No worries Ben - you were the first of several, but most of the others stuck half a nose in at the hairpin and spun me round; very tedious.

Quote from shaun463 :

Cobain was victim of many things happening in his life - it was inevitable.

Rubbish - he took the easy way out. Unfortunately, not the easy way for his daughter was it? Coward.

Flat in 7th, with KERS and DRS on through Schumacher S for Red Bull - mighty

Quote from theodinho29 :

It's a shame ... Still a lot of players use this view and you do nothing to help us
It could have avoided a lot of crashes ... Too bad.

Drivers cause crashes, not views. If you can't see behind then you must assume something is there and drive appropriately.

Or use the proper view.

Wonder how many other drivers would be as frank and honest about the situation as Webber? Even Hamilton seems to be behaving himself - notice he praised the team on the radio when he was thinking, and I was expecting him to say, "Un-frickin' believeable! Who decided on the fuel level?"

Quote from Mackie The Staggie :

Not according to his twitter, I think Dario's off the Christmas car list this year.

I understand why Power feels the way he does, and credit where credits due, Dario held his hands up and admitted he was at fault, but the way Power is acting right now is a bit out of order. By no stretch of the imagination is Dario a dirty driver, but Power effectively claimed he was the dirtiest on the track. Having said that I was surprised that no one got a penalty in that race, I suppose it was consistent throughout though.

Speak in haste, repent at leisure. Stick a microphone under a driver's nose after a race like that and he'll say all sorts of things that, on reflection, might not be the smartest thing to say. eg Hamilton.

Quote from Mustafur :

The commentators where saying that the off throttle exhuasts where hurting webber as he couldn't extract the maximum out of it and thats why he has been right on it in the last two grand prix after they have been limited/banned, Not sure if thats the case though.

There might be something in that. Webber is able to blow his own diffuser better than Vettel. After Webber schooled the German at Monaco and Spain in successive races, Renault developed an off throttle system that removed the Aussie's advantage.

Quote from Intrepid :

Though it has to be said that F1 must be in a pretty sad state of affairs engineering and innovation wise if the 'noise of the engine' is a decisive factor in regulations and a critical news item.

I thought Top Gear last week was a great example of how Bernie was quite right about the noise.

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.