2018 German Grand Prix - Hockenheimring, July 20-22

[marvin78]

Other drivers made same mistakes in other corners. Even Hamilton did. It was the wrong place for such an error.

[roon]

How much money changes hands during these long meetings with Charlie?

Somewhat related: how much does he charge per ancillary mirror attachment allowance?

[Schuttelberg]

Great drive by Hamilton.

No penalty for Hamilton's pit infringement delegitimizes the FIA, race stewards, and F1 as a whole.

It's literally professional wrestling now, not a technical sport.

Makes me want to vomit. Especially with previous infractions and Whiting directives/ threats. The justification contortions are literally awful... To say they didn't penalize BECAUSE OF THE SAFETY CAR made it less dangerous is utterly stupefying. If anything, all infractions under the safety car should come with DOUBLE penalties.

I can't watch anymore...

I'm tired of people whining and threatening like that.

So, just stop watching. You won't be missed, frankly.

He's not threatening you or me. He's emotional and every fan that leaves the sport, the sport is poorer. We're what makes this sport.

I think not penalising Lewis was the right decision yesterday and a sporting decision. However, the fact that Vettel was penalised in Austria is what stirs this debate up. Stewarding has been a joke. Nothing new.

[Nathanael F1]

I still don't understand how Hamilton didn't get a penalty for making up his own track when he ignored his engineer about to pit. Seriously.

Was cool seeing Leclerc do a 360 and keep going, though.

Do you seriously think Ham deserved his win taken back for what he did? Reprimand is quite adequate in my opinion. Remember this is an F1 where "headbutting" your title opponent behind safety car is penalized by 10 sec.

Not adequate at all. Did you forget the 2016 Azerbaijan GP? 5 sec penalty for Raikkonen for barely crossing the pit entry white line. Nowhere near as blatant as Hamilton, yet no penalty. I'm not saying Hamilton shouldn't have won. Maybe he would've been able to pull a 5 sec gap to Bottas by the end. The recent trend of Mercedes favoring by the FIA recent has been absolutely disgusting.

[Restomaniac]

Wasn't Wehrlein's penalty given because he skipped the bollard and entered the pits ? And you damn well know Kimi's penalty was in Baku, where there was a track specific ruling regarding the pit entry... They are in no shape or form precedents for what happened today... Apples and oranges.

In much the same way as there were no precedents for intentionally swerving into another car behind the safety car.

Wow... You took apples and oranges to another level it seems...

Not really. I’m backing up your point that the stewards have free reign when they haven’t seen something before and no set rules for it. Like in Baku in 2017.

[Vasconia]

Laps before Seb's slide in to the gravel.

Vettel
45 1:19.251
46 1:20.700
47 1:19.382
48 1:19.133
49 1:20.281
50 1:23.376
51 1:29.270

Hamilton
45 1:17.251
46 1:19.386
47 1:16.957
48 1:17.792
49 1:18.899
50 1:21.122
51 1:29.258

Hamilton was eating in to Vettel's advantage. If Vettel was aware of that, it might have caused him to push too hard on the tyres he was on. The only one who knows is Seb and he isn't saying.

It would be more informative if you had stuck the times for Bottas and Raikkonen up as well.

As you wish:

Kimi
45 1:19.719
46 1:21.798
47 1:19.680
48 1:20.789
49 1:20.117
50 1:22.168
51 1:33.961

Bottas
45 1:18.222
46 1:21.822
47 1:20.370
48 1:19.568
49 1:19.723
50 1:22.063
51 1:31.867

Mercedes was clearly faster on those conditions as Bottas was reducing the gap to Kimi and Hamilton with all of them. Vettel tried to go faster than it was "safe" with these tyres and he made a small mistake with big consequences.

Hamilton had a lot of luck, but his drive was tremendous, he remined me the best Schumacher when the German was able to find the grip when no one was able.

Kimi was once again, underwhelming in the last laps when he wasn´t able to attack Bottas.

[Vasconia]

Personally i am not that critical of Vettel. Being 1st and leading a GP is always a very difficult position. From 1st, you can only go backwards. Getting the perfect balance between risk and reward is hard; risk too much, you risk throwing it away, play it safe, well you might lose too. Vettel was being too cautious because he needed to and because he had the most to lose. This likely caused him to lose tire temps that led to less grip and his eventual mistake and crash. Hamilton on the other hand, well he was driving like someone with little to lose, was aggressive and maintained a lot of heat in his tires.

