Championship showdown this weekend. Will Lewis win his eight title or will Max win his first? All will be revealed on Sunday.
TV Times:
Qualifying Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports)
Race Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports and Channel 4)
Bring! It! On!
i have no love for Lewis but dear god the hatred for him here is unreal, imagine getting so worked up about someone you’ve never even met, bizarre!
Well Netflix must be over the moon.
What rules are they?
well surely the FIA will take more than one angle to determine whether max was actually ahead.
Dont think it did though, Max had him on toast the minute that decision was made
Few thoughts:
Despite many saying it should have been red flagged, you can’t red flag a race on racing rather than safety grounds, and it would have had the effect of neutralising Red Bull’s legitimately gained tire advantage.
I accept that the rules were not followed: not all the lapped cars were released and the race should have restarted the following lap. But, while I feel great sympathy for Hamilton about the inopportune safety car, it seems to me a weak defence to be relying on technicalities to have kept a faster car behind.
Masi has shown himself out of his depth and an obnoxious communicator. But it’s probably wrong that he has to deal with team principals over the radio while trying to make important decisions.
Two words.
Mercedes. Benz.
Anyway, Merc are in the right with their protest, Masi compromised the rules, my guess is it'll be a count back to the moment before the Safety Car was deployed.
I reckon a 10s penalty for Masi is fair. After all, it's already been established at Silverstone it's about the mistake not the consequence of the mistake.
Would they go against him though? I doubt it
The regulations does not say only some cars.
The race director went against fia rules.
My box cut out with 5 laps to go, had to switch to commentary on YT. What a time for the whole thing to go.
I had a feeling someone would hit that wall, surprised it took so long.
Bit peeved that i didnt back the PP special of both Williams to retire, it caught my eye at 20/1(maybe slightly more) 😄
Also there's already precedent for unlapped cars not catching up to the tail of the field before a restart.
Masi is allowed to let no cars overtake the safety car or all of them, not some of them.
The whole point of the regulations to let cars unlap themselves is to get them out of the way. It worked as intended.
Nasi is a fool though and the release of snippets of radio doesn't help him.
As Sky said the FIA wont go against their own ruling. Max did nothing wrong so they cant blame or dock him.
All of this was because Masi said earlier in the week that if there was a crash like Latifi’s then he wouldn’t put out the red flag.
It absolutely would have been the thing to do here. Standing start, same tyres, right beside each other and nobody would be able to complain.
However, Masi showed his incompetence once again by making a decision about lapped cars not overtaking, and then deciding at the last minute to let some of them overtake and brought the safety car in immediately, instead of the end of the following lap like the regulations clearly state.
He made a complete mess of this all because he said he wouldn’t put out a red flag earlier in the week and now Max’s title win is overshadowed by the actions of someone else completely out of his control.
That’s why I said Mercedes should let it go because Max did nothing wrong here, Michael Masi did.
Mercedes made decisions based on the existing rules. Masi knew that, by only letting a few cars past, that he was handing the championship to Max.
This is why id say the communication was poor.
Having said that, even had Merc known the decision for them would have been tough, because they would anyway have had to decide to possibly concede track position. It’s always a tougher decision when you’re in front.
Looks like for a very short period Verstappen was ahead of Hamilton when Hamilton braked suddenly before the restart, but when the race restarted, Hamilton was still ahead of Verstappen so no advantage gained.
If they pull Verstappen up for very small margins that had no impact on the restart and let Hamilton away with lap 1 where there was far more of a gain, then I think Red Bull will take this to court.
Absolutely disgusting from Mercedes
That's a great decision under tough circumstances. No one other than a Hamilton fan wants to see a race won on a yellow.
It was an incredible finish remembered for years
It’s funny all the conspiracy theorists before the race imagining in their head that Verstappen was going to take Lewis out when in reality he overtook him with two beautiful clean overtakes, while Lewis resorted to cheating and taking a massive shortcut to undo the first one and Mercedes are now trying to undo the second one with dodgy back room dealings.
Championship of my life (fan since ,96)
That's not down to the race directors though. If Lewis pitted and Max stayed out and the race finished under the SC Toto would still be crying like a 5 year old.
Anyone know what happened Checo's car?
Finally justice for Max, deserved.
Stewards on the first lap, no?
As for refs decision final... You are OK with the ref just making stuff up? That goal doesn't count cause a fan shouted in the crowd. Refs decision final.
For this to be in the spirit of racing it has to completely ignore that one of the drivers was going to have a huge, huge tyre advantage.
Well he was told on the radio by the team to watch that so red bull probably knew the limit.
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