2021 British Grand Prix - Silverstone, July 16 - 18

[Jolle]

I don't think any calls for penalties for what happened yesterday are going to be discussed. Was it blocking/impeding? Yes. Hamilton had no intention of doing his lap and his presser is a whole heap of BS which has been the norm from 2007. He talks a heap of gas in press conferences and has gotten himself in trouble too for it. It was gamesmanship and the issue is that these things get discussed only when it happens at the front. What happened in Austria with Vettel and Alonso was much much more clear cut and the two Monza races before this year were a proper joke. It's easy to blame the stewards but they follow the wording in the rule book. Not what they feel is right/wrong. In most such situations that I have seen, the person crashing/blocking almost always gets away with it and the penalties are often meted out to blokes that don't intend it. THE problem is in the rule book. Not the people.

One thing I will say- It seems the entire Mercedes team is so affected by "booing." For me it's hilarious. Specially when it comes from Hamilton who's spewed a whole heap of garbage from 2010-13 when Seb was receiving it and even more rich after what happened at Silverstone when the crowd was roaring in ruptures when Max was about to hit the wall. To blame the RBR top brass for it just shows how arrogant they are. You indulge in cheap tactics and then you can't take a little booing.

I had become a Lewis fan in his Mercedes stint, but Max is right. The true colours are out and Toto has been a snake from day 1. Nothing he does will ever surprise me. To coin a term if it doesn't exist, they're a lot of humblebrags. Plain disgusting!!

An interesting rant…
Few things about yesterday and the redbull management I observed over the last two weeks.

For the “blocking” yesterday, Hamilton and Bottas maintained a gap to each other comparable to the five drivers in front. RedBull send their drivers out after the Mercedes cars. If you watch the onboard of each of the drivers there is no blocking or slowing down in places where you don’t expect it. Hamilton’s outlap was even faster then the first run. What you do hear is a rather concerned radio in Verstappen’s ear, what probably makes him go to close to Hamilton, preventing himself to do a good warmup.
As for the reaction of the redbull management. It was apparently so bad, that the stewards had an extra paragraph in their reply taking about a concern about accusations.

So far, it looks like the whole redbull team is on edge, not only on track (pushing Verstappen to claim Hamilton’s place in the cue) and in interviews (Verstappen was very irritated). At the moment, the Mercedes team looks, communicates and drives quite relaxed.

[Hammerfist]

Well they still stand true today even if they are not official.
But lets focus more on the facts... Max was 1kph faster in a car with 100kg of fuel, more than a car on qualifying fuel with race primed soft tyres.. Let that sink in.
He was going wayyy too fast in desperstion to keep the lead. And the desperate weaving all over the track hinted at that.

Can you confirm where that data came from? Copse is taken flat out in qualifying, as in, there is no lift or braking for that corner, and with a full tank of fuel and harder tires, I don't see how Max could have gone faster than he did in qualifying. That sounds impossible to me because in race trim they do lift for Copse, and watching Max's onboard of the incident, he did lift a little bit.

It's mentioned in this rather good article from the BBC,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/58041542

"Mercedes' and Red Bull's rivals, meanwhile, are standing back and watching all this with a degree of dismay.

A number have told BBC Sport that they found Red Bull's attempts to gather "evidence" against Hamilton somewhat questionable.

And some have mocked in private Red Bull's decision to ask reserve driver Alex Albon to drive Hamilton's line in a two-year-old car using demo tyres at a test at Silverstone a couple of days after the race, and use that as an argument in their submission that Hamilton would never have made the corner at the speed he was doing and the trajectory he was on.

Equally, while Horner has accused Hamilton of a "red-mist moment" and allowing the pressure of the occasion to cloud his judgement, questions have been raised about Verstappen's driving, too.

Beyond the question of whether he should have allowed Hamilton more room given the Mercedes had a substantial part of his car alongside the Red Bull on the entry to the corner, there is the matter of Verstappen's entry speed to Copse on the first lap of the race.

This, according to GPS data available to all teams, was 1.5km/h faster with Hamilton on his inside than it had been on his fastest qualifying lap the day before. Copse is taken flat-out in qualifying - but certainly not on the first lap of the race with a full tank of 100kg of fuel, even when a driver is on an ideal line, which Verstappen was not.

