Formula 1 Talk 2007 Season

[tcbass]

No punishment for BMW or Williams.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/63567

No doubt people will say it's all Ferrari's fault.

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by Shadow Demon UK

Hamilton showed his inexperiance there trying to overtake Alonso when there was no need to, down to 18th but fighting his way through the pack, personally i think hes blown it unfortunately.

I assume we were watching the same race, but Hamilton didn't try to overtake Alonso, he was on the front of the starting grid, the two Ferraris took the first corner and Hamilton lost his third place to Alonso as he was concentrating on not hitting the back on Raikonnen. Perhaps that was down to his inexperience, but if Hamilton had a proper team-mate then perhaps it should not have been an issue.

Originally Posted by Hom3r

WTF hamilton in the pits for fuel.

Goodbye F1 and goodbye ITV SH*T coverage
Just emailed this to ITV regarding there coverage

You coverage of F1 has been totally **** all season.

Yet again adverts are interupted by the racing

Hamilton was in 8th you sod off to an ad that nobody gives a **** about. come back he's 18th.

I agree that the coverage from Brazil was not great, it seemed that every time Hamilton went to overtake someone they cut away to something else.

However, this is not ITV's fault, it's the local TV director and not much ITV can do about it.

And I don't really see how ITV could have guessed that Hamilton was going to have a complete gearbox failiure whilst they were on a standard ad-break. Be reasonable!

Originally Posted by Hom3r

You wouldn't put ads in football or rugby.

Now this I agree with, I would much rather have a whole race with no commercials - but the two things are too dissimilar; a football match can have adverts before the match, then 45 mins later, then 10 mins after that then 45 mins later again. So in 90 mins, 4 ad-breaks. In F1 you have your ads before and after, two ad breaks in 120 mins and it would just not be commercially viable.

I think to be fair to ITV, even though sometimes they do drop some of the better features, their pre-race coverage of F1 is usually superb.

Originally Posted by homealone

I could see the thinking behind the short stint on the fragile supersoft tyres, for Hamilton, but why they didn't fuel him to the end when he came in to change them, is a mystery?

Ironically, despite the disappointment, it was one of the most interesting & exiting races for ages, not only Hamiltons skills at passing (the one on Barrichello was awesome), but the scrap between Kubica & Rosberg, as well.

I agree, two hours of total excitement, I can't remember a more dramatic race in years.

I think the deal with the pit styop to change the super softs was that there were around 35 laps to go from that point, and it was unlikely they could get enough fuel in there to the end of the race and keep race speed up.

Originally Posted by Jon T

In the pre race build up Bernie said that he thought Lewis was young enough to wait. I think Mr Hamilton's chances of winning the championship were ended there and then.

Wasn't it strange that Lewis' car lost powere for just long enough to spoil his chances of winning the championship.

No team orders? maybe not, but deffinatly Bernie/FIA orders. F! is becoming more stage managed than World Wrestling. The problem is though, that if you look just below the surface in F! you can very often predict the results from what key people say before the event.

I wondered how long it would take the conspiracy theorists to start their work! Anything can happen in F1, and yesterday most of it did - that's the way it goes sometimes.

Originally Posted by tcbass

Lewis showed his inexperience as a rookie in the last couple of races, alongside some unreliability from the so far rock solid car. He will be WDC plenty of times in the future.

In the last race the tyre failed, making the car un-steerable, ending his race. In yesterday's race the car had put itself in neutral for 30 seconds, dropping to 18th place.

Explain how these things are down to driver inexperience.

[Saaf_laandon_mo]

There could be a few more twists in this years championship http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/moto...ne/7055644.stm

---------- Post added at 09:32 ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 ----------

Originally Posted by andygrif

I assume we were watching the same race, but Hamilton didn't try to overtake Alonso, he was on the front of the starting grid, the two Ferraris took the first corner and Hamilton lost his third place to Alonso as he was concentrating on not hitting the back on Raikonnen. Perhaps that was down to his inexperience, but if Hamilton had a proper team-mate then perhaps it should not have been an issue..

Alonso should have staged a retirement from the race when he knew he had no chance of catching the ferrari.

[Shadow Demon UK]

Originally Posted by andygrif

I assume we were watching the same race, but Hamilton didn't try to overtake Alonso, he was on the front of the starting grid, the two Ferraris took the first corner and Hamilton lost his third place to Alonso as he was concentrating on not hitting the back on Raikonnen. Perhaps that was down to his inexperience, but if Hamilton had a proper team-mate then perhaps it should not have been an issue.

Yes, then after that he tried to overtake Alonso and he went off the track and fell back to 8th place. IMO that's what cost him the championship, he showed a lot of inexperiance in trying to do something when there was no need whatsoever to do. I don't blame Alonso, even though i can't stand the bloke, he had a chance of winning the championship and had every right to do what he did, team play goes out of the window when you have two drivers on the same team both with a chance of winning the championship imo.

Originally Posted by Saaf_laandon_mo

Alonso should have staged a retirement from the race when he knew he had no chance of catching the ferrari.

