F1 2021 Round 14: Monza

Well no, he had nowhere to go except off the track, Lewis had a ton of room on his outside and the rules are pretty explicit that he should have left a car’s width, which he didn’t. Nothing in the rules say it’s the duty of the overtaking car to drive off the circuit in the event that the defending car breaks the rules and turns into you.

Pretty much my view! I’d have been happier with no pen but it won’t have a huge impact if he takes the expected engine change

I'd agree, there should be an investigation into that. I'd have said it was a racing incident but a 3 place grid penalty is probably a similar enough penalty to what Hamilton got in Silverstone.

Well done Bottas on a great weekend from start to finish. Very little praise for him here, but that's normal enough.

I can't believe the Max penalty. For me, if anything, Lewis was slightly more to blame. Max was well up beside him (the rule is his front axle to be ahead of Lewis' rear, right?), his front axle was just behind Lewis's front axle, the gap was there, but then Lewis closed him off to clip the apex of T2. I've taken a few stills to illustrate my point:

1: Max outbreaks Lewis into T1 and gets up into a good position, slightly behind Lewis.

2: Into T2 the gap is there. The right lock that Max has on in the still (and the one posted earlier) has been on since T1 and was not done deliberately, as seemed to be implied by that earlier poster.

3: Lewis turns left to cut off Max, who also puts on full left lock to take the apex.

4: Nothing can be done at this stage. Bad luck that the rear tyres collided, but had Lewis been further right they would not have done and both drivers would have most likely continued. Just look at T1 on the first lap to a line of cars taking T1 and T2 2 abreast and not colliding (last still).

If be was correcting an oversteer caused by loss of grip at the back, then he would have to steer right.

...

Why should Hamilton have to back out every single time they are racing? Imola, Spain, lap 1 today, off the top of my head. Every single time he's either had the option of backing out, going off track or colliding with Max. Red Bull seem to be endowed with some devine right that both cars can consistently force other cars off track. When your team boss is saying something like "Thankfully Lewis had got out of it because otherwise he would have ended up in the fence." then what do Red Bull expect

He didn't back out in Silverstone. Got a piddly penalty that he had practically wiped out by the time he was forced to take it and won the race.

Which was a BS penalty, the same as the 3 place penalty Max has been given. Both minimal for racing incidents. Now tell me the difference between what Hamilton did at turn 4/5 on lap one and what Max did at turn one

Really surprised the stewards decided Max was more at fault, but it is what it is. Fully expect a new Verstappen PU next race, possibly Hamilton too.