2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Yas Marina, Dec 10 - 12

[sAx]

Lewis was going to cruise home comfortably. That’s good strategy. Likely it would have been around a 5s gap at the end and that’s not even close at an average speed of say, 130mph.

he would have cruised even MORE comfortably had his 1st stint on meds been usual, and not cut short by fear of a Max magically undercutting him on a tire RB hadn't run all weekend, and when the race showed that he wouldn't be able to match Lewis on softs, Lewis would have been 100% safe and had options for VSC and SC periods

and I'm not defending Masi, I've said as much, but it wasn't the only problem Lewis had on his hands, I've said it few times before, Merc strategists are not even remotely on level with others, they constantly make these mistakes and then Lewis pulls another magical performance and people forget about these things, this time it went all wrong for him, he couldn't do anything on 2!!! safety car periods because of that mistake shortening the 1st stint and losing all his advantage behind Perez

I somewhat agree... at the end of the first VSC, they could have pitted Lewis as Max was 24 sec behind after his second stop..... I was thinking why they didn't pit, if they had put mediums then he could have got atleast 17 to 18 sec gap which was enough for sc buffer

How could a 17/18s gap to Verstappen have prevented an egregious interpretation of the rules by the Race Director? If the RD was always going to let the 5 backmarkers through for a final lap tele-visual showdown by bending the rules...then we would still have seen the same result. Whether or not MB chose to play victims of hindsight, the jeopardy of the safety car should not have played such an advantage to the Red Bull grey area tactics by pulling Perez out of the race with 'we have a problem with the car, we need to retire', so they could move one car closer to Hamilton, anticipating they could pressure Masi not to let all cars unlap themselves, for their one-lap roll of the dice!

[Ryar]

It's about principle, and setting a precedence!

Those are outside of courts. The discussion is about what can potentially happen in the courtroom.

I think you will find the ICA cares about both concepts a great deal!

I am sure those words make a lot of sense to be etched in stone outside of those big court rooms.

[Hoffman900]

he would have cruised even MORE comfortably had his 1st stint on meds been usual, and not cut short by fear of a Max magically undercutting him on a tire RB hadn't run all weekend, and when the race showed that he wouldn't be able to match Lewis on softs, Lewis would have been 100% safe and had options for VSC and SC periods

and I'm not defending Masi, I've said as much, but it wasn't the only problem Lewis had on his hands, I've said it few times before, Merc strategists are not even remotely on level with others, they constantly make these mistakes and then Lewis pulls another magical performance and people forget about these things, this time it went all wrong for him, he couldn't do anything on 2!!! safety car periods because of that mistake shortening the 1st stint and losing all his advantage behind Perez

I somewhat agree... at the end of the first VSC, they could have pitted Lewis as Max was 24 sec behind after his second stop..... I was thinking why they didn't pit, if they had put mediums then he could have got atleast 17 to 18 sec gap which was enough for sc buffer

How could a 17/18s gap to Verstappen have prevented an egregious interpretation of the rules by the Race Director? If the RD was always going to let the 5 backmarkers through for a final lap tele-visual showdown by bending the rules...then we would still have seen the same result. Whether or not MB chose to play victims of hindsight, the jeopardy of the safety car should not have played such an advantage to the Red Bull grey area tactics by pulling Perez out of the race with 'we have a problem with the car, we need to retire', so they could move one car closer to Hamilton, anticipating they could pressure Masi not to let all cars unlap themselves, for their one-lap roll of the dice!

Exactly. It’s such a silly argument.

[101FlyingDutchman]

Brundle absolutely nails this

[Bill_Kar]

Brundle absolutely nails this

Geoblock?

[banibhusan]

Just out of curiosity why didn't Mercedes go for a 1 stop from the beginning? Why did they have to copy Max? Lewis could have most likely gone up-to lap 25 on the mediums and then switch to the hard tyres. He had a decent speed advantage yesterday to stay ahead even after Max's 2nd stop under the VSC and would have had better tyres at the end of the race. Though it still probably wouldn't have been enough to defend from Max with the fresh soft tyres.

[101FlyingDutchman]

Brundle absolutely nails this

Geoblock?

Yeah sorry. UK based. No idea how that can be circumvented

[Andres125sx]

It's interesting what Ola has to say. Haven't heard anything from Daimler.

As for the lawyer's warning. What is the meaning of "overturning" here? What is the "overturned" position of a SC restart decision of a concluded race looks like. Surely, it can't be the order of 57th lap of a 58 lap race. That in itself a legally arguable case against such a decision. Why would the other party accept a shortned race's decision? The other party has to right to go ask for going back to the circuit and restart the race once again, from the point of the crash. It sounds weird, but anything can happen in a courtroom. Defendents can push for all sorts of arbitrations.