Completely disagree. Vettel did something metronomically dumb today. In the 5 laps leading up to his crash, he extended his gap to Raikkonen from 3 to 10 seconds. He was just pushing too hard and I have no idea why? It almost felt like he was trying to prove an unnecessary point!

A part of me has a feeling he did not like being held up by Raikkonen for that long. It's not the first time he would have lost his hot head and done something daft.

He needed to extend the gap to Hamilton because they were expecting rain and if they were going to change the tyres a few seconds advantage was more than welcome.

He was leading his home race, take for granted that Hamilton or Verstappen would have done the same. You can´t blame him for trying to win this race, only for making this error. And I am one of those who is tremendously disappointed.

[Cannonballer]

Vettel mistake is one of those which may cost a world title...

FIA's favouritism towards Ham may cost him the title too.

Favoritism towards the favorites perhaps. Vettel deliberately crashed into an opponents car last year and got a slap on the wrist.
It seems that the officials are always loathe to make any decisions that could possibly change the course of the championship, regardless of how justified. That has always been true, there is such an instance every year.

[Restomaniac]

Laps before Seb's slide in to the gravel.

Vettel
45 1:19.251
46 1:20.700
47 1:19.382
48 1:19.133
49 1:20.281
50 1:23.376
51 1:29.270

Hamilton
45 1:17.251
46 1:19.386
47 1:16.957
48 1:17.792
49 1:18.899
50 1:21.122
51 1:29.258

Hamilton was eating in to Vettel's advantage. If Vettel was aware of that, it might have caused him to push too hard on the tyres he was on. The only one who knows is Seb and he isn't saying.

It would be more informative if you had stuck the times for Bottas and Raikkonen up as well.

As you wish:

Kimi
45 1:19.719
46 1:21.798
47 1:19.680
48 1:20.789
49 1:20.117
50 1:22.168
51 1:33.961

Bottas
45 1:18.222
46 1:21.822
47 1:20.370
48 1:19.568
49 1:19.723
50 1:22.063
51 1:31.867

Well looking at those numbers Vettel was around 6 seconds faster than Raikkonen and although the times come and go with regard to Bottas in lap 51 Vettel was around 2.5 seconds faster. In fact he almost did an identical lap time to Hamilton on lap 51.

[Vasconia]

Let's talk about TR putting Gasly on full wets as it was only wet in the hairpin and then changing him back on slicks shortly before the rain started to get heavier.

That was the dumbest move of the day.

[Restomaniac]

You know something. Mercerdes have rightly taken a whole load of crap over their pit strategy recently. Yesterday however Mercedes got it right.
They didn’t fall for the Ferrari trap, they left Hamilton as long as they could and then calmed him by rightly predicting very light rain which wasn’t enough for inters and they made a very late call to stick Bottas on US instead of Inters (What a great call that was).

The only black spot was Bonnington confusing the living hell out of Hamilton.

[Andres125sx]

What utter **** from Mercedes. Robbed the fans of what would have been a great duel for 1-2 between ham and bot.
I'm really starting to get tired of this kind of rubbish.
For the 1st time in years I finally just turned the TV off after that crap happened. Just crap.

If you really think that.... what are you doing watching F1? F1 has always been the same since 1950, except for a brief period when FIA banned team orders, but even in that period TOs were still active, so FIA finally removed the ban


I really can´t grasp how some fans get surprised with TOs.... When did you start watching F1?

[sosic2121]

Vettel deliberately crashed into an opponents car last year and got a slap on the wrist.

10s stop&go is slap on the wrist?

[Just_a_fan]

The entire point of having a safety car on track is because inherent unsafe conditions exist.

No. The safety car was on track for a specific situation at a specific corner where a tractor was working very close to the side of the track. That corner was some distance away from the pit entry area and so there was no "inherent unsafe condition" applicable at the point where Hamilton went across the grass.

[Andres125sx]

Vettel mistake is one of those which may cost a world title...

FIA's favouritism towards Ham may cost him the title too.

From an Alonso fan, what favouritism are you talking about mate? I´ve seen soft decisions on both Hamilton and Vettel, no favouritisms at all apart from FIA agenda wich is selling a product and they will favour Lewis sometimes and Seb some others

Did you think the same past season after the ridiculous penalty FIA provided to Vettel after crashing intentionally with Hamilton under SC in Baku?