Quote from ajp71 :

Fuel chillers are banned under the rules, and a fuel heater would be a completely useless thing to have adding weight and making packaging difficult, I doubt the teams have a fuel temperature sensor, or if they do it will be used for other telemetry and engine management, not to check if they're legal in a race at least because there's bugger all they can do.

I was referring to the fuel before it gets put into the car Once it's in the car there's nothing you can do, but the teams must control the temperature of the fuel going into the car. It was common practice during the turbo era (after the FIA limited fuel tank volumes) for teams to chill the fuel before putting it into the car. It would seem from the Alonso quotation that this is still happening.

Quote from Jakg :

Seeing as they're comparing the ambient temp to the temp of the fuel, the longer they leave it the more likely it is to pass the test.

The latest Autosport article claims that the fuel was too cold at the time of the Williams/BMW pit stops. Quite how the FIA have managed to get hold of that data without the teams being aware of the temperature problems at the time I'm not sure.

If the data is being logged by the teams then you'd expect there to be some sort of system for keeping the temperatures within 10°C of ambient.

It seems the problems relate to fuel temperatures, in which case I assume that article 6.5.5 is being applied:

Quote from 2007 F1 Technical Regulations :

6.5.5 No fuel on board the car may be more than ten degrees
centigrade below ambient temperature.

6.5.6 The use of any device on board the car to decrease the
temperature of the fuel is forbidden.

Quote from J.B. :

Sad result. The only team that scored points running an illegal car this season wins it due to McLaren's stupidity.

I mean three stops when at the back of the field, WTF!

Ron Dennis told ITV that the switch to a three-stop saved them 10 seconds over the original two-stop.

Quote from Albieg :

The journalists at RAI TV are talking about a 95 precedent: the points for the drivers championship were not stripped while those for constructor championship were stripped.

That was the 1995 Brazillian GP...Williams and Benetton were disqualified because their post-race fuel samples did not match the pre-season samples provided by fuel supplier elf.

From what I can remember the fuel wasn't illegal, it just wasn't what elf said they would be using. I think that's why the constructors' points were docked but the drivers' points remained.

It was always going to be Raikkonen or Hamilton after qualifying. Alonso was nowhere all weekend, and rather lucked into third place as a result of Hamilton's problems.

Congratulations to Kimi though, he deserved this one

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Have you seen the incidents that the woman was complaining about?

Yes.

Quote :

Hamilton got out of the way as soon as possible...

No he didn't. He had the whole length of the straight to slow and let Raikkonen past, yet he chose to leave it until the braking area for T4 to do it.

Quote :

...its not his fault Kimi got distracted and messed up a turn.

Arguable.

The fact that Hamilton even thought of apologising to Raikkonen shows that he knows he got in the way.
Of course, the FIA have done nothing. Unlike in Monza last year where the evil baby-eating Alonso dared to get within 100m of Massa.

Quote from ajp71 :

I love how James Allen can accurately predict the precise power loss Alonso's engine will suffer. In reality there shouldn't really be much difference between a fresh engine and a race old engine, assuming they haven't actually gone and built a season ending one race special, which we'd know about because Alonso would be bouncing up and down and Ron really would look a bit silly if Hamilton lost the title in a cloud of smoke

In fairness to JA, I would assume he's asked around in the paddock what sort of defecit you'd expect from a second-race engine. It's not necessarily about the wear on the engine, it's about not being able to stress it so much since the components have to last longer.

That said, I agree with you about the 'one-race-special' engine...the smart thing for McLaren to do is to use Hamilton's engine just the same as they would if they were expecting to use the engine for a second race.

No penalty for Hamilton:

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=41104

What a load of utter cobblers.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Or the FIA will be sensible and say "okay it was a mistake. You didn't gain an advantage in any way shape or form. We'll leave it and let the racing do the talking".

That won't happen by the way.