The last lap cannot be a green flag racing according to the rule... so it has to be a yellow flagged lap, so any positions gained in that lap is invalid and illegal.. .. hence the position gained by Max will revert back to the one he had on lap 57. So there is no shortening for the race, only changing finishing order which is perfectly possible

Race Director's decision overrides all rules. So it's a legal decision and stands. Then what is the next argument in court?

Arbitrarity from a Steward wich harms several competitors

- Lewis obviously as with a normal (legal) procedure the race would have finished under SC, wich is what they logically assumed when SC was deployed with 5 laps to go and a car crashed into the track with pieces all around, so they decided to do not stop to keep track position as the scenario looked like a finish under SC. But then normal (legal) procedure was modified on the go to let only some cars to unlap, and quickly restart the race with one lap to go. Basically they moved the goalposts after Mercedes made their decision based on normal (legal) procedures. Like it or not that is not fair as is not how Stewards are suppossed to act

- Sainz as they left two lapped cars between Verstappen and himself, so he couldn´t try a pass.

- Same with Bottas with 1 lapped car in front of him

- Ricciardo as the last lapped car alowed to unlap was Vettel who was in front of him, so he was deprived of an opportunity to pass at the restart

4 drivers were harmed with the decision wich by itself is something very questionable from a Steward, then the championship...


I think Max was the best driver of the season, but the title was decided by an arbitrary Steward decision. I say arbitrary to do not assume intentionality, but we all know when there´s huge amounts of money involved this things are anything but unintended.

I must admit I´m a bad person, as I´m even a bit pleased of this. Now Lewis knows how Alonso felt in 2007

[DChemTech]

Brundle absolutely nails this

Geoblock?

Yeah sorry. UK based. No idea how that can be circumvented

VPN probably?
Can you provide a synopsis? I read at some outlets that Brundle was in essence calling for a right hand man for Masi, saying Masi has too much on his plate to deal with alone (and that Whiting did have a right hand) - and that in the end the sport is a referee sport, and some respect for the referee is in place. Is that indeed what he is saying here?

[basti313]

Please do stop. I was annoyed at Silverstone too. I think it would have been more just if Lewis DNFfed there, too. But that is not how things played out. That doesn't mean we should ask for disproportional penalties - a DSQ is not a proper penalty for what is essentially a racing accident, even if one driver can be blamed a bit more than the other. And continuing to call for that does not reflect well on Max fans (of which I am one). We're already outnumbered here, let's at least keep a bit of class.

Isn't it easy to ignore posts, instead of coming back at a poster and telling, "stop". Nobody does. I would appreciate people arguing on, but bossing around saying, "stop", is not acceptable. If there are points, feel free to put forward and and debate on.

Wait, you just accused a member of ignoring posts while simultaneously ignoring the majority of their post?
I’m sorry but your repeated, constant trolling and gaslighting of other forum users really should be bought under control.

Honestly....yesterday I tried to read the thread in the evening I tried to read this thread and my browser could not load the pages as quick as Lewis fans were expressing their feelings here....of course that was expected that ringostar, scorcho and their gang will own this thread.

[basti313]

The last lap cannot be a green flag racing according to the rule... so it has to be a yellow flagged lap, so any positions gained in that lap is invalid and illegal.. .. hence the position gained by Max will revert back to the one he had on lap 57. So there is no shortening for the race, only changing finishing order which is perfectly possible

Race Director's decision overrides all rules. So it's a legal decision and stands. Then what is the next argument in court?

Arbitrarity from a Steward wich harms several competitors

- Lewis obviously as with a normal (legal) procedure the race would have finished under SC, wich is what they logically assumed when SC was deployed with 5 laps to go and a car crashed into the track with pieces all around, so they decided to do not stop to keep track position as the scenario looked like a finish under SC. But then normal (legal) procedure was modified on the go to let only some cars to unlap, and quickly restart the race with one lap to go. Basically they moved the goalposts after Mercedes made their decision based on normal (legal) procedures. Like it or not that is not fair as is not how Stewards are suppossed to act

- Sainz as they left two lapped cars between Verstappen and himself, so he couldn´t try a pass.

- Same with Bottas with 1 lapped car in front of him

- Ricciardo as the last lapped car alowed to unlap was Vettel who was in front of him, so he was deprived of an opportunity to pass at the restart

4 drivers were harmed with the decision wich by itself is something very questionable from a Steward, then the championship...