Asked about this, Horner said: "I think that would be physically impossible" and "I can't believe [it] to be true based on all the analysis we have looked at prior to the hearing". The data is the data, though."

I would agree with Horner on this case then. It is "physically impossible" for Max to have been faster in that situation, unless of course he was deploying less during qualifying than he was when he was fighting Hamilton, so he would be faster on entry, but definitely not at the apex.

[NathanOlder]

I don't think any calls for penalties for what happened yesterday are going to be discussed. Was it blocking/impeding? Yes. Hamilton had no intention of doing his lap and his presser is a whole heap of BS which has been the norm from 2007. He talks a heap of gas in press conferences and has gotten himself in trouble too for it. It was gamesmanship and the issue is that these things get discussed only when it happens at the front. What happened in Austria with Vettel and Alonso was much much more clear cut and the two Monza races before this year were a proper joke. It's easy to blame the stewards but they follow the wording in the rule book. Not what they feel is right/wrong. In most such situations that I have seen, the person crashing/blocking almost always gets away with it and the penalties are often meted out to blokes that don't intend it. THE problem is in the rule book. Not the people.

One thing I will say- It seems the entire Mercedes team is so affected by "booing." For me it's hilarious. Specially when it comes from Hamilton who's spewed a whole heap of garbage from 2010-13 when Seb was receiving it and even more rich after what happened at Silverstone when the crowd was roaring in ruptures when Max was about to hit the wall. To blame the RBR top brass for it just shows how arrogant they are. You indulge in cheap tactics and then you can't take a little booing.

I had become a Lewis fan in his Mercedes stint, but Max is right. The true colours are out and Toto has been a snake from day 1. Nothing he does will ever surprise me. To coin a term if it doesn't exist, they're a lot of humblebrags. Plain disgusting!!

An interesting rant…
Few things about yesterday and the redbull management I observed over the last two weeks.

For the “blocking” yesterday, Hamilton and Bottas maintained a gap to each other comparable to the five drivers in front. RedBull send their drivers out after the Mercedes cars. If you watch the onboard of each of the drivers there is no blocking or slowing down in places where you don’t expect it. Hamilton’s outlap was even faster then the first run. What you do hear is a rather concerned radio in Verstappen’s ear, what probably makes him go to close to Hamilton, preventing himself to do a good warmup.
As for the reaction of the redbull management. It was apparently so bad, that the stewards had an extra paragraph in their reply taking about a concern about accusations.

So far, it looks like the whole redbull team is on edge, not only on track (pushing Verstappen to claim Hamilton’s place in the cue) and in interviews (Verstappen was very irritated). At the moment, the Mercedes team looks, communicates and drives quite relaxed.

Completely agree. Looking at qualifying yesterday, the only driver to have a large gap in front while behind another driver was Leclerc. Alonso left a gap to Leclerc, Norris did the same to Alonso, Ocon did the same to Norris, Bottas did the same to Ocon and Hamilton did the same to Bottas. the gaps were all very similar.

For anyone to think Hamilton did a slower lap to hold back the RedBulls, they really don't know what they are looking at. The gaps were all even. Get over it and stop looking for something that wasn't there.

[hollus]

This is the Silverstone race thread, in case you are here by mistake.

[Magicsenna_41]

Were the claimed 23m for not hitting Max or for making the corner? It seems excessive either way comparing it to other braking points, 23m earlier would have put him at a really low speed for that corner, probably like 50kph lower - or am i missing something?

This is one of the so called evidences that Red Bull brought up on Thursday.
Its really hilarious that they used Alex Albon in a 2019 car in Silverstone to come to these values... No wonder the Stewarts denied further actions.