I'm not really sure that's the sensible approach. The rule in this case is black and white. Adding in a grey area where you break the rule but don't gain advantage makes the stewards' decision subjective rather than objective, and that opens up a can of worms regarding bias and 'race fixing'.

The team knew the rule, they broke the rule (gaining advantage or not) and so they deserve punishment.

Quote from sam93 :

I always like the way these investigation come out always just before the race weekend, some of you must think do they do it to make the drivers more nervous and put more pressure on them.

Always? You speak like this happens at every race, which it clearly doesn't. Also, this hasn't happened 'just before' the race weekend, it relates to what happened in first practice on Friday. McLaren broke the rules with Hamilton and he deserves punishment.

Quote :

Guys keep your fingers crossed that Lewis Hamilton will win the title.

No.

Quote from evilgeek :

i highly doubt they will penalize hamilton over the tire thing. a pretty lame attempt by the FIA to create drama and media hype over nothing.

Nothing? He (and the team) broke the rules. The only way to deal with this is to give all three drivers 10 place penalties. If Hamilton wasn't involved there wouldn't be any question about the penalties, they would just happen.

Well, I've lived in two of the top twenty places To be honest, I'm surprised that Stoke-on-Trent is as 'good' as 13th...

S-o-T came first in one of these surveys a while back and I was most amused to see the local councillors quoted in the local rags defending the place. "We produced Robbie Williams and Anthea Turner!". Great.

Totally agreed with Tristan! I'm not entirely happy with the current STR/SA situation since they seem to be exploiting a loophole in the current regulations.

A true customer chassis with current-spec parts would be a disaster for F1, which is, and always should be, a constructors' championship.

It seems like a very short-term idea designed to get more teams into F1. Frankly, I don't care how many teams there are, since once you go over 8-or-so, most of them are only fighting over who doesn't finish last. However, it's a whole lot easier to buy current-spec cars from a leading constructor than it would be to build your own cars, so if this goes ahead I see it as the beginning of the end for the true 'constructors'.

Quote from BlueFlame :

When people blame it directly, or even joke about Hamilton and his right foot, it angers me. As clearly you have no idea what your talking about. The incident can go no more as being called unlucky..

Interesting that nobody else in the whole race was so 'unlucky' as Hamilton. Of course the pit-lane was wetter than the rest of the track, that's why he should have gone slower. It's not the only gravel trap on the track either, it's just that usually there's a huge tarmac runoff area before you get to the gravel.

Bear in mind that Raikkonen, Alonso and Massa were using tyres just as old as Hamilton's and they didn't crash when they came into the pits. Hamilton seems to be harder on his tyres than Alonso and that's the second time this year he's been caught out by it (Turkey being the other).

There's no point blaming the team for keeping him out too long...if Hamilton really thought his tyres were finished, he should have pitted anyway. As a driver I'd say he has the final responsibility for staying on the track. If he feels he needs to change his tyres to do that, it's HIS responsibility. Now I accept the possibility that Hamilton could have asked to pit early and the team told him to stay out, but nobody's claimed that so far.

Quote from Kalev EST :

What the hell? Did he actually say that? It´s natural to support drivers from your country more than drivers from foreign countries but this is just frickin ridiculous.

It's from his post-race 'verdict' column on the ITV-F1 website.

I was getting very bored with the race until it rained around lap 30 I didn't want Hamilton to have a mechanical failure as then the ITV goons would say how luck took the championship away from him this weekend.

Crashing in the pitlane is about as embarassing as it gets, and I loved it

The "Lewis Can Do No Wrong" quotation of the day must go to James Allen:

Quote from James Allen :

Yes it was his first mistake of the year, but 80% of the mistake today was the team’s and only 20% can be attributed to Lewis for the actual slide.

Funny, I missed the point when the whole of the McLaren team pushed the right pedal too hard.

*Sigh* This is getting ridiculous. I still want to support Alsonso but he's making it very difficult. If those comments from F1-Live are real (I've not seen them reported anywhere else) then I think Alonso has lost the plot completely.

