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

cu3ed said:
I can't see why Vers got such a huge penalty for that, it was a racing incident, Grosjean seemed to slam on the brake really early for the corner.
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Grosjean braked later than the lap before, and he wasn't exactly going to leave the door open for Verstappen to overtake, but critically Grosjean didn't change direction.

The sole cause of that accident was inexperience, and he'll learn from that. It could have been the mother and father of all accidents with Verstappen somersaulting over the Sainte Devote barriers.

Massa and Perez's accident at Montreal looked similar last year, but was caused by Perez changing direction (hence Perez getting the penalty on that occasion).
 
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ZG002 said:
Meh Massa managed to crash in the same place all on his own couple of years ago.
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I don't think you'll find many placing the halo over Massa's head, but that doesn't make him wrong, especially if he's worried about a fellow driver's ability to fight wheel to wheel safely when he's in one of the other cars.

A few in the paddock immediately and openly questioned Verstappen's age and lack of experience when he was announced. That he had a strong opening to the season shouldn't be tarnished by that (rather wild) mishap on Sunday, but I bet there's a few more keeping a weary eye on him now, and not in a respectful way.

If it was Grosjean or Maldonado who pulled that move on Sunday the forum would have melted by now.
 
this_is_gav said:
I don't think you'll find many placing the halo over Massa's head, but that doesn't make him wrong, especially if he's worried about a fellow driver's ability to fight wheel to wheel safely when he's in one of the other cars.

A few in the paddock immediately and openly questioned Verstappen's age and lack of experience when he was announced. That he had a strong opening to the season shouldn't be tarnished by that (rather wild) mishap on Sunday, but I bet there's a few more keeping a weary eye on him now, and not in a respectful way.

If it was Grosjean or Maldonado who pulled that move on Sunday the forum would have melted by now.
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If he starts turning into either of those drivers then your point will stand. One crash at Monaco of all places it's neither here or there imo. The lad has shown some proper skill so far this season.

Guess we will see what the next few GP bring. Still think Massa needs to pipe down.
 
I think the issue that's arisen is the nature of the accident. It wasn't malicious, it's wasn't a silly misjudgement costing a front wing and points for someone, it was just downright scary. It's the exact sort of crash you'd expect from someone with so little experience of single-seaters and learning from watching racing from the recent past. He totally misjudged another car's lack of braking ability on worn rubber, trying to go for a gap which never existed, and it could so easily have had dire repercussions like Villeneueve in Fuji (edit: or Jacques in Melbourne now I come to think of it) or Krosnoff in Toronto.

Experienced drivers have done the same (Webber in 2010 in Valencia being the most recent similar accident which springs to mind), but it certainly focusses the spotlight on Verstappen, be that fair or not.

Time will tell, but he certainly needs to keep his nose clean for the next few races.
 
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Toto has come out with some really clear answers to questions - all credit to him:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2015/05/...rategy-error-and-rubbishes-conspiracy-claims/

However, one of them causes some confusion in my mind:

If Hamilton passed Vettel would you have asked Rosberg to let Hamilton pass?
“Very good question. It would have been a very tough call to make.”

I don't understand this. If the same situation took place but with a few more seconds available, and a wheel nut jammed or something else went wrong with the team in the pitstop, would the answer be the same? Of course it would not - there would be no question about letting the driver back.

It raises the question that there's a different policy in place for a botched pitstop compared to a botched strategy call. Both have the same net result but both could have different outcomes, with Toto admitting that one of them would give them cause to think very hard indeed.

If they made the call then it would then put Rosberg in the position of villain or number two driver. Villain if he refused the order, and number two driver if he accepted it. After all, he'd have done nothing wrong.

I can understand that Toto wouldn't want to rub salt into Hamilton's wounds by giving an outright negative response, but his reply is nevertheless confusing. If I was Rosberg I'd want to know why. But, as it is, let's hope everyone can move on. Hamilton's ability to do so has been so much improved in the past 18 months that I'm sure he'll have a strong race in Canada.
 
The_Abyss said:
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?
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I see no problem with having a VSC initially. It effectively freezes the race and gaps.

Double waved yellows surely could have worked as well, but I guess something else could happen somewhere else making things even worse.
 
The_Abyss said:
Toto has come out with some really clear answers to questions - all credit to him:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2015/05/...rategy-error-and-rubbishes-conspiracy-claims/

However, one of them causes some confusion in my mind:

If Hamilton passed Vettel would you have asked Rosberg to let Hamilton pass?
“Very good question. It would have been a very tough call to make.”

I don't understand this. If the same situation took place but with a few more seconds available, and a wheel nut jammed or something else went wrong with the team in the pitstop, would the answer be the same? Of course it would not - there would be no question about letting the driver back.

