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

[PlatinumZealot]

Well at least 1 good thing has come out of the Belgium GP

F1 Commission to review rules Belgian GP ‘to see what can be learned and improved’, says Todt

What I want to know is when exactly did the race start… and if it’s was the first time round, then why the hell is Perez not a lap down in the classification???

And if it was the second time round, then surely they are still missing 1 lap of racing to be able to award points

Perez is not a lap down.
The race never started. Start lights were yellow on formation lap. Yellow = aborted start.

[Mogster]

I juts reviewed the first lap of Alonso onboard. This is the lap at the beginning of the race, the one where they started from the grid slots and that was "not race".
Visibility in the corners was OK, and in the braking areas and acceleration zones, it was OK. But as soon as a straight was longer than 200m, you could no longer see the red flashing light of the car in front. Literally, at every straight worth of that name, the car in front was invisible. Mind you, this is at safety car speeds!
So surely those are no-go conditions.

The track did not look that ultra wet in most places, though. So, could it have been that intermediates, nursed carefully, would have been raceable?
How much less water do they displace per second?
And perhaps more importantly, would their spray consist of thicker droplets?
Possibly the cars themselves could have cleaned the track. Maybe (it is a 7km track).

Surely at the first start it was worth keeping the field circulating behind the safety car for much longer. At least then we’d have seen if the 20 cars on full wets cleared the water. It was still raining very hard though so probably it wouldn’t have made much difference.

With hindsight a 12:00 or 13:00 start was needed.

[Phil]

Well at least 1 good thing has come out of the Belgium GP

F1 Commission to review rules Belgian GP ‘to see what can be learned and improved’, says Todt

What I want to know is when exactly did the race start… and if it’s was the first time round, then why the hell is Perez not a lap down in the classification???

And if it was the second time round, then surely they are still missing 1 lap of racing to be able to award points

Perez is not a lap down.
The race never started. Start lights were yellow on formation lap. Yellow = aborted start.

If the race didnt start, why were those laps eliminated from the official lap count (or in other words, counted towards the race distance)? It was a topic during the red flag period.

[Viper2789]

Must be a record on here....71 pages of a race that wasn't a race haha

[PlatinumZealot]

Well at least 1 good thing has come out of the Belgium GP



What I want to know is when exactly did the race start… and if it’s was the first time round, then why the hell is Perez not a lap down in the classification???

And if it was the second time round, then surely they are still missing 1 lap of racing to be able to award points

Perez is not a lap down.
The race never started. Start lights were yellow on formation lap. Yellow = aborted start.

If the race didnt start, why were those laps eliminated from the official lap count (or in other words, counted towards the race distance)? It was a topic during the red flag period.

Well I have to research if the lap following an aborted start is counted as one.

[ringo]

Yes, Lewis was again massively lucky. If the race had happened he would have lost even more points against Max.

How can you be so sure about that?
For all we know Max would have done his usual bullying when George tries to overtake him around the outside and both crash out.

Anything could have happened. The gap could have went from 8 to 33points.
Max got luck he got 12.5 free points without racing.

[1m0bius1]

I dont want to hear anything about Hamilton or Merc Being lucky again. Literally gifted Verstappen a free win and obvious RBR bias allowed Perez to rejoin the race when he was OUT!!!

[Ryar]

I dont want to hear anything about Hamilton or Merc Being lucky again. Literally gifted Verstappen a free win and obvious RBR bias allowed Perez to rejoin the race when he was OUT!!!

Gifted? There is a reason for having a qualifying session and the driver that did the best job, deserved to get the win in the circumstances. What stopped Lewis from taking pole and be that person? It's not like Verstappen beached his car and someone created a red flag to rescue him and then got the win or that Verstappen took out the faster driver ahead of him and took the win.

[zibby43]

I dont want to hear anything about Hamilton or Merc Being lucky again. Literally gifted Verstappen a free win and obvious RBR bias allowed Perez to rejoin the race when he was OUT!!!

Gifted? There is a reason for having a qualifying session and the driver that did the best job, deserved to get the win in the circumstances. What stopped Lewis from taking pole and be that person? It's not like Verstappen beached his car and someone created a red flag to rescue him and then got the win or that Verstappen took out the faster driver ahead of him and took the win.

Even Verstappen acknowledged he was gifted the win. And I admire him for it. Not his fault, but there are no mental gymnastics that can spin it any other way. There wasn’t a race.

[Ryar]

I dont want to hear anything about Hamilton or Merc Being lucky again. Literally gifted Verstappen a free win and obvious RBR bias allowed Perez to rejoin the race when he was OUT!!!

Gifted? There is a reason for having a qualifying session and the driver that did the best job, deserved to get the win in the circumstances. What stopped Lewis from taking pole and be that person? It's not like Verstappen beached his car and someone created a red flag to rescue him and then got the win or that Verstappen took out the faster driver ahead of him and took the win.

Even Verstappen acknowledged he was gifted the win. And I admire him for it. Not his fault, but there are no mental gymnastics that can spin it any other way. There wasn’t a race.

Officially, there was a race and the result was announced, whether you like it or not. The guy who earned the position to be at the front, was the winner of it. I agree, there should be no Mental gymnastics on this.

