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Quote from garph :I think a lot of people didn't give Alonso the benefit of the doubt because of his behaviour last year and the levels he seemed to be prepared to drop to.

Probably there's too many people taking sides with a prejudice or bias because of the team they support, so they blurb what's within their heart forgetting to use their head, and sometimes good manners too.

I'm one of those who thought Alonso should have been booted from F1 along with some other people, but this doesn't mean that he's guilty by default even when he's right. So I watch F1 races as I can watch a movie like Once Upon a Time in America: the absence of likeable characters doesn't make the movie not worth watching.

As for Hamilton, he had a bad race. Concluding he's not good under pressure would be - once again - an assumption made with too little data. We'll see in the future. But raising the fist against drivers who do their job can hardly be called appropriate or mature behaviour.
Quote from garph :I think a lot of people didn't give Alonso the benefit of the doubt because of his behaviour last year and the levels he seemed to be prepared to drop to.

And as for all those Hamilton haters, same old same old. I don't think he can do anything right and at times he does and says everything wrong and is the only one to ever do so.

I don’t know what it is about certain people, Casey Stoner attracts the same kind of criticism.

I agree with you completely. The anti-Hamilton stuff is funny because it's so disproportionate.. if he drove 5x as well as Kubica drove today, it could not be good enough for them. I admire Hamilton immensely, but my expectations of him are clearly a fraction of what the anti-Hamilton crowd's are. They must think he's capable of absolutely amazing things.

Alonso, on the other hand.. if he'd brake tested, it would not have been a surprise. He's demonstrated behaviour in the past that would have made a brake-test perfectly in-keeping and consistent with his personality.
And some people say touring cars is full of dirty 'banger racing' type driving... F1 this season has been full of it so far, while being completely boring in the process!!!
w00t! Ferrari 1-2!

I really, really couldn't have hoped for a better race on my birthday.
Quote from STROBE :(depending of course on how competitive the McLaren is)

Very.
Who had the fastest lap?
Kovalainen!

So it's Hamilton who isn't competitive not the car. Everybody has bad days, maybe this was his.
Quote from Clownpaint :Button / Coulthard incident = Racing incident. Button committed himself to a tiny gap and Coulthard made it even smaller, Button did everything he could to get out of the way but Coulthard was intent on holding the line and squeezing him out, and it just ended in tears. It's 50/50 IMO, but Jenson instigated the incident.

My opinion is that Button committed himself to a move at a time where he couldn't judge wether the move was save or not.
Racing is about taking chances and dealing with risks, but when you take a high risk and come out as the loser you have to accept that it's your own fault.
Button was the one who took the risk, it didn't work and now Button has to accept that it's his fault.

...Not to say drivers shouldn't attempt such moves in the future anymore. It sometimes works, but since it didn't this time Button has to take the responsibility for the outcome.

@"Anti-Hamilton" discussion:
It's the Schumacher effect. Since Wonderboy was hyped so much last year he's the scale to measure against. He's the enemy to defeat, the evil guy. The only difference is that he has a normally sized chin and isn't german.
The effect will wear down when Hamilton fails to win 3 WDCs in a row and people will assume he isn't the best driver ever like they were told by the ITV commentators.

Vain
Quote from Vain :My opinion is that Button committed himself to a move at a time where he couldn't judge wether the move was save or not.
Racing is about taking chances and dealing with risks, but when you take a high risk and come out as the loser you have to accept that it's your own fault.
Button was the one who took the risk, it didn't work and now Button has to accept that it's his fault.

That's how I saw it too. But we've seen cars being unable to create decent passing opportunities for the last few years - maybe he thought that was the best chance he was going to get.
I liked the race, even though it was quite dull, it gave me enough time to take a shower and such while not losing track of what was going on.

As a matter of personal taste, I would have liked Kubica to get into 1st position, he's a fast driver and pretty much capable of doing so, but the Ferraris comeback was also quite nice and demonstrates that the championship is still open to anyone and every (competitive) team can still fight for the points.

Quite a bad race for some of the drivers, guess it wasn't their day, but that doesn't mean they are allowed to behave in an immature way.

Quote from SamH :Alonso, on the other hand.. if he'd brake tested, it would not have been a surprise. He's demonstrated behaviour in the past that would have made a brake-test perfectly in-keeping and consistent with his personality.

First news for me.

Care to elaborate/point when he has shown this behaviour on the track?

I mean, people talks that he's arrogant while in fact they don't read his actual statements but media 'we're going to have big sales-because we're selling a big story' kind of manipulation, but as of now I have not seen much about it nor actually cared to think it's something unique from him.

Quote from Clownpaint :The ITV commentators put their foot in their mouth again today. After the incident they began speculating about Alonso's evil plot to brake-test Hamilton. As the laps went by they excused Hamilton's pace blaming damaged bodywork, but dismissed any suggestions that Alonso would be suffering handling issues. I love the neutrality of it all.

Completely agreed. It seems like people likes to act based on 'I've heard that' or 'they say he said that' rather than on the actual raw data or the direct source. I might bet they did even deny any damage done to Alonso's car (wow, the Renault must be a tank! :tilt and use the fact that he wasn't fast to 'prove' their point that he's a 'bad driver', while it's well known that the Renault in it's current state is slower and less powerful than most cars this F1 season.
Quote from Clownpaint :but dismissed any suggestions that Alonso would be suffering handling issues. I love the neutrality of it all.

I don't remembering them dismissing any suggestions of him having handling problems. I don't remember them making any comment about it at all tbh.

