myurr wrote:First off is the blue flag rules. You point out that the three corner thing is a guide rather than a rule, but don't show the rule that says the driver should dive out of the way immediately. As with the flexing wings that Seb benefitted from last year where the written rule is stricter than the practical implementation, the way this rule is enforced is by giving a driver 3 corners to let the lapping car through. Sure they should make space as soon as is practical but we've seen some quite horrific blocks in the past that went unpunished. Vettel assumed that Karthikeyan would leap out of the way and lunged past from incredibly far behind. Which brings me on to the second point about just how far away Vettel was when he made the move.
I have spelled it out. I quoted the legal situation chapter and verse earlier in this thread and you seem to be unable to recognize the points. This incident was not about denying a legal pass. In those cases there is the three corner rule.
According to the sporting regulations which I have quoted earlier in this thread
the backmarker has to let the leader pass as soon as possible. This means literally on the first available strait or corner. This is the point where the regulations define the duty of the backmarker and this is the yard stick for the stewards ruling in case of a collision. NK was under duty to let Vettel pass.
The three corner rule might have come into play if there had been no collision and Vettel had been stuck behind NK for two more corners. Then that rule would have been applied to determine what constitutes denying a legal pass.
The point I was making is not that a rule is written or not written but the simple legal applicability. For the stewards and for me there is no shadow of a doubt that
the regulations require a backmarker to make room as soon as possible. A bunch of fans and NK himself should read the rule book and stop talking about bullying if a leader makes a pass on a driver to be lapped.
You say that you don't agree with my interpretation that Vettel came from a long way back. Well here's the captures from the onboard video from his car.
Here are the cars entering into the two corners where the incident took place:
see pic in original post
At the point NK lets Hamilton (I believe, and not Alonso) through - you can see the puff of water as he runs off the track to make room. You can also see just how far back Vettel is as they enter the corner and how NK would not have been able to see him at this point:
see pic in original post
So here we are as Vettel hits the apex. You can see how much ground he's made up through the corner and therefore how much faster he's going.
pic removed
The cars are alongside. Note how Vettel is actually steering left at this moment despite having the car straight. Presumably he's correcting a little bit of a rear end wobble, but it actually puts him closer to NK than he really needed to be and in my view contributes to the accident.
pic removed
And here's the final shot of the car effectively straight and the steering straightish with possibly a very slight left turn.
From this point Vettel had the whole track width to his right and more than enough speed advantage to move to the right and give NK some room, but instead holds the line and expects NK to just disappear or continue running on the curbs. So basically it's a racing incident. NK could have waited a fraction of a second to avoid Vettel but at the same time Vettel treated him like dirt and ran unnecessarily close to him contributing massively to the accident.
I agree that it may have been another leader in front of Vettel because I have not checked lap charts. That really is completely immaterial to the case.
I dismiss all of your other considerations above. There is nothing in the book that says how much speed differential between a backmarker and a leader is appropriate and there is equally nothing in the book about the distance between two consecutive leaders catching up with a backmarker. Whoever was the first leader - Hamilton or Alonso - had just the same kind of speed differential and no different initial lateral distance than Vettel to NK.
Your interpretation is basically flawed because you have a wrong concept of what is the duty of the driver being lapped, as NK apparently also does.
If your pictures show something relevant at all it is the fact that there was a lateral gap of something like 1 meter between SB and NK at the time when they were alongside. I reject the idea that NK at this time was riding the curb. The wide angle nature of the roll hoop camera is very misleading in such situations. We have never seen a shot of NK's roll hoop camera at this point which is a shame, because it would probably show that he was well away from the curb there. At least all I have seen in terms of frontal shots of TV cameras on the incident stipulate that he was safely on track with no traction issues at all.
When a leading car puts a pass on a back marker with approximately 1 meter lateral gap and with a constant steering angle as you have established yourself I see no reason at all for criticism. This is exactly how it should be done. There is enough room and both drivers should be aware that the faster man has a right to pass unobstructed.
The fact that you do not mention, and which is relevant is that NK reduced that lateral gap by steering his car away from the curb and into SV's path. We can only speculate why he did it because his defense mentioned circumstances that applied to the first leaders pass and not to Vettel's pass. My conclusion is that he simply made a mistake. He did not think that the next car was a leader but another car he was racing or he simply did not pay attention to his mirrors.
Also you can see in that shot how Vettel isn't at all close to the car in front and should not have expected to have been let through in the same move. It was arrogance, he expected to just blast through and that NK would just leap out of the way. That disregard of his fellow driver and sense of entitlement when passing a back marker can be seen in his actions afterwards and subsequent comments. We didn't see that kind of reaction from Hamilton in Spa last year and Hamilton was rightly criticised for moving over on Kobayashi even though he thought he was past.
We've also seen this kind of move several times from Vettel where he cuts across another car way too early after making a move, assuming that the racing line is now his.
This is all off topic rambling. You do not recognize the nature of the passing rules for lapped drivers and make up your own universe of what drivers should do or not.
Finally with the blue flags it appears you don't have any additional information so I feel more confident in saying that the light on the dashboard doesn't have sub-corner accuracy. The system wouldn't have determined that Vettel was now close enough for the blue flag to be triggered - indeed as they enter the corner he was not close enough for a blue flag to be relevant, but was carrying so much more speed that he quickly caught NK - it was still flashing for Hamilton, but he had just been let past. NK had no obligation to let Vettel through immediately, nor could he reasonably have known how close he was except from the noise of his engine. That wouldn't have told him who the driver was or that he was about to cut across so close to him.
So at worst, in my humble opinion, this is a 50/50 racing incident where neither driver intended it to happen but Vettel had plenty of track and grip to have avoided it entirely by not running so closely to the lapped car.
This is idle speculation and totally unsupported by the observed facts. The facts are that four separate blue lights along the track were definitely identified as being shown to NK. The blue zone began well before Vettel arrived on the scene when the first lapping occurred and went on until the accident occurred. There cannot be a doubt that NK was under blue during the whole double lapping event and unless there was a malfunction his dash lights should have been blue as well. The simple truth is that NK screwed up, they crashed and the stewards punished him correctly for failing in his duty to let the leader pass as soon as possible. The corner exit they crashed was the first opportunity and he failed to give Vettel the room that was there initially. And this should be the end of this particular debate unless you want me to show you the rule again. I assume that you have read this thread. So you should be able to find the post where I quoted the regulation.
