They made the front wing bigger hoping it would still provide enough grip in the dirty air to stay close. What has actually happened is make the loss of downforce at the front greater.

They should give them much smaller front wings. They would have to balance up the rear aero and make them slower in the corners and also make the loss of downforce at the front less catastrophic.

A bit of proper ground effect would not go amiss either.

That might be the simple difference between Hamilton and Vettel this year. Vettel gets on pole and then pulls away supremely, but Hamilton is under pressure (from himself it has to be said) and pulls off impatient moves.

Reverse the qualifying positions and the opinions on the driver's racecraft might be a little different. Vettel has not always covered himself in glory when trying to overtake. We need to see him fight through from the back row like we know Alonso, Webber et al can.

No one will be able to persuade anyone else to change their opinion on whose fault these incidents are, so you're all going to waste the best part of a week in an exercise in futility.

There is one interesting comparison to the Hakkinen - Schumacher move and it's not about blame: Hakkinen lived to fight another day.

Hamilton seems to be a bit like a person stepping infront of a bus on a zebra crossing. It may well be your right of way, but there's no point being right about that sort of thing from a hospital bed.

Quote from pearcy_2k7 :

What exactly did he do wrong today then?

The tedious overlap arguments will go on all week to no avail. Hamilton's problem is he drives every lap as if it is his last minute on earth; ie - like a GP2 driver. He would do a lot better if he learned a little patience.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Thing is, Webber never would have been close enough to use DRS if his car wasn't significantly faster than Schumacher's.

So either you have slow cars holding faster cars up indefinitely due to shitty aero interference, or you have the faster car zooming past with DRS to compensate for the shitty aero interference.

Ground effect would fix that, but they've wimped out of changing the rules.

Or it can be closed by the controls in the cockpit. I think they have designed it so it cannot be stuck open. Airflow snaps it back into place without mechanical intervention.

Hopefully it will be wet so they won't use it.

Quote from BlueFlame :

Wasn't talking about that you fool.

Don't you remember who won the championship? It wasn't Alonso OR Hamilton. Hamilton still thrashed Alonso in his rookie season, IN THE SAME CAR.

You really don't give Hamilton credit at all so you arguing with me and others is pointless as you're too blind to see that Hamilton is one of the best drivers on the grid, and will be for some time.

Thrashed? Nonsense - they finished on exactly the same number of points and Hamilton was ahead on countback.

Quote from Wilford :

I have stuff to get the tracks and the cars

You mean like a license?

VB - does that count?

Quote from tristancliffe :

How about because it isn't in the rules. It's an unwritten rule. Part of the code of conduct. If every 'rule' from life had to be written down we wouldn't be able to breathe.

Sadly, young people today work on the principle that if it isn't written it doesn't count. That's why young people are nearly all morons.

Unwritten rules generally exist where if it were written down then it would be too complex and restricting and a new sub-clause would be required every time something happens that does quite follow what has gone before.

That means they are more open to interpretation and opinion, which is why there has been a week of pointless arguing in this thread.

Quote from sinbad :

You don't have to be fully side by side to control the corner. Everyone knows the nose at the driver's door principle. F1 cars don't have doors but the overlap rules are the same. Also the only thing that counts is track position. It doesn't matter if you're defending the inside or attacking down the inside, what you are allowed to do is determined by your position relative to the other car(s).

Can't find that rule in the F1 Sporting Regs. Can you link to it please?

If they're moving the crane and the extending the run off they probably have the room to move the chicane (and therefore the braking zone) further on and thus avoiding the issues of braking instability.

Quote from JCTK :

what the frig could he had done to concede?

As soon as he's commited for trying to pass down the inside, he wouldn't exactly be braking not hard enough so he could brake harder to concede.

Eyesight, it looks like it's PM that's lacking that.

Brain, I wouldn't say either was at fault, just a racing incident. But PM should have and could have conceeded the corner. As soon as he turned in on Lewis an accident was always going to happen. And I guess losing 2 points for losing a position from 6th to 7th is much better than losing 7th place which is worth a much needed 6 points for Williams?

How about the massive run off area on the inside?

Brakes...

Eyesight...

Brain...

Why couldn't Hamilton concede the corner?

