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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeeEP6ZwCVU[/youtube]
I have looked at the video once again showing the whole incident. There are some interesting points:
In the video sequence you see blue flag flashing signals at four points beginning when Alonso makes his pass. There is also one between Vettel arriving behind Katikeyan and Alonso already having passed. And then there are two more flashing blue lights during and after the incident. Knowing the FiA signal system we can say with 100% certainty that Katikeyan had a blue light in his cockpit at least from the moment when Alonso successfully passed and beyond the accident point. We can be sure the system was working because there was no complaint about a malfunction. The system is designed to reflect the flashing blue light when a backmarker's transponder is detected between the circuit blue lights and show it in the cockpit.
Katikeyan made place for Alonso ok. He says he ran over marbles, a rumble strip or a wet curb which made him loose control. I have some serious doubts about that. In the video he touches a curb on the corner entry when Alonso passes him. But he then takes the corner under good traction and never looks out of control behind the apex. At least there is no stepping out of his back end at the corner exit to justify leaving the outside edge of the corner by several meters. If he was on the curb at all - which I doubt - and only wanted to get off the curb he did not need to come back to the inside as much as he did. If there were marbles on the track it could not have been so serious that he had to get back on the racing line. A bit of a lift could have done the same for him. I believe his statement is simply a cop out.
The logical explanation is that he made an assumption that he was going to be lapped only by one driver. In that situation he simply could have observed his blue light in the cockpit to know that he was still required to let a leading driver pass. I believe he probably was too much worried that a competitor would use Alonso's pass to pass as well. So he wanted to go on the racing line as fast as possible and failed to check his blue light.
Coulthard compounded the analysis by comparing the situation with Turkey 2010 which was completely different. In Turkey it was Vettel who made the move but yesterday in Malaysia Vettel held his line and Katikeyan moved inside towards the racing line.
2012 Malaysian Grand Prix, The FIA Stewards of the Meeting
From The FIA Stewards of the Meeting To The Team Manager HRT F1 Team
Document 36, Date 25 March 2012, Time 19:40
The Stewards, having received a report from the Race Director, have considered the following matter, determine a breach of the regulations has been commited by the competitor named below and impose the penalty referred to.
No / Driver: 23 - Narain Karthikeyan
Competitor: HRT F1 Team
Time: 18:32:00
Session: Race
Fact: Causing a collision with Car 1 Sebastian Vettel
Offence: Involved in an incident as defined by Article 16.1 of the FIA Formula One Sporting Regulations
Decision: Drive through penalty, imposed after the race in accordance with article 16.3 (20 seconds added to elapsed race time)
Reason: Self-explanatory
Paul Gutjahr, Roger Peart, Johnny Herbert, Allen Oh
As we know the stewards have found fault with Katikeyans driving and it must have been the point that he moved too early to the inside. Apparently they did not believe his defence any more than I do.
Hail22 wrote:What i don't like is that Vettel was name calling NK...Gherkin? Idiot? thats not very nice from a supposed (champion).
I think this is a cultural issue. Vettel comes from a culture where people are often much more outspoken and unpolite particularly in stress situations and where the standards of public speaking are more relaxed than in the UK which sets the standard for the English spoken world. We have a young man in a stress situation who is very upset with what has happened. He feels that Kartikeyan made a mistake that may cost him very dearly and he knows the guy should know better.
I'm not very happy with the "idiot" label and I think Vettel will regret that once he has had a bit of time to cool off and get over it. You can call that a mistake but we have seen worse lapses of protocol where drivers got into fist fights over racing accidents. One should not make a character judgement or witch hunt out of it.
Bet on it now. Silverstone is always wet, especially as Im going this year. Garenteed to rain