars. Bernie has proposed a change whereby the three teams who receive the most money (Ferrari, McLaren and currently Red Bull) would build 2 extra cars each which they would donate to customer teams should the grid fall to 16 cars. However Lauda told Sky he suggested to the group that they shouldn't wait until 2 more teams die, do it now!

Apparently this is actually about equality of money. Mercedes don't expect the grid to fall to 16 anytime soon. They also think the three big teams would rather change how the money is shared out rather than build extra cars for others, but while the risk of that happening is remote nothing will change. If Mercedes could force through customer cars now they hope to get the three big teams to change their view on money earlier. They want this sorted now because by the end of next season Mercedes should be in a position to replace Red Bull as one of the big teams (as it's worked out on a rolling 5 year basis who's been most successful) and they definitely don't want customer cars (ironically). Bloody F1 politics.

Must admit, I just despair at everything related to the Sporting Fund, and how the money is divided up.

Even if you don't divert a larger chunk of the money away from Bernie and the investors, there's no reason why the cash couldn't be redistributed more sensibly, give every team a guaranteed budget of £40m-odd, still allow for sizeable bonuses as a reward for doing well in the constructor's championship and then, beyond that, if a team can go out and secure a heap of additional sponsorship, that's up to them.

Look what Williams have managed to do with a budget of £40m.
Imagine if every team had that sort of budget?
Seems like a grid filled with cars that were all at least similar in performance to the Williams wouldn't be too awful and then, if major manufacturers want to invest more money to get better results, you'd still have the opportunity to gain an advantage.

Williams haven't achieve enought in my book. They have the top engine in their car and so should be able to win races. They are not even close. Mercedes give Williams a 2nd rate engine and others a third rate engine.

They make sure none of their customer engine cars ever win a race. They would only do so to a greater extent with customer cars.

There will only be depth of quality in the field when producing an F1 car is reasonable simple and cheap.

Everthing done to the sport recently has brought the sport to a position where only a handful of companies can produce an F1 car at enormous expense. Rediculous given the performance of an F1 car is now only slightly better than other single seaters.

Think Williams run closer to £100m, and im pretty sure Merc are contractually bound to supply an equal engine. Of course thats just the block, teams still have to design all the other bits that go round it, ie the 'packaging'.

Lordy, you just never pass up an opportunity to have a dig at anything British, do you?

How'd you feel about the results Sauber, Toro Rosso and Marussia have been having with their Ferrari engines?
Are Ferrari involved in some dastardly plot to ensure customer teams never win too?

I wouldn't say a dastardly plot because Ferrari don't supply torro rosso. They only supply Marussia with the 2014 engine and Sauber have the same 2015 engine. The main reason why they have improved this year.

But as Ferrari management say. "No money, no honey"

Proof or GTFO.

With all the attention FIFA are getting, I wonder if it will give anyone the idea to have a closer look at F1 again? Bernie keeps getting caught up in legal arguments and keeps squirming his way out of them (bought his way out last time). I think where there's money in a sport there's dodgy dealings and I wonder if the climate that's made that acceptable is going to be blown away?

Anyway, on to Canada, always a favourite on the calendar.

2017 shaping up nicely. Wider cars, wider tyres, more ground effect.

Also looks like customer cars, or 'franchise' cars are gathering pace. Teams only allowed one franchise is the general idea.

Just watching a bit of P2. Can't believe Hamilton has been given the blame for the crash he had. It was far too wet for inters what were Mercedes thinking. Another bad decision from them and this time Hamilton gets made to take the blame.

It wasn't Lewis's fault.

I feel really bad for him.

Don't know what you were watching but I didn't see or hear anyone suggest LH was to blame. Seems pretty unanimous that inters were clearly the wrong tyre.

Nasr made a bit of a mess on the circuit, crashing in 3rd Practice when warming up the tyres.

Intetesting picture of the force india garage with what looks like heaters on the wheel hubs plugged in to the gantry. Are the team preheating the brakes and hubs now?

http://m.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119329

See Hamilton made to take the blame.

Also in todays sky coverage Martin Brundel crofty etc really saying hamilton percipitated the decision to pit for tyres at Monaco. Anybody want to call blatant racial discrimination on it?