I’d have been waiting forever even if you hadn’t.
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No, probably a week or so.
Well… hum….
I confess visiting their fighting cock forum when I have a shit day. Cheers me up.
Why them?
Because the caf and grandoldteam have largely accepted that their team are shit. Spurs forumites on the other hand still think that they should be CL regulars but the world is against them. It makes some fun reading
Sure, sure.
Yup.
Helmut wouldn’t do anything about that issue though.
Sure. A further factor in how F1 has been distorted as a competition. Every race there are two extra obstacles in Hamilton’s way than there is for Max.
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I’m still furious about this too. Hamilton has definitely been cheated out of it. He was the better and faster driver all race, and they manipulated it at the end, swerving the rules, to get one lap of mismatched racing, with Hamilton a sitting duck at that point. Dead wrong.
It won’t matter to F1 one jot, but I doubt I will watch in future. It’s a shitshow, and not sporting.
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Done is done. It’s been an injustice to Hamilton and a farcial end to what has been unto now one of the best f1 seasons.
Congratulations Max.
So it seems Masi was trying to correct his earlier decision to not allow lapped cars to pass which should have happened 3 laps earlier. Because there was no time to let the entire lapped field through and still finish on a green flag (afaia there was consensus from teams that they’d finish the race on a green if at all possible) he let through only those that would affect the outcome of the championship. Most drivers have said it’s 50/50 as to whether generally lapped cars can pass so it’s entirely normal for them to be allowed to pass which would have resulted with Verstappen right behind Hamilton in any case.
Was it wrong to hold the lapped cars back initially? It appears so, though without knowing the safety aspect it’s not possible to answer that with certainty.
Was it wrong to allow only some cars to pass? I realise a lot on here have got their knickers in an absolute twist on this but what difference does it make if it’s the entire field or just those in the way of the championship? Is it against the rules for Masi to make this call? Given the rejection of challenges over the last 24 hours it seems a lot of the rules are actually at his discretion and it’s a worry when one person can have that power.
The only question to answer is had the lapped cars been allowed to pass on lap 52 or whatever it was, whether that would have changed the Mercedes strategy. Would they have pitted and thus given Verstappen the lead, and the championship would have been decided in a reversal of the situation where Hamilton would attempt to pass Verstappen on the final lap? I think Verstappen had much younger tyres? 22 laps younger? So that should have been a much tighter battle. Throw in the likelihood of Verstappen running him off the track (for a championship remember…) and potentially Hamilton was doomed the second Latifi crashed.
The rule is essentially the procedure should be this or this, or whatever the fuck the race director wants to do. It appears with this final clause there isn’t much room to appeal, but that is different from complaints by fans about how this king like power was applied to create an incredibly unbalanced situation that so unfairly treated one of the two competitors who had utterly dominated the race up to that point.
I realize so fewer safety car situations in F1. This type of end of race is common in America, even in our open wheel series.
Looking back at it, I wonder if he could have red flagged the race as soon as the crash happened. Then both drivers would have been able to pit, get fresh tires and Masi still gets his fantasy situation of them going racing for three laps.
I think that video is quite a good indication of how safe what eventually happened was as well.
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I think the problem starts with this supposed agreement that the race shouldn’t end under a safety car if possible. That starts to ball moving with the strange decisions, every other race would have either ended under safety car or with the lapped cars still in the pack as there wasn’t time for them to get around to the back of the field before the end of the race. Massi clearly felt he had to engineer a situation where the championship contenders are racing on the last lap. Ridiculous situation, the standard rules should just have been applied. Formula One; the FIA and the teams, seem convinced that they need to manufacture competition and excitement to attract fans. But it is those decisions that are driving more people away.
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He just shat it. it’s too big a job for one man - there needs to be a team there working on it. In a few years, if he’s still in the job, these issues should be ironed out - but on this occasion he was obviously under pressure to get it to green flags, an in his haste to do so, didn’t really leave it a fair race on the final lap.