It raises the question that there's a different policy in place for a botched pitstop compared to a botched strategy call. Both have the same net result but both could have different outcomes, with Toto admitting that one of them would give them cause to think very hard indeed.

If they made the call then it would then put Rosberg in the position of villain or number two driver. Villain if he refused the order, and number two driver if he accepted it. After all, he'd have done nothing wrong.

I can understand that Toto wouldn't want to rub salt into Hamilton's wounds by giving an outright negative response, but his reply is nevertheless confusing. If I was Rosberg I'd want to know why. But, as it is, let's hope everyone can move on. Hamilton's ability to do so has been so much improved in the past 18 months that I'm sure he'll have a strong race in Canada.
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This was a protective move though. So there could feasibly be a scenario where for example

Hamilton
Rosberg +15
Vettel +25

that pitting Hamilton and telling Rosberg to let him past is the best move. It covers off Vettel with no change in the order. In this case obviously they were expecting Hamilton to be out in front of Rosberg.
 
muon said:
This was a protective move though. So there could feasibly be a scenario where for example

Hamilton
Rosberg +15
Vettel +25

that pitting Hamilton and telling Rosberg to let him past is the best move. It covers off Vettel with no change in the order. In this case obviously they were expecting Hamilton to be out in front of Rosberg.
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So in the scenario you describe they'd still get their one two but with Rosberg in front, unless they allowed Hamilton to pass. I don't see any reason why they would do that, and favour one driver over the other.

There's a clear difference between protecting a team race position and protecting a driver's position.
 
The_Abyss said:
So in the scenario you describe they'd still get their one two but with Rosberg in front, unless they allowed Hamilton to pass. I don't see any reason why they would do that, and favour one driver over the other.

There's a clear difference between protecting a team race position and protecting a driver's position.
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Because pitting Rosberg would lose track position if pitted. Hamilton won't agree to pitting unless that scenario played out.

Rosberg would have no reason to not allow it unless he initially cooperates and then reneges.
 
muon said:
Because pitting Rosberg would lose track position if pitted. Hamilton won't agree to pitting unless that scenario played out.

Rosberg would have no reason to not allow it unless he initially cooperates and then reneges.
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You're missing the point. In the scenario you describe, Mercedes would still get a one two. Why should the driver who emerges in front be asked to give the position back? If that was the case then any time the lead driver gained 25 seconds over the third place driver (assume non Mercedes) he could pit and ask for his position back.
 
Still a mute point, even with dud tires the pace Hamilton had, it utterly beggars belief why it was ever even thought of at Monaco, that close to the end, to bring him in.
 
If Rosberg was told to move over I'd support him if he didn't.
It wasn't his mistake.

Oh, does anyone feel sorry for maldanado yet ? :-P
 
IF Hamilton had come out as No2 in the race after his 2nd stop , I can see it going both ways - Rosberg got so much grief for last year's Monaco, he might have let Hamilton through, but if he was stubborn about it and held him off I cant see why he would be to blame either it wasn't his **** up to start with (and I can see a lot of fans giving him grief FOR giving up the place if he did for that very reason)
 
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al4x said:
If Rosberg was told to move over I'd support him if he didn't.
It wasn't his mistake.

Oh, does anyone feel sorry for maldanado yet ? :-P
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Yes, I both hate Maldonado with the crap he's gotten up to, but he can be an exciting driver to watch. Regardless, he's had horrific luck this year.

It's again worth pointing out this is not even the second time his brakes have failed, they've failed in practices before and had issues in qualifying with them. Brake by wire failed and caused his race to end twice this season, China and here. The crash from Button isn't what caused the brake failure in China.

We had a very similar situation to China in Monaco. Verstappen was behind but you could see Maldonado was slowing early and had little to no drive out of the corner to the point where a Renault(even in Monaco) was clearly faster out of corners. We had the same thing in China, he couldn't overtake Button easily and a crappy Honda saw Button powering out of corners better than an awesome... but mgu-k-less Merc engine. Maldonado's mgu-k was gone way before the crash.

This pretty much leads you to think that like Rosberg at Bahrain when his brake by wire went, Maldonado's brake by wire likely went as he entered the pit lane. So people having a go at him for that are simply wrong, the brakes failed and he was lucky to not hit anything and be able to get into the pits at all. The spin could also have been down to vastly decreased drivability without the mgu-k working. Engine maps without the mgu-k won't be as refined and power won't be as smooth.

Every or almost every contact this year hasn't been his fault, he's also had mgu-k failure/brake by wire failure in two of the 6 races. Thing is, when the car has been working his racecraft has been good, made some good overtakes, shown some real pace in that Lotus and for me, has noticeably out driven Grosjean in races.
 
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