Monaco Grand Prix 2015, Monte Carlo - Race 6/19

cu3ed said:
So what about Kim constantly cursing and blaming everyone about him?.
What about how terrible Button was at Honda, climbing out of the car walking out and flying home?
Senna not even driving back to the pits claimed in a car and went home etc?.
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LOL, yes Senna indeed.
Kimi hasn't been just as annoyed as he used to be, if anything he was rather comical yesterday, I think Vettel's sence of humour is rubbing off on him, he used to be an angry young man, then an angry middle aged man, yesterday ' He bumped me from behind and pushed me off, that wasn't a very nice thing to do!' ;)
Hilarious.
I was a bit surprised to see they didn't penalise Riccardo actually.

It doesn't make Hamilton seem any better. Anger is one thing, spitting the dummy, acting like a child, and being a douche, are all things I associate with Hamilton rather than with the others strangely.
Maybe its the earrings ;)
 
EVH said:
dm, I'm aware of why they use the VSC, but the fact was they activated the VSC then 30 seconds later sent the real SC out. I think this caught out the team.

There shouldn't need to be a real SC for someone to grab a wing from the track, that's why they have double waved yellows. Not to mention there are 9 cranes around Monaco, so we ended up with everyone trawling around behind Bertie for what seemed like an eternity.

Merc should never have pitted him, but id like to know why they went VSC >SC
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I was fairly sure my post explained that but I'll try again. Double waved yellows weren't enough for the piece of wing precisely because of where it was. Drivers can't see around that corner till they are right there and the track is very narrow, it would be incredibly dangerous for a marshal to run on and grab it. Obviously this is different at the start of the race and later on. At the start after the last car there would be 1 minute gap between last car and leader, 15 laps later with a few pitstops a few cars already down a lap as a result of damage/pits there was no comfortable gap, the VSC was used to induce a gap rather than catch everyone with a full safety car.

With Max, you had a car in a different position, if the car came out easily that is one thing, but it didn't. You see them pull on the car multiple times with an increasing number of marshals, the danger was increasing as more people were on track and it was taking longer.

At the specific moment the VSC was likely introduced just to reduce danger at that corner while a driver was still in the car, the safety car then came out to catch them. Don't forget that the safety car comes out after the pits and would be beyond the crash after 10 seconds yet some cars wouldn't catch up to it for another minute or more. Meaning the safety car could be at the tunnel for instance while some car is going down the start finish straight catching up the safety car at higher speed than the safety car.. this while Max and marshals were on the track. The VSC meant instantly an effective full course speed limit, not just when cars catch up to the safety car.

The VSC is an improvement in safety even when a full safety car is needed because it can bring speed down instantly around the entire track, not just for the cars caught in the queue behind the safety car.
 
Got back home today after a ridiculous 5 days in Monaco. If anyone watched the Monaco special F1 show on Sky then there was a 30 second short on the F1 Innovation Prize and I seemed to have bagged quite a bit of the camera time. Although fortunately you can't hear what I'm saying. They did give us our fair share of alcohol.

Not going to do a full write-up now, but if people are interested in how the experience went, what we got up to, who we met, where we went and what we saw I'll post something up. It was a truly surreal experience considering I've dreamt of going to the race and never thought I'd do it in such a fashion as we did.

The end of the race from the stands perspective was just weird. There were a lot of Ferrari fans being so close to Italy and they cheered for Vettel as you'd expect, but the cheer for Rosberg was a respectful patter for a faux first place. The cheer and applause for Lewis was quite moving. Everyone knew he had that race in the bag and there was a certain amount of disbelief that he wasn't on the top spot.
 
gord said:
Got back home today after a ridiculous 5 days in Monaco. If anyone watched the Monaco special F1 show on Sky then there was a 30 second short on the F1 Innovation Prize and I seemed to have bagged quite a bit of the camera time. Although fortunately you can't hear what I'm saying. They did give us our fair share of alcohol.
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Have it recorded.
 
drunkenmaster said:
....
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I. know. that. No need to be so condescending :o

I know the reasons for the use of the VSC and understand why it's a good idea, but they hadn't shown or mentioned barrier repairs at the time, so it seemed a bit of a shambles how it all changed in 30 seconds or so. Obviously, as Skeeter pointed out, they needed to get the JCB on and in hindsight it should have been obvious. Perhaps the FIA could have issued an on-screen message stating barrier repairs at T1 whilst the SC came out, to avoid confusion.

