F1 Silverstone *** Spoiler***
 

A great race. The 1/2 wet track, the charge by LH, lots of overtaking, & solid racing by Alonso to the win.

Ian

Something was very clear today, in F1 the guy out front with a decent lead has it made and is very hard to catch, unless his pit crew screws up.
Early on Vettel was running away with the race. Looked like no one would catch him, as usual.
He stayed out a couple laps too long and then the a bad pit cost him the lead and it changed 180.

Also looks like ferrari handed the bad crew and strategy baton to Mercedes. finally.
Not enough fuel? Seriously?

I watched the BBC feed of the race on Justin.tv. They had a ton of post race interviews including one with Pfaffet (SP?), McLaren's test driver. He explained that due to poor weather on Friday, they missed out on their fuel calculations runs so they couldn't set a baseline and that Hamilton ran much faster in the race than anticipated after his qualifying performance. The last stat they mentioned is that every 10 kilos of fuel costs .4 seconds per lap at Silverstone, so they didn't want to over fuel him.

Entertaining race, I hope that was the last Fox race. I want to see it live in HD on my tv, not my computer.

Nice win by Alonso. How does 1 bad pit stop for Vettel drop him from 1st to 6th (from where he had to claw his way back up to 2nd, which was gifted to him by Webber BTW)?

What a fantastic last lap. Hamilton-Massa and (kinda) Vettel-Webber.

I didn't get to see that Paffett interview, but suspected that perhaps the drying track may have thrown off McLaren's pre-race fuel calculations a bit. You run that ragged edge to disaster, particularly when you're behind.

I think the big story at the end was Webber being told not to pass Vettel. I wouldn't want to be in Webber's motorhome after the race.

I guess you didn't hear that Webber ignored the strategy. He was told to stand down and he ignored the team orders and raced as fast as he could.
Horner will be talking to him in private.


http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/10072011/66/surprised-horner-defends-team-orders.html

Agreed. Excellent drive by Alonso.



Tim

Anyone care to comment on the "defensive" move that hambone made on massa in the last corner?

F1 made no decision on it so I guess they thought it was OK for him to move completely over into Massa until he forced massa completely off the track to keelp the faster car from passing and then kept moving into him they made contact and bits of carbon fiber were flying.

If a ferrari had made the same move on soemone else, would the outcome be the same?

No, the other (non-Ferrari) car would have been fined, silly! SmileWavy

Seriously, I think Hamiltion got a little home-track advantage at this race. Which I guess is okay, because Ferrari gets it in Italy...and Spain...and Monaco...and Abu Dhabi....and Dubai...and Singapore....and Spain again...

What I wish the FIA would do is emulate NASCAR as far as making race-time decisions. I never see NASCAR take seven races to decide if a part is legal or not. They understand that taking so long will either penalize the teams that have the part or the teams that don't so a quick decision creates less inequity than a perfect decision. In NASCAR, if an incident happens during the race, the penalty happens during the race, except maybe during the final lap or two. You don't see a lot of post-race result adjustments. And finally, NASCAR does a pretty good job of meting out punishment equitably. Popular drivers/teams get penalized the same as less popular drivers and teams.

Vettel is 10 seconds ahead of Alonso, quick throw a full course caution for a car that spins in a turn and is completely offline.

NASCAR rules, no thanks.

I thought it was a racing incident. This is F1, the pinnacle of professional motorsports--not PCA club racing.

Notice how I didn't cite how NASCAR does in-race "cautions" as an example.

I will say this, I believe most of the "debris" cautions in NASCAR are actually designed to clear the rubber marbles off of the track to ensure that passing can still happen. (They always send out blowers to clear off the entire track.) The fact that this also bunches up the pack is just an added bonus from their perspective.

I would agree that the moment created by Hamilton was a racing incident but there seems to be a plethora of incidents around the "golden boy". "Best passer in F1?" you might as well name him "Barge Boy".

Barge:
1. To move about clumsily.
2. To intrude or interrupt, especially rudely: barged into the meeting


It is also interesting to note the remarkable similarity between the careers of Hamilton and Jacques Villeneuve. Oh wait, I guess since NASCAR we call him Jack.
Sparkling debut followed by a rapid descent into mediocrity. All Hamilton needs is an offer from Hyundai to build a team and history will repeats itself.

Watch the slo-mo of the accident - as soon as Hambone hits Massa, he straightens his wheels to push Massa off-course - same as the incident in Monaco. Hamilton is a dirty driver, and has way too many "racing incidents" to justify them as innocent.

That is the result of racing on tracks with 190MPH average lap speeds and and 30-40 second lap times. In the time it takes the entire field to pass by, the leader is right back into the caution area, makes clean up a pain, yah know? Also there is higher risk of a accident happening at the same spot as some drivers might go through the area slower than others, resulting in a car sliding off the track into the guy that has just stepped out of his car...

I watched the Road America race this year, there where a lot of times cars were offtrack or spun and no caution was thrown. On the other hand, the road course track cautions have such a slow pace car speed, and they do more caution laps than they probably really need - big big bore.