Quote from DeMS :Care to elaborate/point when he has shown this behaviour on the track?

I mean, people talks that he's arrogant while in fact they don't read his actual statements but media 'we're going to have big sales-because we're selling a big story' kind of manipulation, but as of now I have not seen much about it nor actually cared to think it's something unique from him.

Here's just a couple of the many incidents of his attitude :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feslxpzokuk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjSFWc9jpFg

Don't forget, in a public professional sporting environment what someone says and what someone thinks or does aren't necessarily the same thing. There's and old saying over here "Actions speak louder than words"
Quote from Mazz4200 :
Here's just a couple of the many incidents of his attitude :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feslxpzokuk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjSFWc9jpFg

Don't forget, in a public professional sporting environment what someone says and what someone thinks or does aren't necessarily the same thing. There's and old saying over here "Actions speak louder than words"

The first one looks like he's trying to overtake a lapped car - correct me if mistaken - and even though he's making a dangerous turn, it could well be provoked by him showing the hand to the other guy. Not saying it's okay, just not seeing it as such a big thing.

The second one is quite a bad move indeed, made me quite angry (not exactly an Oalosno fan myself), but guess we will never know either if it was a human error, made on purpose, or the car misbehaving. [Edit] Uh, looking at it again, he brakes at the same place as the cars in front of him, so I guess it's not about his move that Coulthard goes out[/Edit]

Uh, and I do agree, what people says might not be the same as they think or do, but that's just defending hypocrits imo.
I like the fact that Lewis is not the all dominating Schumachermachine and makes stupid human mistakes.

What i dont like is the pair of oxygen thieves on ITV , jesus the man made a mistake no need for conspiracy theories that Alonso brake tested him.

Were used to that sort of crap from James "i should be shot with a ball of my own shit" Allen but ffs to hear Martin sprout that rubbish is not good...

Good to see the BMW going so well too..

GO WEBBER!!!! love to see him with a little bit better car under him and see what he can do.
It has been proven that the incident was LH's fault. People always have something against hamilton, don't know why he is a good sports man, friendly guy and a very good f1 driver for his age. There are still a lot of rounds till the end of the season yet, I reckon he can pull it off and win the championship. But, I would say this, I am a Hamilton fan. Kubica is quick but I don't think he will be able to beat the Mclaren's and ferrari's. Hamilton will be back on pace next race, well I reckon anyway.

Edit: Can't wait for F1 coverage to move to BBC, gets rid of the adverts. Also, get decent coverage, just not of the front cars and also get people who know what they are on about and not just support one racer on the circuit.
I think it shown today how bad the commentary on ITV is.
Quote from sam93 :Also, get decent coverage, just not of the front cars

As far as I know that's decided by the F1 management, not the TV channel. Both ITV and Speed get the exact same picture, that's for certain.

EDIT: funny pic from another forum, sums up the race pretty well.
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Quote from ATC Quicksilver :Bit off topic but looking at those other links I saw this little video, its quite good...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... uMewo&feature=related

That had my favourite Schumacher move ever in it (3:06). I think it was Hungary when Michael was leading but nursing a very sick and slowing car. Ralf (Williams) and Rubens came up to pass him and Rubens had been trying to pass Ralf for a few laps, so Michael let Ralf past on the outside through a corner, then squeezed him towards the outside and let Rubens up the inside. He lost both places but got his teammate infront of his brother.

I really admired him for that. Very clever move.
Actually, that's genius IMO. There's reasons why he won so many titles, and stuff like that is it.
Just the fact that he was still dictating the outcome of the race while driving a car that wouldn't go above third gear or whatever, it was pretty funny. I bet Ralf didn't talk to him for weeks.
I thought that they were already not really happy with each other as it was?

Anyways, that's quite possibly the greatest thing I've ever seen.
well Formula One is becoming England Premier League where fans must hate a certain driver. this is not the original idea of sport. *shoulders shrug*

i have a question for the anti-hamilton people, why do you guys hate Hamilton? im just curious
Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :well Formula One is becoming England Premier League

The British drivers at Bahrain were anything but "premier league".

I don't think anyone here hates Hamilton, I think they're all just sick of the hype. Especially those of us who have to watch ITV's broadcast with its one hour build-up to each race where Steve Ryder tells us what Hamilton's favourite type of pop tarts are and what colour pants he had on yesterday.

The only similarity with English football is that the English media always expect the English football team to win championships, despite the fact that they haven't won anything for 40 years.
Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :

i have a question for the anti-hamilton people, why do you guys hate Hamilton? im just curious

We don't (well most of us). There's just no apparent reason to like him. Mostly it's his fans I don't like, because they act like he was god himself.
I dont think people hate LH , they hate the ITV (ok its not just them) hype machine and totally biased commentating.


If James Allen sftu and let LH do his thang then there would not be an issue.

JA kisses his arse so much you would swear he was looking for colon cancer...
Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :i have a question for the anti-hamilton people, why do you guys hate Hamilton? im just curious

I don't hate him... I mean... I don't even know him

But I must say I don't like daddylton behaviour on pits claiming for attention and acting like he was someone on the competition
I don't like the Hamilton fans that blame anyone who has a racing incident with him, but you know... blind fans exists everywhere and in every sports so... really don't care about them... most of the times they're just causing a few lol's

I'm really waiting to see a good fight between Hamilton and Kubika, they're very competitive one against the other and I'm sure they can give an awesome fight!

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG