Ferrari says: There is (apparently) a new rule about tyres. Everyone must start with "full wet" tyres. We were forced to pit (by the race control/fia) behind the first safety car.

WTF! This must be just Ferrari propaganda.... Can't be anything else, can it?

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Come on! "He needed fuel!"

and according to Ferrari's press release, Massa said:
"I managed to get up to the front places again but I had to pit again because I did not have enough fuel to get to the end."

lol likely story. I didnt watch the live race (yeah yeah lazy me was asleep) but I woke up to the end of the race when Hamilton won lol. Gonna watch the replay whenever its on.

Quote from hyntty :

Ferrari says: There is (apparently) a new rule about tyres. Everyone must start with "full wet" tyres. We were forced to pit (by the race control/fia) behind the first safety car.

WTF! This must be just Ferrari propaganda.... Can't be anything else, can it?

Yes, apparently the FIA ruled that every car had to use full wet tyres. Ferrari claimed that they only got the message some minutes after the start. However, the other 10 teams and even some TV commentators knew of this before the race. And anyway, how stupid must you be to start with intermediates under these conditions?

A bit strange, if you ask me.

yea, lol, f1 cars couldn't drive even with full wets, and they wanted intermedia

Well, Massa did have the same amount of stops with Kimi before he did that short in the end but he did extra one earlier, and Kimi did his in the half way. So it might have been that he really needed fuel.

Quote from N I K I :

yea, lol, f1 cars couldn't drive even with full wets, and they wanted intermedia

I think they were using standard wet, from Autosport:

Quote :

The race direction informed teams that they were forced to start the race with extreme weather tyres given the poor conditions at Fuji.
Ferrari, however, decided to start the race with the standard wet tyres and both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa were forced to pit with the safety car on track if they didn't want to be excluded.

James Allen: Great gamesmanship by Lewis Hamilton (orgasm)
Martin Brundle: No, its just silly.

At race "start" from behind safety car.
(or somthing like that.)

Quote from zeugnimod :

Yes, apparently the FIA ruled that every car had to use full wet tyres. Ferrari claimed that they only got the message some minutes after the start. However, the other 10 teams and even some TV commentators knew of this before the race. And anyway, how stupid must you be to start with intermediates under these conditions?

A bit strange, if you ask me.

Let's say Ferrari is unexcusable for having tried a stunt that is better suited to a team like Spyker, and probably the result of the race wouldn't have changed.

Anyway Haug's words about what happened sound just as stupid as Ferrari's stunt. Ferrari claims that the email arrived 7 minutes after the race start, in Domenicali's box. Now, if only someone wanted the whole truth to come out, it would be easy comparing the timestamps of various servers (you just need to take a look at SMTP headers and logs of servers). Delays in delivery are nothing new, and I'd really like to get my hands on the various machines involved to understand who really screwed up things, if it was Ferrari checking the email too late without any other means of knowing this rule change, or if it was an email that was really sent or arrived too late.

This sounds really, really strange, and completely unprofessional. Anyone working in the computer business knows emails are reliable only under specified conditions, so somewhere in the chain someone failed to check something extremely important and screwed up things; but without knowing exactly what happened the only real (and heavy) guilt Ferrari has is having chosen a suicidal tactic.

Was an exciting race, I loved it!

I got annoyed a bit when Allen and Brundle kept saying that the Ferrari's were fuelled to the end, as they obviously would only have been fuelled to the end if the whole race was under safety car, which is the gamble they were taking. They did put fuel in Massa's car, but only a drop. The hose was only on Kimi's car for about two seconds as well, and that was a good few laps before. Anyway...

A very good drive from Lewis Hamilton. He kept his head and did everything he needed to do to win, and took no unnecessary risks. Alonso was all over the place again and then was the only driver to really stick it in the wall all afternoon. Kimi very aggressive and fun to watch at the end, and I'd love to see the Massa v Kubica fight again!

Sato ftw! Who else would drive out of the pits in flames and be lucky enough to have the rain put the fire out?

Best race of the season, easily

Nice driving by Hamilton. And Kovilienen (spelling. Pah, doesn't matter, he's finnish, and you're not meant to be able to spell their names right). And Kimi. And Vettel (small, easy error imo).

Alonso proves how good he is.

If only they raced on ovals in these conditions. Shame.

Quote :

Alonso proves how good he is.

what rubbish? lol

What we saw today was the difference between Alonso and Hamilton.

When Alonso has the pace Hamilton doesn't lose his head.... he understands that when you start out in something new you not gonna been lit 100% the time.

With Alonso it's like his head goes into meltdown because someone is quicker.

If Alonso had been more consistent when he wasn't beating Hamilton he may well be leading the championship right now.

definatly he cant handle a so called rookie beeting him

I think its fair to mention that he had quite a bit of damage on his car, although I do agree that he can't cope with Hamilton beating him. I am just amazed that Hamilton didn't make a single mistake, the only time he went off was when he was punted into a spin by Kubica.

Oh and did anyone count the number of times the ITV team said 'Lewis Hamilton' ?

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

I think its fair to mention that he had quite a bit of damage on his car, although I do agree that he can't cope with Hamilton beating him. I am just amazed that Hamilton didn't make a single mistake, the only time he went off was when he was punted into a spin by Kubica.

Oh and did anyone count the number of times the ITV team said 'Lewis Hamilton' ?

must be in the thousands~? that'd be impossible to count...

Well, Hamilton was the only one with clear visibility for the whole race, so it was much easer for him than others. But you can't blame him for that, because the thing is that quali has a huge role and the rules suxor more than the 18 lap safety start.

Quote :

Oh and did anyone count the number of times the ITV team said 'Lewis Hamilton' ?

Although very annoying, they're always going to love Hamilton with him being from the same country.

EDIT: I wonder if we all chipped in a couple of quid, We could get Martin to gagg James with an old sock, and duct tape him to a chair for the remaining races?

I just love the difference between martin brudle (excellent) and the ramblings of james allen.

when ja said about the crown of the race track, martin just calmly put him right. i guess it shows that you need MB because of his experience, something ja hasnt got. driving on a motorway behind a truck.............for example, soooo noobish, but entertaining.

anyone remember when derek warwick stood in for mb?
terrible, terrible, terrible!

if martin brundle quit f1 itv i doubt that id watch it. he is the best imo.

Quote from GFresh :

Although very annoying, they're always going to love Hamilton with him being from the same country.

Obviously Hamilton-the-superman wasn't the highlight of this race. You guys can't imagine how mtv3:s commentators were yelling when Kimi and Heikki were having a duel for 2nd place. And that was just the first team of commentators, I'm looking forward to seeing (and hearing) the race with a different set of commentators tonight. Our number 2 team is (if it possibly can be) even more Finland-centered than the first.

Woohoo!

Liuzzi got penalized (overtaking under yellow)
Sutil (and Spyker) has its FIRST point! =D

And FIA apologises for the Ferrari tyre incident. According to Ferrari they received an email about the order seven minutes after the start.

I can understand why FIA didn't bother to inform Ferrari in time, but why the hell did they have to start the usual asskissing again? Could't they just have done something FIAish like usual. Oh, but the asskissing is just that!

If the FIA is actually using plain SMTP email to disseminate crucial information to the teams during the race weekend they are morons of the worst kind (like we all didn't know it already).
Any random sim racing league using a php forum and Teamspeak is doing a better job, and I bet Bernie could cough up some money for something a little better than that.