2021 Belgian Grand Prix - Spa-Francorchamps, Aug 27 - 29

[NathanOlder]

True true. Maybe I'm just so used to Verstappen being boned out by a Mercedes or random tire blowout that I see him crossing the line in a good position as a win already
But yeah, one could also view the damage limitation as luck once again falling Hamilton's way. Anyway, main point, I do think it's fair points were awarded, even if the way in which it happened deserves little praise.

You guys are hilarious, so yesterday it was Lewis getting lucky? He lost 5 points to his rival without any racing. If you see that as luck falling Hamiltons way then I totally understand why you see Lewis as the luckiest driver on the grid.

It is you who is hilarious. You want to twist words and if you want to describe this, with Max being o pole on merit, with max having fresh inters left and with max the only one with no visibility impact as lucky for not having raced I beg to differ. In fact, it are always the Hamilton brigade who feel entitled to dish out with calling people names. Forum admins don’t do anything to stop this.

They didn't race. To get more points than anyone else for not racing is fortunate. The rules don't say points are given out for qualy so don't bring qualy in to it. Max has won 2 races with rain involved before yesterday. Both those races he spun and got back on track. So yesterday was not a guaranteed win for Max. Saying that both races he won with rain were half wet races anyway. Max may be super fast in the wet, but he spins a lot too. So to say he had it wrapped up before it even started is a joke surely?

[NathanOlder]

Will they reimburse the tickets ? This will be a worse travesty than indy '05, if they don't.

I dont think they will, well they certainly trying to wriggle out of it hence calling it a race.

Technically the fans came, they saw a race. they went home.

[marvin78]

Will they reimburse the tickets ? This will be a worse travesty than indy '05, if they don't.

Technically the fans came, they saw a race. they went home.

And hopefully never come back. But that is only my wish. That will not happen.

[Sieper]

You guys are hilarious, so yesterday it was Lewis getting lucky? He lost 5 points to his rival without any racing. If you see that as luck falling Hamiltons way then I totally understand why you see Lewis as the luckiest driver on the grid.

It is you who is hilarious. You want to twist words and if you want to describe this, with Max being o pole on merit, with max having fresh inters left and with max the only one with no visibility impact as lucky for not having raced I beg to differ. In fact, it are always the Hamilton brigade who feel entitled to dish out with calling people names. Forum admins don’t do anything to stop this.

They didn't race. To get more points than anyone else for not racing is fortunate. The rules don't say points are given out for qualy so don't bring qualy in to it. Max has won 2 races with rain involved before yesterday. Both those races he spun and got back on track. So yesterday was not a guaranteed win for Max. Saying that both races he won with rain were half wet races anyway. Max may be super fast in the wet, but he spins a lot too. So to say he had it wrapped up before it even started is a joke surely?

Who says that? You I think. I have said nothing of the like.

The only thing I said to you is to stop ridiculing others. “Surely a joke”, “hilarious”.

No, nothing of that. All my posts in this topic have been sincere, on topic and imho reasonable. I have made no statements on who is lucky or who wrapped up things, that is all you.

[DChemTech]

Come on, I did not say that. I said that yesterday was mostly luck falling in Max's direction for once - and that there are certain perspectives in which Lewis is lucky too. The world isn't completely black-and-white.

Don’t go on the defense. Nathan has no right to always use such words. Let him explain himself.

He said

"But yeah, one could also view the damage limitation as luck once again falling Hamilton's way."

This not saying Hamilton got lucky?

Exactly - I said "One could view as luck falling his way", after I already said "Verstappen is lucky for once".
I did clearly not say "Hamilton is lucky once again (and bad luck for Verstappen he only gets half points).

So, how you interpret that as me saying "Lewis is the lucky one" is an absolute mystery to me.

[Sieper]

Will they reimburse the tickets ? This will be a worse travesty than indy '05, if they don't.

I dont think they will, well they certainly trying to wriggle out of it hence calling it a race.

Technically the fans came, they saw a race. they went home.

They came, they hoped, they stayed, there wasn’t a real race, they probably understood the reasons why. Rain and danger/ risk the stewards were not willing to take.

It is peeeeep but when you go you know it can happen.

[basti313]

I'm guessing race control or the management of F1 and the management of the Spa circuit were responsible for yesterday's action I think. I think they all agreed on the outcome that benefits all parties, except the fans.
......

I am surprised by the take on the ticket situation. If you read in the terms for the tickets it always speaks about "event". The event had started once they opened the gates. This has nothing to do with the race. The Sundays ticket says you can enter the event and take a seat, there is not a single word in the terms or on the ticket guaranteeing you cars going round the track.
The question is now how you imagine the fans to "benefit"? It sounds like the three laps was a betraying of the fans, but it is not.