I wonder what odds you can get on him not driving (for McLaren, at least) in Brazil if Hamilton takes the title this weekend? If I were Fisi, I'd be nervous

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You're assuming workers' pay and conditions were just fine before the unions were formed. So why did they bother to form unions? :rolleyes:

Because they wanted better pay? We all want better pay, but not all of us are prepared to hold our bosses to ransom over it.

Quote :

Exploitative companies who deliberately try to avoid their workforce becoming organised don't seem to lack employees (McDonalds?).

If they don't lack employees then they must be doing something right.

So I take it you'd all be happier paying higher taxes to pay the posties more then?

My opinion is that anyone who strikes deserves to be summarily dismissed. If you're not happy with your job, find another one. The Royal Mail (or any other company, for that matter) will soon start paying its workers more if they can't recruit anyone.

I don't understand why the Communication Workers' Union thinks it's acceptable to stop delivering my mail for a week because they're angry with the government.

Quote from DeKo :

is it just me that sees, since the introduction of the safety car in 1994, every single car behaving in this so called erratic way?

I can't say I can remember many safety car periods well enough to comment authoritatively, but I'd say no. You often see cars swerving down straights to keep the tyres warm, but the constant brake/accelerate Hamilton was doing is a bit different.

I think you've also got to remember that the visibility must be taken into account here. In good weather other drivers have plenty of time to react so any erratic driving isn't too dangerous. However, in the rain or in the dark (Schumacher in the tunnel at Monaco), braking suddenly is very dangerous.

Quote from lizardfolk :

I liked Alesi. I remember when he was driving with Senna, he said he didn't mind being the secondary driver and he'd support Senna instead of challenging him (like Alonso with Hamilton).

That's quite noble of him. You dont really see that in F1

You'll have to remind me...when did Alesi and Senna drive together?

Quote from Hyperactive :

FIA going through youtube videos to find evidence. I just laughed aloud when I read that.

Why? YouTube videos are evidence just like any other sort of videos. The FIA don't have stewards standing on every corner in order to judge who might be at fault, so they have to rely on video evidence. Whether this comes from the FOA or some Japanese punter on YouTube makes no difference.

I said immediately after the race that the stewards should investigate Hamilton's driving so I'm happy to see the investigation started. The only laughable part of this is that you can be fairly certain they won't punish him.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I think a time penalty would be fine. Maybe a 10 or 20 second penalty, both of which would put him 3rd, behind Kimi (). Just shows that slowing at the end can backfire on you!

Totally agreed...I think a 20 or 30 second penalty is 'usual' in these cases where something is investigated after the race. Can't see it happening though, sadly. I was more upset by Hamilton's driving at the end of the first safety car period, which I thought was outrageous.

Quote :

I'm not a big fan of carrying penalites into the next race - the infraction occured in a race, and the penalty should apply to that race. If Hamilton doesn't put a foot wrong in China, why should he be penalised?

Yeah, agreed. Vettel's penalty should remain that he took himself out of contention for a podium. There's no reason to drag it into China.

I'll finally admit it...most of Hamilton's driving impressed me today, and I have to say that he deserved the win.

I wasn't impressed with his ridiculous start-stop moves to get an advantage over Alonso at the end of the first safety car period. It was dangerous and totally unneccessary. I'd like to think the stewards will give him a talking to, but it seems that anyone foolish enough to attempt to overtake the wunderkind needs to be punished. I thought Kubica's penalty was very unfair...Hamilton turned across the whole width of the track towards the apex and didn't see Kubica. I don't necessarily blame Hamilton...I can imagine that the mirrors are completely useless in those conditions, but to blame Kubica and then penalise him was ridiculous.

I was also amused to hear James Allen (in what I think was the worst race of his commentating career) say that aquaplaning was completely out of a driver's control and is a matter of luck, then immediately blame Alonso for losing control of his car as he aquaplaned off...such is the consistency I've come to expect from that cretin.