He would have been slightly annoyed if Raikkonen had spun off on the last corner though wouldn't he Also the rules are that team instructions are not allowed to be given during the race and it would have been a bit of a hollow win for Hamilton if Mclaren had basically cheated for him to win the title, i would rather see him win it properly next year than cheat to win it this year.

[Cobbydaler]

Alonso's backing Kimi...

Link

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by Cobbydaler

Alonso's backing Kimi...

Link

There's a surprise.

Personally I do think it would be a rubbish way to win the championship - but I also wonder what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot and it was Ferrari that had lost by one point.

[tcbass]

Originally Posted by andygrif

In the last race the tyre failed, making the car un-steerable, ending his race. In yesterday's race the car had put itself in neutral for 30 seconds, dropping to 18th place.

Explain how these things are down to driver inexperience.

I can't believe you are not willing to cut the guy some slack here. He has driven fantastic the whole season (his first season in F1) and he only makes something like 3 mistakes, the 2 most serious ones at the end where the pressure is enormous. Coping under such intense pressure takes experience, which he has gained plenty of this season.

He showed (IMO) lack of experience as a rookie by overcooking it on the entry to the pits, easy to do as the tyres were in a dreadful state, can even be said that he was part of the tyre mistake by not sorting out the tyres earlier,as I'm sure he has input here, and it is ultimately his decision if comes in to the pits or not. He was trying to win the championship earlier than necessary. He Overdid it trying completely unnecessarily to overtake Alonso and ran wide when he could just have just tucked in and sat tight, a bit of the old red mist there me thinks.

After all he is human and it's not easy to win in your first season, lets not forget that, before jumping to all sorts of crazy theories.

[sherer]

actually just been reading that it was LH's fault as he hit a button on the steering wheel that put it into neutral.

he had a great season and just missed out. At least he missed out going for a win each time rather than just collecting points.

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by tcbass

I can't believe you are not willing to cut the guy some slack here. He has driven fantastic the whole season (his first season in F1) and he only makes something like 3 mistakes, the 2 most serious ones at the end where the pressure is enormous. Coping under such intense pressure takes experience, which he has gained plenty of this season.

<snip>

After all he is human and it's not easy to win in your first season, lets not forget that, before jumping to all sorts of crazy theories.

Did you actually read what I wrote, or did you doze off after the first paragraph?

Originally Posted by sherer

actually just been reading that it was LH's fault as he hit a button on the steering wheel that put it into neutral.

he had a great season and just missed out. At least he missed out going for a win each time rather than just collecting points.

Source please?

Cos this is the official McLaren line just now:

Ron, can explain what happened to Lewis’s car?
We don’t quite know the exact cause of the problem yet. However, we can tell you that the result of this problem caused the gearbox system to go into default – to select neutral. This was probably caused by an incorrect command given to the system box. At this stage we do not know why the system received an incorrect command - it could be a sensor. When it defaulted it took a while to mentally recover and then the box worked perfectly after that.

And this is from the post-race interview with Lewis from the McLaren website

A lot of people are talking about the problems that you had in the race, you had rotten luck with the car, can you tell us what happened?
It wasn’t a great start to the race, I locked up behind Fernando basically to avoid hitting him and went a bit wide. I came back on and was quite relaxed, I knew that I had the pace to gain back my position and I was downshifting into turn 4 and it just went into neutral. I coasted for quite some time and eventually, I don’t know how, but it just eventually clicked back in and I was able to get it going again and from then on we had to manage the engine so I was quite low rpm.

[sherer]

got this from F1 Live

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headline...22220432.shtml

Seems to say it was LHs fault.

I think this is McLaren management here so that he doesn't spend the whole winter feeling he lost the title himself blame it on the team so he can come back stronger

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by sherer

got this from F1 Live

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headline...22220432.shtml

Seems to say it was LHs fault.

Hardly conclusive though? - the press has a habit of making things up to make stories

[sherer]

Originally Posted by Mr_love_monkey

Hardly conclusive though? - the press has a habit of making things up to make stories

well i'll be far and say that I haven't that reported elsewhere but I feel this is a McLaren "strategy" to make Lewis feel better.

Seems to be better for him that he lost because of a car problem rather than driver error.

At least he lost going for a win in both races rather than just driving round picking up points

[Woolly One]

I know that this is now an 'old' thread, but spygate continues -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/moto...ne/7085098.stm

Where will it end?

I seem to remember a race from several seasons ago, to which MS won. As soon as he was out of his car, he was having a good look round the cockpits of the P2 & P3 cars, to which the ITV commentators made light of, saying that he was making sure that they had nothing better than him. Didn't see him being investigated. However, having car specs is a bit different to having a 'quick look inside'

[sherer]

the FIA shot themselves in the foot years ago when they allowed all the spying in the first place with cameras etc etc.

This is just the next step of that

[Hom3r]

Well Ferrari International Assistance (FIA) have done it again, and rejected Mclaren appeal.

I still wonder if it it because Mclaren would have had the world Drivers Championship sewn up.

I bet though if it had been McLaren at fault both Hamilton and Alson would have had thee points stripped.

As I said before goodbye F1, all crediability has been lost, while Max & Bernie are running things I'm outta here