[NathanOlder]

Gifted? There is a reason for having a qualifying session and the driver that did the best job, deserved to get the win in the circumstances. What stopped Lewis from taking pole and be that person? It's not like Verstappen beached his car and someone created a red flag to rescue him and then got the win or that Verstappen took out the faster driver ahead of him and took the win.

Even Verstappen acknowledged he was gifted the win. And I admire him for it. Not his fault, but there are no mental gymnastics that can spin it any other way. There wasn’t a race.

Officially, there was a race and the result was announced, whether you like it or not. The guy who earned the position to be at the front, was the winner of it. I agree, there should be no Mental gymnastics on this.

By your logic, wouldn't it mean Lewis wasn't lucky to avoid any contact in turn 1 in Hungary. Lewis did the job on saturday so he deserved to be away from any contact. it was Max's fault for only qualifying P2 that weekend. So Max wasn't unlucky. He was just not good enough to qualify further up.

We all know the reality in Hungary, Max was unlucky, Lewis was lucky to not be inviolved in the incident. Like is Spa Max had more luck on sunday than every other driver.

[sosic2121]

Even Verstappen acknowledged he was gifted the win. And I admire him for it. Not his fault, but there are no mental gymnastics that can spin it any other way. There wasn’t a race.

Officially, there was a race and the result was announced, whether you like it or not. The guy who earned the position to be at the front, was the winner of it. I agree, there should be no Mental gymnastics on this.

By your logic, wouldn't it mean Lewis wasn't lucky to avoid any contact in turn 1 in Hungary. Lewis did the job on saturday so he deserved to be away from any contact. it was Max's fault for only qualifying P2 that weekend. So Max wasn't unlucky. He was just not good enough to qualify further up.

We all know the reality in Hungary, Max was unlucky, Lewis was lucky to not be inviolved in the incident. Like is Spa Max had more luck on sunday than every other driver.

IIRC Max was the only driver that said he wanted to race.
Lewis said he doesn't want to!
If he was a bit braver maybe he would have had a race and maybe he would have won. But he didn't want to.
And he, and all his fans, think this isn't fair, and because of that rules shouldn't be followed.

Or he preferes that they haven't even tried to race, so race could be cancelled.

And all this because he wasn't fast enough.

[NathanOlder]

Officially, there was a race and the result was announced, whether you like it or not. The guy who earned the position to be at the front, was the winner of it. I agree, there should be no Mental gymnastics on this.

By your logic, wouldn't it mean Lewis wasn't lucky to avoid any contact in turn 1 in Hungary. Lewis did the job on saturday so he deserved to be away from any contact. it was Max's fault for only qualifying P2 that weekend. So Max wasn't unlucky. He was just not good enough to qualify further up.

We all know the reality in Hungary, Max was unlucky, Lewis was lucky to not be inviolved in the incident. Like is Spa Max had more luck on sunday than every other driver.

IIRC Max was the only driver that said he wanted to race.
Lewis said he doesn't want to!
If he was a bit braver maybe he would have had a race and maybe he would have won. But he didn't want to.
And he, and all his fans, think this isn't fair, and because of that rules shouldn't be followed.

Or he preferes that they haven't even tried to race, so race could be cancelled.

And all this because he wasn't fast enough.

If you think sunday was safe to race, you are either blind or stupid.

[F1NAC]

Officially, there was a race and the result was announced, whether you like it or not. The guy who earned the position to be at the front, was the winner of it. I agree, there should be no Mental gymnastics on this.

By your logic, wouldn't it mean Lewis wasn't lucky to avoid any contact in turn 1 in Hungary. Lewis did the job on saturday so he deserved to be away from any contact. it was Max's fault for only qualifying P2 that weekend. So Max wasn't unlucky. He was just not good enough to qualify further up.

We all know the reality in Hungary, Max was unlucky, Lewis was lucky to not be inviolved in the incident. Like is Spa Max had more luck on sunday than every other driver.

IIRC Max was the only driver that said he wanted to race.
Lewis said he doesn't want to!
If he was a bit braver maybe he would have had a race and maybe he would have won. But he didn't want to.
And he, and all his fans, think this isn't fair, and because of that rules shouldn't be followed.

Or he preferes that they haven't even tried to race, so race could be cancelled.

And all this because he wasn't fast enough.

At bigger speed with not that bad conditions as sunday, George Russell aquaplanned on the straight. It would probably be similar if not worse had they started. Also Max wanted to race because heck, he's got clear road ahed of him and needs every point to catch up on Lewis. Ofc he would want to race. He even said post race that he couldn't see safety car because of spray.

Similar thing happened in Korea 2010. Leaders in the championship didn't want for race to go ahead while Lewis who was behind in championship wanted to go racing.

It just stupid to think that conditions were good for racing. They were not.

[MattWellsyWells]

Perez is not a lap down.
The race never started. Start lights were yellow on formation lap. Yellow = aborted start.

If the race didnt start, why were those laps eliminated from the official lap count (or in other words, counted towards the race distance)? It was a topic during the red flag period.

Well I have to research if the lap following an aborted start is counted as one.

I think whenever there is an aborted start and they do an extra formation lap, a lap is taken off the number of laps remaining. For example, Bahrain this year when Perez broke down on the formation lap. But if you miss any of the formation laps, you can stay on the lead lap as long as you start from the pitlane even though you've technically completed fewer laps.