Either way, Britney got gifted the win because of a Merc balls-up. Would have loved to have been in the driver de-brief :D
 
Although I'm far from Hamilton's biggest fan (I think he's contributed an unnecessary amount to wasting his undoubted talent over the years), my interpretation of those who are laying some blame at his door for the decision to pit are off the mark.

Hamilton's feedback to the engineer before the decision to pit, that his tyres were unusually cold and that he had no grip, was entirely appropriate. In fact, it was consistent with the same feedback given by Rosberg. Hamilton could not know the gap behind him nor calculate whether there was enough time to pit - that's a decision in which he needs to place trust in the team. Only they have all the necessary data available but, even taking that into account, as demonstrated at this race they are still capable of making an incorrect decision.

I thought Rosberg's reaction was more or less appropriate. He knows that he was behind Hamilton all weekend, but what driver wouldn't take the gift of a win when presented like that? He did nothing wrong and I don't think there's any question at all of giving back the place should Hamilton have been able to get past Vettell.

Hamilton's reaction was better than I expected. Although I generally have pretty low expectations of how he conducts himself in the media I've learned over the years that the image on show, whether you like it or not, really is just him. He said all the right things, whether he believed or meant them, and I think is more than ever now able to put a bad weekend behind him and move on.

On a completely separate note, I'd like to put in a plea to call for fewer of the artificially raised sausage kerbs in F1. This sounds like a lot of ifs and maybes, but I was struck at the speed at which Verstappen crossed the kerb before hitting the barrier. The five marshals behind the barrier had no fence protection at all, and if that kerb had been more raised then Verstappen could easily have flown over the barrier right in to them, head on. That is a lot of ifs and maybes, but these kerbs are appearing everywhere now. If they launch a car into the air then the chances are that the retaining barrier will be wire fence and not a proper crash retarding barrier. I'd like to see F1 learn from a catastrophe that didn't happen and review their use of these kerbs, perhaps with stricter enforcement of track limits instead.

On the issue of the VSC vs SC, is it possible that the VSC was deployed before a complete assessment of the required repair work was completed?
 
There was some confusion at this stage. Following the crash the Virtual Safety Car was deployed for the first 30 seconds, then a full Safety Car period was declared. And on the timing screens Hamilton’s advantage over Rosberg appeared to increase from 19.1 seconds to 25.7 on lap 64, the figure seemingly inflated by the slower speed they were now circulating at.

Added to this was unclear communication between Mercedes and Hamilton over what his rivals were doing and whether he needed a fresh set of tyres. After the Safety Car was summoned (the Virtual Safety Car boards were displayed for the first 30 seconds) Mercedes sent their crew into the pit lane immediately, which Hamilton noticed.
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There was some confusion at this stage. Following the crash the Virtual Safety Car was deployed for the first 30 seconds, then a full Safety Car period was declared. And on the timing screens Hamilton’s advantage over Rosberg appeared to increase from 19.1 seconds to 25.7 on lap 64, the figure seemingly inflated by the slower speed they were now circulating at.
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That was as Hamilton came into the pits, which is a shorter route (and part of which is not limited by the delta time).

I think the actual gap was, as said, around the 19-20 second mark, which is why Rosberg was only just ahead of him. Had Mercedes performed a decent stop (rather than the 4.1 second stop he had), he'd have been ahead of Vettel and probably Rosberg too.

The reasoning for a pitstop was sound, the calculations for it were only slightly off (like tenths).
 
Excuses excuse really... I just can't fathom why they thought it was a good idea to give Lewis new boots so close to the end of the race when it is blooming hard to overtake.
 
leaskovski said:
Excuses excuse really... I just can't fathom why they thought it was a good idea to give Lewis new boots so close to the end of the race when it is blooming hard to overtake.
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Yep, unless his tyres being so bad there was a very real danger of causing him to crash out and end up with nothing there was no reason to pit.
 