The only benefit from calling it off at ~4pm without any car being on track would have been to come home earlier. For me it was a better choice to see two safety car laps and then a podium celebration. The only issue is that they called it off much too late, but the safety car laps were ok.

[Sieper]

Nobody is lucky here. It was just peeeep. For everyone. Gaining some points for the once who did is nice, but then again, could have been very different if we raced.

[sosic2121]

Exactly. The rules could, and should have been more clear on what happens procedurally when there is no opportunity to race. But let's be honest, this was a rather unique situation - and rules are often written in hindsight.

That there was no race, doesn't mean no points should be awarded. There still was a team effort in the days prior in which some drivers/teams stood out, for which they deserve to be rewarded. Now it feels unsatisfactory that the procedure was made up on the fly and the whole thing was a big mess, sure, but still, points are in place. Russell/Williams in particular took a gamble and won, for which they should be credited.

And yeah, it's mostly Hamilton fans that complain now, whereas Verstappen fans are largely silent. Logically, they benefitted. I have no doubts it would be the other way around had their positions been swapped. But for once, luck (and Stewards decisions) fell in Verstappen's favor rather than Hamilton's. Soit.

No points to the FIA/stewards for execution, but in the end the decision to essentially give points on qualifying merits is, in my view, the right one (even though in this case there were even some mutations to that, as Sieper pointed out). Let's hope next time it's just known upfront that that's how it will be.

Was it Verstappen that benefitted, he was the one out in front, with no spray. The rest was in even more danger. He could have gained 25 points also.

Really??? come on man. I don't recall anyone winning and scoring points without racing at all. The guy who took the most points was the luckiest. None of them raced. Max did the same job as Mazepin, yet Max got 12.5 more points than Mazepin.

Really it's time to stop with this.

If your guy was a little bit braver like the guy that won, maybe we would have a proper race.

But you think it's not fair that guy who was fastest on Saturday and said "yes, I want to race" on Sunday got more points than someone else.

[NathanOlder]

Was it Verstappen that benefitted, he was the one out in front, with no spray. The rest was in even more danger. He could have gained 25 points also.

Really??? come on man. I don't recall anyone winning and scoring points without racing at all. The guy who took the most points was the luckiest. None of them raced. Max did the same job as Mazepin, yet Max got 12.5 more points than Mazepin.

Really it's time to stop with this.

If your guy was a little bit braver like the guy that won, maybe we would have a proper race.

But you think it's not fair that guy who was fastest on Saturday and said "yes, I want to race" on Sunday got more points than someone else.

My opinion is no one deserved anything as they didn't race.

[NathanOlder]

It is you who is hilarious. You want to twist words and if you want to describe this, with Max being o pole on merit, with max having fresh inters left and with max the only one with no visibility impact as lucky for not having raced I beg to differ. In fact, it are always the Hamilton brigade who feel entitled to dish out with calling people names. Forum admins don’t do anything to stop this.

They didn't race. To get more points than anyone else for not racing is fortunate. The rules don't say points are given out for qualy so don't bring qualy in to it. Max has won 2 races with rain involved before yesterday. Both those races he spun and got back on track. So yesterday was not a guaranteed win for Max. Saying that both races he won with rain were half wet races anyway. Max may be super fast in the wet, but he spins a lot too. So to say he had it wrapped up before it even started is a joke surely?

Who says that? You I think. I have said nothing of the like.

The only thing I said to you is to stop ridiculing others. “Surely a joke”, “hilarious”.

No, nothing of that. All my posts in this topic have been sincere, on topic and imho reasonable. I have made no statements on who is lucky or who wrapped up things, that is all you.

YOU. you questioned "was it Max who benefited, when he could have had 25 points" suggesting he lost out most with this.

Don't twist my words. you know what you said end of. good bye.

[basti313]

..... Mercedes gambled on a dry race and made the wrong call, but also benefitted from not having to run their dry race set up in a wet race. ....