Yep - looks like an avoidable collision. Just like football though, where different referees make different calls. At least they were consistent with Di Resta and Hamilton (x2) in 2011.

It was a big dive, but he was all the way alongside. He didn't just dangle his nose in and expect Arnoux to leap out of the way.

Witness Lewis's radio comms about Massa "He just turned in on me on purpose".

It's not really about pulling two moves apart to the Nth degree, or dragging up examples from 30 years ago to prove the minutiae of an argument. It's a general issue about Hamilton which has been with him since GP2 and once again Brundle's summation is about right: "It can't always be the other guys' fault"

Listen to his interview "Massa blocked me in qualifying and I get the penalty." He got the penalty because he cut the course.

If you don't think you ever make mistakes, or you don't have anyone in your circle to tell you when you make mistakes then you don't learn and you don't evolve - and he needs to learn because he's not the finished article.

Very unfortunate for JR, but I guess if he had been offered 2nd place in his rookie race before the start he would have been okay with it.

Quote from Intrepid :

The only reason the overtaker was along side fully was because the driver being overtaken had recognised the move early and not released the brakes as usual. it's quite simple to understand. Had Koby not seen Webber, he could have turned in taken Webber out, and Webber would've been punished. If Schumi hadn't have recognised the move and not conceded, Hamilton would have t-boned him exactly like he did with Maldanado. However Schumacher was a little smarter and saw he's left a gap and the mistake was made so didn't turn in early.

Maldanado made the mistake of leaving room on the inside. If I was him I'd be more angry at myself than at Hamilton. I've made the mistake myself... didn't blame anyone else but me. Leave a gap and you get punished. Don't pretend your blameless... this is motor racing... not motor driving in single file. Hence why I believe f1 and often single-seater car racing is quite often lame.

Even in LFS you can turn in on racers all day long and not get ONE ban request. Free pass to take people out, it's wonderful watching people apologise for doing nothing wrong.

If Kobyashi had turned in he would have touched Webber front wheel to front wheel. That's way different to Hamilton poking his nose in and cutting the corner then expecting everyone to leap out of his way.

Your argument is not strengthened by basing it on what happens in a computer game playing against rank amateurs. It's not a computer game - one of their colleagues was watching the race from hospital.

His move on Schumacher (and Schumi's on him) worked because by the point it came to the crunch (no pun) the overtaker was all the way alongside. He did little more than poke his nose in on Maldonado and Massa. It was front wheel to back wheel, more or less, both times. Also, the point of contact came when Hamilton was off the track, like Di Resta

Brundle summed it up nicely; it can't ALWAYS be the other guy's fault.

Lewis has the air of a guy who no one challenges. Feels like he gets back to the garage and everyone slaps him on the back and says "Yes, that was Maldonado's fault and Massa too".

Poor people management on McLaren's behalf. They're creating a monster.

Increasingly puzzled by the strategies. Webber and Alonso seemed so obsessed with getting the undercut they had 3 stops in the bag by around lap 30. It's short term advantage because the the shorter you go then you just end up getting hung out to dry at the end of the race.

Tyres seem to be the factor for overtaking, not DRS. Button waltzed past Alonso as he had fresher tyres and could get through the last turns quicker, whereas Webber's tyres were about the same as Alonso's and he had nothing for him.

Quote from From BBC :

BBC Sport's Andrew Benson in Barcelona: "Red Bull's Achilles' heel, the reliability of their Kers power-boost system, has again reared its head here. Sebastian Vettel had to qualify without it, but I'm told that is not necessarily what made the difference in Mark Webber getting his first pole of 2011. Webber was 0.2secs quicker than Vettel and for most teams Kers is worth at least 0.5secs a lap here. But not Red Bull. So compromised is their system by its tight packaging - the root of its reliability problems - that it is only worth around 0.1-0.2secs."

So Vettel would not have spanked Webber after all.

But he didn't have it, so he didn't.

He needs it tomorrow or clean side Hamilton and maybe even Alonso will burn him into T1.

Quote from Inouva :

Saw some gameplays with cockpitview and dont have any sense of speed at all, also the cockpit view kinda suck =/

It feels a heck of a lot faster if you're actually driving it, but the problem is actually that unlike rally games, RBR is as close to simulator as the sport has ever got so it is generally well under 100mph