Guerrilla said:
Yep, unless his tyres being so bad there was a very real danger of causing him to crash out and end up with nothing there was no reason to pit.
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Unless they thought Vettel would pit and would have been a threat with fresh tyres - they would have seen Verstappen coming through on his fresh super softs too. I suspect they were hedging their bets, a free pit stop for Hamilton, keeping his lead, while leaving the other with his old tyres as he couldn't pit into clear air (or consider a late dash into the pits if Ferrari had come out for Vettel).

Keep in the mind the status of the softs - very hard to warm up, and in the past that is amplified when the tyres are heavily worn. Perhaps that is one of the things they would have checked on Thursday, given the way the tyres weren't warming up, but the rain might have stopped that from happening. Perhaps the risk was in staying out rather than pitting. I don't know.

As it was, they miscalculated and didn't get Hamilton back out in the lead, but I can understand why they did it, given what they thought the needed gap was.



SPG said:
Why is this even on the race calendar, Not really a F1 fan but i fail to see the point in this racetrack whatsoever ?
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Monaco is definitely one for the purists who can appreciate the dancing they do with the throttle and brakes, using them to turn as much as the wheel, brushing up against the barriers. It's less evident with these cars as it was in the 90s and earlier, but still.

Plus the history, and by that I mean the races, not the location. Epic races like 1982, 1992, 1996 and 1997 leave marks on you that you'll never forget, more so than at other tracks for some reason.

The casual fans usually just want to watch action and overtaking, which is obviously seldom the case at Monaco.
 
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Mercedes were just being greedy and it backfired. They thought they had a full window but they didn't. All they wanted was to put fresh supersofts on Hamilton so he could finish 50 seconds ahead.
 
They wanted fresh super softs to counter Vettel putting them on, but that's flawed in 2 ways. Firstly track position > fresh tyres in Monaco, especially with Rosberg as rear gunner, and secondly there wasn't even the slightest hint that Ferrari were planning to pit.

Mercedes screwed up. Simple as that.
 
Skeeter said:
and secondly there wasn't even the slightest hint that Ferrari were planning to pit.
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Despite Kravitz's determination on that matter, they couldn't possibly have known at the time they decided to pit. Vettel was 20 seconds further back and Ferrari had plenty of time to pick up and carry 4 wheels into the pitlane.

As I said, Verstappen was slicing his way through the field on fresh super softs, so what was to say a top car couldn't do the same?

My main reasoning was the unknown reaction of the tyres to a cold cycle, given the problems suffered in practice. A heavily worn tyre left to cool will basically cure and on the already difficult to warm tyres (though better than Thursday and Saturday) it could have been a disaster, like driving on concrete tyres. It one of the things they would might have tested on Thursday given the state of the tyres, but the rain might have prevented it.

I think they saw the risk in not pitting rather than the other way around, as most have viewed it, given the misguided thought that they had enough time to get him in and out.
 
this_is_gav said:
Despite Kravitz's determination on that matter, they couldn't possibly have known at the time they decided to pit. Vettel was 20 seconds further back and Ferrari had plenty of time to pick up and carry 4 wheels into the pitlane.

As I said, Verstappen was slicing his way through the field on fresh super softs, so what was to say a top car couldn't do the same?

My main reasoning was the unknown reaction of the tyres to a cold cycle, given the problems suffered in practice. A heavily worn tyre left to cool will basically cure and on the already difficult to warm tyres (though better than Thursday and Saturday) it could have been a disaster, like driving on concrete tyres. It one of the things they would might have tested on Thursday given the state of the tyres, but the rain might have prevented it.

I think they saw the risk in not pitting rather than the other way around, as most have viewed it, given the misguided thought that they had enough time to get him in and out.
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That throws a rather interesting slant on the teams view of Rosberg.

They pitted due to concern that Ferrari would pit and beat them... But they only pitted Hamilton. There doesn't seem to have even been a discussion about Rosberg. So had Ferrari pitted and they not screwed up on their timings they would have basically thrown Rosberg under the bus in order to save Hamilton's win.

I wonder if Rosberg has figured that out yet? The team were perfectly happy to sacrifice his ability to defend against a faster Vettel.
 
I see Massa's stuck his oar in, to say Verstappen deserved his penalty, because he was dangerous.
Guess his first season is too far back for him to remember, but everyone makes mistakes Felipe. ;)
 
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