I think Max was the best driver of the season, but the title was decided by an arbitrary Steward decision. I say arbitrary to do not assume intentionality, but we all know when there´s huge amounts of money involved this things are anything but unintended.

I must admit I´m a bad person, as I´m even a bit pleased of this. Now Lewis knows how Alonso felt in 2007

- Sainz was on old hard tires. Attacking Max???
- Bottas was overtaken by two Torro Rosso in the last lap although two lapped cars were in between.
- No unlapping car reached the end of the pack, so Riccardo vs. Vettel would have ended exactely the same.

You should watch the race and not post nonsense here.

If any driver was harmed then this was Tsunoda and Gasly who could not have a go at Sainz.

[DChemTech]

The last lap cannot be a green flag racing according to the rule... so it has to be a yellow flagged lap, so any positions gained in that lap is invalid and illegal.. .. hence the position gained by Max will revert back to the one he had on lap 57. So there is no shortening for the race, only changing finishing order which is perfectly possible

Race Director's decision overrides all rules. So it's a legal decision and stands. Then what is the next argument in court?

Arbitrarity from a Steward wich harms several competitors

- Lewis obviously as with a normal (legal) procedure the race would have finished under SC, wich is what they logically assumed when SC was deployed with 5 laps to go and a car crashed into the track with pieces all around, so they decided to do not stop to keep track position as the scenario looked like a finish under SC. But then normal (legal) procedure was modified on the go to let only some cars to unlap, and quickly restart the race with one lap to go. Basically they moved the goalposts after Mercedes made their decision based on normal (legal) procedures. Like it or not that is not fair as is not how Stewards are suppossed to act

- Sainz as they left two lapped cars between Verstappen and himself, so he couldn´t try a pass.

- Same with Bottas with 1 lapped car in front of him

- Ricciardo as the last lapped car alowed to unlap was Vettel who was in front of him, so he was deprived of an opportunity to pass at the restart

4 drivers were harmed with the decision wich by itself is something very questionable from a Steward, then the championship...


I think Max was the best driver of the season, but the title was decided by an arbitrary Steward decision. I say arbitrary to do not assume intentionality, but we all know when there´s huge amounts of money involved this things are anything but unintended.

I must admit I´m a bad person, as I´m even a bit pleased of this. Now Lewis knows how Alonso felt in 2007

The title was not decided by a single decision. It was decided, amongst other factors, by several decisions over the course of the season, some of which played out in favor of MB. Claiming that this was the single ultimate decisive factor is absurd reductionism. The decision was poor yes, but it's a sign of a bigger issue of poorly written, hard-to-interpret and hard-to-enforce rules and regulations, that has led to more controversy already. As I indicated before, the title was already tainted by such decisions, regardless of who won, regardless of how this last race played out.

[Andres125sx]

Infact IMO, they should change that ruling and instruct the leading cars to overtake lapped cars, instead of allowing lapped cars to unlap.

This sound so obvious I guess there must be a reason we´re missing

[cooken]

There has been an argument made that "any" as pertaining to lapped cars does not mean "all" in an attempt to justify letting only a select few lapped cars go past. Assuming that this is part of the logic being applied, then by extension, the message in 48.12 of "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" does not have to be "all" lapped cars, and therefore the message sent to the selected 5 can be interpreted as the one implied by this article. Meaning that 48.12 actually WAS invoked as soon as that message was sent out.

Frankly, I think regardless of the wording of the rules, it seems to me that Article 48.12 is intended to come into effect if it is decided that lapped cars are overtaking, whether it be one of them, all of them, or any combination in between.

[El Scorchio]

Isn't it easy to ignore posts, instead of coming back at a poster and telling, "stop". Nobody does. I would appreciate people arguing on, but bossing around saying, "stop", is not acceptable. If there are points, feel free to put forward and and debate on.

Wait, you just accused a member of ignoring posts while simultaneously ignoring the majority of their post?
I’m sorry but your repeated, constant trolling and gaslighting of other forum users really should be bought under control.

Like Dans said, we should be allowed to tell Ryar and our friend from Delft (nice town, I hope I can be there early next year) that Max fans are a$$holes? Would this make the thread better?
Or just flag them and let only the Lewis fans post?

Honestly....yesterday I tried to read the thread in the evening I tried to read this thread and my browser could not load the pages as quick as Lewis fans were expressing their feelings here....of course that was expected that ringostar, scorcho and their gang will own this thread.

First- I don't appreciate being called out like that. Plenty of people including yourself were posting a lot last night offering a wide range of opinions on what transpired. Second- I am perfectly entitled to air mine on the situation, even if it is contrary to yours.