I hope the decision stands,, you can't make a rule and then piss about with it when it suits, he was given advice by his team over the radio and broke the rules, he should stop moaning and whinging and accept the decision.

Well done British stewards for upholding a rule

Why would that be a problem (not finishing). Happens to loads of cars.

That's two soft decisions he's had in two races.

On what grounds. If Mercedes couldn't tell Nico about his breaks failing in Austria ( a genuine safety issue ) then how can they justify telling him about a gearbox,

It was a calculated ploy by Mercedes, hoping the stewards would be soft. In turn the stewards have now set a precedence on the penalty given for breaking orders on radio instructions.

I suspect the next race for Nico will be hit with a gearbox penalty, at a track Lewis usually does well at with Lewis hopefully getting ahead in the Drivers Championship ahead of the Summer break.

If that is so, I wouldn't put it past Lewis to try and engineer an incident, knowing how clumsy Nico is at time to get Nico suspended for a race or two, knowing he could then take an engine penalty for a new engine and still score some points. In addition, knowing that Nico at some time later on in the season may also have to take engine penalties himself given the length of the season this year.

Thats the way i see it too. If he was about to have to retire then the instructions given allowed him to nurse the car to the end and gain 18 points, 15 as it is now. If i was the other teams id be appealing that decision on the grounds that without the instruction he would have stopped thus allowing them all to be bumped up one place.

Mansell was one but who are the others?

Might not be British..

Please could you qualify that comment.

British and steward.

I am aware Nigel Mansel was on the governance panel that along with others would of been responsible for this decision, but were they all British?

Why are they a disgrace? There is a rulebook, they have measured the incident against a ruling, and rightly applied a penalty.

And it has not yet been appealed, Mercedes are merely lodging a placeholder whilst it considers whether to appeal or not. They now have 96 hrs to decide whether they wish to appeal.

The rules as they stand at the moment are daft.

Drivers shouldn't be having to faff around with controls on the stearing wheel to guess the settings, or try and reset the system when it's gone wrong. At the same time the coaching we had before was stupid too.

In the same way modern aircraft have manuals listing procedures in the event of unusual circumstances so the pilots don't have to guess and crash the blooming plane so should F1 drivers have access to similar information - obviously reading at the wheel isn't going to be possible so it will inevitably need to be some form of communication with the pits. Why not copy what we see elsewhere in the sport and offer a token system - e.g. ten such instructions throughout the season with a ten second time penalty for each further instruction, stops the coaching but allows drivers to get useful information like this when needed, effectively ending the racing because of a software glitch is worse than the coaching!

With Rosberg's car today selecting the default mode to reset the system and being advised not to use 7th gear sound like the sort of instructions that are reasonable - being told three time afterwards that you work round not using 7th gear by skipping 7th gear that's starting to get more into coaching.

Perhaps the drivers need to take a hint from the airline industry and practice various failures in the simulators though!

The rule is stupid but its also the rule and he clearly broke it. I cant remember which race it was this year but Hamilton was constantly told they cant help him with an issue or setting on his car. I remember him saying "its stupid, ive gone through every setting i can think of"

As i said, stupid rule but still the rules. If they didnt break it for Hamilton then they shouldnt have broke it for Rosberg today.

That was in Baku. He found the right combination just before the end of the race if I'm not mistaken.

As for today. The office decision on the website says that some of radio message was permitted, I imagine the "Mode 1" message, it was the "Don't use 7th" message which is the dodgy one as far as I can tell.

Anyway, Merc putting in an appeal so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Far too many settings on the steering wheel.

Guess Merc were trying not to have a pissed off Rosberg in the garage and chanced it.

Exactly!

I said earlier Hamilton is leagues ahead of Rosberg in damp/wet/changeable conditions. If there's anyone here who still needs convincing, this might be of interest:
http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/36759542

great post..

I personally like the Joker card concept, you can do it once re this kind of issue but only once a race.

But overall I would want more radio chatter, but not the coaching we had before , its a fine balance and I can understand its very hard to get the right levels agreed by all the teams.


Spot on, Nicos team rolled the dice on a penalty versus him DNF instead.

The other week Lewis asked for advice about settings on the steering wheel and was categorically told no they couldn't give him any, Rosberg asks and he gets told the information regardless of the risk of rule breaking, talk about double standards or what from a team that insists it treats it's drivers equally.

The question is where do you draw the line over driver communication.

One safety grounds such as informing driver about brakes potentially failing then that info should be passed on, but it would be up to the driver as to how he changes the way he driver. That way Mercedes could have informed Nico his brakes were failing in Austria and not try to defend any passing move by Lewis. Ditto Perez being told about his brakes by Force India. Yes both cars may have gotten more points, but had Perez been going a lot faster when his brakes failed the consequences could have been more serious

The stewards now in a way though have laid down a marker for the type of punishment a driver can expect, so you can expect now teams will tell their drivers to create a gap to cover any time penalty so they can give them a message. about settings.

With regards to penalties, it's time the stewards themselves were given proper guidelines over fixed penalties for transgressions that these penalties made public. I feel Nico got off far to lightly in Austria, only suffering the pain for his own clumsiness, In reality, what he did was more worthy of a longer time penalty or at least being placed further back on the grid at the British Grand Prix.

Nico was told the same in that race but managed to sort it anyway. Back then in both cases it was a loss of performance only, this race it may well have led to retirement so the team considered it worth the risk of telling him as the penalty was unknown and it also sets a marker for the future - i.e. rather than Nico retiring from the race the team have now secured third place, and also know that if Lewis was the have similar troubles while 15 seconds ahead of Nico at the German Grant Prix it's worth telling him how to fix it.

Do keep up, In Baku, it was Lewis who had an issue he asked for advice and was categorically told they couldn't give him any, he said in response that he would try the different settings himself which he did and was able to rectify the problem himself, Nico wasn't refused advice in Baku because he didn't have a problem and didn't ask for advice, yesterday Nico clearly asked for and was given advice about what setting to use and to avoid using 7th gear, that helped him maintain his track position, trust me I wouldn't be commenting on it if I didn't know I was right.

Yes exactly, I know it seems like a conspiracy theory but it's not, as it's is actually happening in plain site for everyone to see and hear.


You are 100% correct as that is exactly what happened, while some may argue the rules are wrong on this they are still the rules until such time they are changed.

Quite a good race due to the rain though Hamilton was never in any danger of not winning. Rosberg was bound to get a penalty as if it was terminal or about safety he could have just retired the car and telling him to bypass seventh gear when shifting up is about as clear cut as it gets on how to drive the car. The funniest bit was Button on Ron Dennis attending an engineering meeting, it hints that his days at McLaren are numbered.

Whose days Buttons, Dennis or both?

Mercedes have withdrawn the appeal. So much for taking it to the courts!

Bizarre that they even considered an appeal.

Under the influence?

If they keep the rule, how long before teams develop coded messages to pass instructions to a driver? If the FIA want F1 to really be about driver ability then you could argue that there shouldn't be any radio comms full stop.

The teams have been using 'coded messages' ever since these rules were introduced, hence why the FIA are threatening to tighten up the rules rather than relaxing them.

I thought the hammer time message was allowed and then not allowed after further additions but ot reappeared at Austria.

I have a problem with rules being applied strictly and that is it isn't always what has been happening. Such as Mercedes cars with under pressure tyres on the grid. They got a let off that day.