[FWandE]

I find all this discussion about the Silverstone incident between Max & Lewis ridiculous. F1 cars bump, touch & crash at almost every race. There are independent stewards who do their best to dish out appropriate penalties when they think that one driver is more at fault for such an incident. Once the stewards have made a decision that should be an end of the matter unless they have made an obvious mistake or misapplication of the rules. They did not so that should be that.
For what it is worth here is my take on the incident. Having watched the Copse incident many times from several angles I think it is clear that Lewis made an ambitious attempt to overtake which put Max in a position where he had to choose to back off or risk a collision. As such Lewis was primarily at fault for the incident because his driving created the situation. Max, forced to make a split-second decision, seemed to decide that he could drive a line that would keep him in front of Lewis but misjudged it and clipped Lewis's wheel resulting in Max losing control of the car and crashing at high speed. A less charitable interpretation of Max's driving would be that he thought he could clip Lewis's front wing with his own rear wheel and thereby ruin Lewis's race but misjudged it. However, the only person who knows whether that is true or not is Max. Max had plenty of room on the track and could have easily made the corner keeping all 4 wheels comfortably on the tarmac but giving up the place to Lewis. What Lewis did not give him was access to the fastest line through the corner. The stewards decided that the collision was more Lewis's fault than Max's fault and deemed a 10sec penalty appropriate. I think they got that about right.
Again I cannot be inside Max's head but I'd be surprised if he doesn't now wish that he had backed off slightly and then tried to overtake Lewis later in the race. The two cars & drivers are well matched and overtaking at Silverstone is far from impossible so that would have been the smart thing given 20/20 hindsight.
I ask people to imagine how they would feel if the incident had occurred involving two mid-field drivers that they have no particular interest in. I suspect many more people would think the stewards got it about right, there would probably be quite a lot who think the stewards were harsh to award a 10sec penalty and I'd be very surprised if any more than a few would think that the stewards should have imposed a more severe penalty.
People get carried away with their allegiance to one driver or one team. It is understandable but really rather silly. Max has now asked the press to stop asking silly questions about the incident so that really should put an end to it.

[maxxer]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/alon ... s/6642172/

Do think since sky took over he is right and the sports became to british they make fools of all the other commentators all the time , i enjoyed Nico being on the team he gave much more insight then all of those Sky people.
Even in football its annoying these pundits the way they are so biased.
Rather have F1 back on eurosport back than it was neutral commentary

[El Scorchio]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/alon ... s/6642172/

Do think since sky took over he is right and the sports became to british they make fools of all the other commentators all the time , i enjoyed Nico being on the team he gave much more insight then all of those Sky people.
Even in football its annoying these pundits the way they are so biased.
Rather have F1 back on eurosport back than it was neutral commentary

Possibly the sport is a little British centric in terms of where the majority of teams and staff are from, but I don't really see how it's connected to Sky. They get a lot of flack simply because F1 reappropriates their commentary for the rest of the world rather than doing their own. He's talking about other things like the press conferences and the sport in general, and possibly external media coverage and opinion pieces available to a global audience. Most of it is written in English by British people largely for Britlish people. Maybe there's an issue with lack of resource in other countries/languages as well? TBH, aside from Britain and Italy and maybe Japan and a few others, I'd say, where it's constant no matter who is driving mainstream interest in F1 in a lot of countries is only sporadic and driver related. I.E. the level of interest in Spain, Germany, Netherlands fluctuates wildly depending on whether there is/isn't a driver of that nationality in the sport. Put it this way, if Verstappen retired tomorrow, you'd barely see any Dutch fans at any races.

[Big Tea]

Sky got the gig because they were the only people who though they would make money selling it.
I am in many ways anti sky, but they obviously researched where the fan base was and tailored the program to fit the target.
There was nothing stopping a company from, say Italy doing the same thing, but they probably looked at the figures and decided there were not enough fans in the catchment area.

It's like USA world series base ball. Some others play baseball, but cannot be in the same ball park (sorry for the pun)

[El Scorchio]

Sky got the gig because they were the only people who though they would make money selling it.
I am in many ways anti sky, but they obviously researched where the fan base was and tailored the program to fit the target.
There was nothing stopping a company from, say Italy doing the same thing, but they probably looked at the figures and decided there were not enough fans in the catchment area.

It's like USA world series base ball. Some others play baseball, but cannot be in the same ball park (sorry for the pun)

Exactly. Let's also not forget (and this conversation has been had many times) that Sky is funded by the British viewers subscription fees, so obviously it's tailored to a British audience. It's not for them to change. It's for F1 to supply an alternative 'neutral' commentary if non British viewers want it.