I am still surprised by this assumption. Nothing in the data supports this:
- All top speeds are well sorted by the engines. Except for the usually low drag AT, you can see Merc engine cars on the top. Everyone bolted on all downforce they had and we see the naturally more grunge of the Merc engine as expected. This was discussed in the week before the race already, that Spa is a track where you see an engine advantage also in the wet.
- Ham had always one of the best S2 in Q. Clearly speaks against a dry setup...
- One of the major differences was the bus stop. Ham neither came out well to start the lap, nor did he get through it on the lap. This was the only place where the Bull was clearly better.
- Rus was clearly better in La Source and Pouhon, ~0.3sec each. If you look at the lap comparisons you can see the Merc and the Bull being better everywhere else on the track but the drivers bottled it in La Source and Pouhon. Ham and Rus bottled a bit the Bus Stop, this is where all the loss in the end came to Verstappen. With the natural speed of the cars extracted more similar, we would have had Ver and Ham very close and Rus being about 0.6sec behind them.

Furthermore there is no real "wet setup" anymore. Tire pressures are on the low limit, ride height is only changed by the tire diameter, wings are clearly visible and according to the top speeds they were fairly similar.

I disagree with this post almost entirely. Williams correctly predicted lots of rain for quali and clearly ran with a big rear wing in the context of this track. As a result they were slow on the straights, even with mercedes PU.
Red bull/williams rear wing:


This corelates perfectly with observed performance trough the lap. Williams is fast in corners and not so much on the straights. Check clip below


Mercedes went with a medium DF wing (the one hamilton used on friday, the higher downforce version) with much higher AOE compared to red bull but not as much as williams. It's true mercedes are getting saved by their engine (again) because even with so much wing they were reasonably faster than red bull on straights.

But it isn't true that everyone bolted on all downforce they could and just run with it, as red bull clearly didn't, not by a long shot.

You are making a wrong assumption here with aero efficiency. The aero efficiency of both Merc and Bull are miles ahead of the Williams. This is why at similar DF levels the Bull or Merc is still faster than the Williams. The Bulls had a different deployment with a much slower entry. For the Merc:
Entry to Eau Rouge is 302 LH, 298 GR.
End of Kemmel straight is LH 310, GR 304.

This is nothing if we look at aero performance difference from Merc to Williams. On tracks like Azer they had similar top speed and the Merc was one second faster in the corners.

Williams used here their medium downforce package. Just like Merc. As parts of the Q were run in Inter conditions no one could put on a high DF setup as they would still loose too much time on the straight on the Inter. Merc even put the gurney on the wing.

Everyone was on a similarly high DF setup and as you can read above and if you look at the video you posted with the ghost car you see that the Bull was faster anywhere than in the mentioned corners. How should this fit to the theory of significantly more DF on the Williams?

[Red Rock Mutley]

I am surprised by the take on the ticket situation. If you read in the terms for the tickets it always speaks about "event". The event had started once they opened the gates. This has nothing to do with the race. The Sundays ticket says you can enter the event and take a seat, there is not a single word in the terms or on the ticket guaranteeing you cars going round the track

I imagine the legal arguments would examine whether the experience met the reasonable expectation of the purchase. It has to more than simply providing a seat as one overlooking the forest would meet that criteria, but rather the seat is part of a wider experience.

The same goes for the event as a whole; it has a number of component parts - from the experience of getting to the circuit, the hospitality, the various fan zones, and the race itself. The question of refund may come down to determining what percentage of the ticket price relates to the on-track action, and did that action meet reasonable expectation.

[Tvetovnato]

There are a few more aspects to it, there was a driver with a grid penalty for taking 5 cars out of the previous race. Should that (lenient) penalty also be just brushed under the carpet. At least now he has served it.

If any of the drivers (like Perez and stroll’s team with the wing) made a mistake in these slow laps they lost the points even.

No, the most sensible thing is just to have the penalties served the next race instead, when there actually IS a race.

I truly don’t understand how anyone can be happy with this whole thing, no matter who you support. Mindblowing.

did you get the impression I am happy with the outcome? Or are you just bashing me for the sake of it?

I didn’t mean it like that, my apologies after reading my own text again. My first point was merely that I really think we should have skipped the race and carried all penalties to the next race, since we didn’t do any racing here. The second point was more a general one, not directed to you. Sorry!

[Sieper]

No, the most sensible thing is just to have the penalties served the next race instead, when there actually IS a race.

I truly don’t understand how anyone can be happy with this whole thing, no matter who you support. Mindblowing.

did you get the impression I am happy with the outcome? Or are you just bashing me for the sake of it?

I didn’t mean it like that, my apologies after reading my own text again. My first point was merely that I really think we should have skipped the race and carried all penalties to the next race, since we didn’t do any racing here. The second point was more a general one, not directed to you. Sorry!

Thank you, class response! I see I also overreacted a bit for which I am sorry too, Yeah this “race” was a farce. We’re they too afraid, or right, what would have happened. Now we will never know and one more race down the (d)rain.