I’ve seen some people say “well that’s racing” - and whilst I agree it is - things can happen - this was not just a thing to happen.
I think a lot of folk are in agreement that it would have been much fairer to just red flag it.
I’m over it, in so much as I don’t agree with how it ended, but it is what it is. A bit like when Liverpool lose in a final - you have a couple of days in a bad mood with all the what ifs, but then it just goes.
I really hope that Lewis comes back for another go at trying to break 8. He’s taken this all very professionally and gracefully.
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Yep it’s a mess how it was handled and a red flag would have been appropriate.
I’m glad people have moved on from the blue loon like conspiracy theories that this was a deliberate attempt to take away the championship from Hamilton.
If that (make sure MV won the championship and not LH) was the intention it’s hard to imagine how they could have gone about it any better.
Masi failed to impose the rules set out by the FIA and, in doing so, distorted the competitive balance and dictated the outcome.
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Come here as pretty much a neutral “fan” without necessarily having a favourite driver or team.
After a long pause from F1 (and I was never a huge in-depth fan anyway, my stance is that you really need to follow/know much more during weeks than only watch the race to be one), I got attracted in last years. And that ‘watch’ part is probably also a fair bit of listening and people tuning in with their eyes only when they hear there’s some shit happening. It’s like it’s there on a Sunday, but you only really watch with focus a few minutes of it.
I don’t think it’s boring (but that’s also taste, some can’t watch it even for a few minutes), I’m not the type that needs to be entertained every single second, cars crashing every minute (actually think in some cases, what’s even the point, it’s like it’s bound to happen - no matter of the factor of difficulty), drama, etc. The race I prefer is really zero cars crashing, but that’s just me.
So, got attracted mainly though F1’s YT channel. It’s a sport that needs to be more closer to a very ordinary fan like me. Much more stuff around the race, analysis, explanations (massive part), etc. Watched the series as well. So they got my basic following back, I could say. F1 are in a good place now.
Initially was drawn to Max’s pure driving talent. And I also don’t mind if someone has a little spice about him, though that also brings a lot of situations where you can’t defend someone. Put it this way, I don’t like all good professionals nor I don’t like all “bad boys”. Very much depends from case to case. It’s sports at the end of the day, we don’t have to identify to the grave with all we see, radically pick sides, etc.
I’m aware of the budget thing and Lewis/Mercedes winning so much, but I didn’t like the “hate” towards that side. Like the feeling that Max’s/Red Bull’s win is supporting the good of the sport and all that type of dramatizing. It only created an effect with me where I started to know about and respect more Lewis’/Mercedes’ side for what they did and still do. And again, I admit that I’m not such an in-depth fan, certainly wasn’t for a lot of years when Lewis/Mercedes won a lot of their titles. I don’t know all the incidents or whatever behind the scenes.
With a lot of people, perhaps it just became a bit boring and they craved for a new younger champion. I can understand that, but I also don’t get that bored of good individuals and good teams. Pep’s Barca, I couldn’t get bored of them, because they were so good. Of course you like when sports titles are a bit more shared between teams/individuals, but it’s not because of boredom of watching good stuff happening. It’s also a little bit the world we live in now, people get bored too quickly and don’t appreciate enough what they’re witnessing. It’s always what’s next and who’s next. I don’t like to change my views so much, rather take it slow and enjoy if you’re witnessing something good.
As Lewis gets older, if nothing weird happens, my appreciation will only grow.
No matter from which perspective (Lewis fan, Max fan, Schumi fan or whoever fan), I am all for records to be constantly broken. Also because I don’t think it’s the only measure, who is the greatest or blah blah. You can still make enough arguments for someone like Schumi or whoever. So I hope Lewis gets his 8th title, it would be a bit of a shame if it ended here. It’s great that we have a new champion in Max and he’s bound to win more in his career, we’ll see.
Will be interesting times with a new champion and a new car in 2022.
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