I didn't address some points by muyrr, Shaddock and just_a_fan due to lack of time but I will do now.
myurr wrote:Now Vettel gains a place by hitting the middle of another car with his front tyre, and those same posters are blaming the lead driver.
Shaddock wrote:Talking to a colleague in the office who spent £350 a ticket for a grandstand view of the loop about the incident with SV & AS. His opinion was that SV T-boned Sutil, and it was a fairly big collision, with lots of carbon fibre on the track afterwards and quite a bit of damage to AS car. The crowd were cheering SV at the end of the race in their appreciation of his efforts
I have little to add to my previous analysis of the incident but I will run through it again and look at the new points brought up. The Sutil/Vettel incident IMO had nothing to do with T-boning as everybody can see from the pics. T-bonig is hitting the side of a car nose on. It did not happen that way.
Here we see that Vettel has plenty of space to go inside of Sutil. He leaves space to Sutil and to the edge of the track.
Sutil starts to turn in sharper than Vettel to claim the racing line while they have plenty of space to the inside and the outside of the track. Due to Sutil's higher turn in rate the cars are getting closer. Vettel is in control of his car. He isn't sliding and he did not brake too late. There is no "wedge" situation because they can clearly still make it round the corner if Sutil reduces his turn in from here. At this point he was fighting for twelve laps with Vettel and he knew exactly that Vettel was on his inside. He never claimed that he had not seen him. So we can safely assume he was aware that he was going to drive into Vettel if he kept up that turn in rate.
Vettel is half way alongside Sutil as they are still heading for the apex of the corner. Sutil still turns in sharper. Vettels front wheel is going to get between Sutil's wheels any moment. The shot shows that Vettel has plenty of room to the inside here to make it round the corner. No wedge situation at all. Sutil needs to give room if he wants to avoid a collision, which he isn't doing. Vettel needs to turn in sharper if he wants to avoid a collision and compromise his line to go over the curbs. He isn't doing this either. So the two drivers are preferring to rather collide than change their steering. Vettel is on the racing line and has no space to give. He must go at least partially off track if he yields from this point. Sutil is the one who must yield in my view to allow Vettel enough room to go round.
Sutil keeps driving into Vettel although he has plenty of room to use on the outside. At this point or very little later Vettel's wheel hits Sutil's barge board and the sidepot/tub. They are still before the apex with Sutil less than half a car length ahead and Vettel pretty much on the racing line.
They have already bumped in this picture. The front of Sutils car got a push which was sufficiently hard to point him away from Vettel. The direction change was big enough that Vettel's right front wheel cleared the interlock with Sutils wheels. The front wheels did not crash into each other, which they would have done if the bump had not pushed Sutil wider. Sutil lost all momentum and Vettel can now take the corner on the racing line without having to ride the curbs.
My shots show that the situation between Vetell and Sutil evolved from Vettel getting on the inside of Sutil while they were running parallel on the straight. Vettels right front wheel hit Sutil's left barge board while they were closing to the apex and the dispute was whether Sutil tried to close the door too late or Vettel steered his car into a gap that was not there. It is pretty clear that both drivers did not yield facing a possible collision. From my POV it is clear that Sutil should have left Vettel room and should have yielded. Vettel was fairly robust but he only defended his right to use the track and not compromise by going over the curbs.
myurr wrote:WB also criticised Hamilton for the first corner incident with Vettel saying that he was a foot away from the inside of the track at the time so Vettel had left him enough room.
Just_a_fan wrote:Hamilton stated that he lost front downforce as he dived under Webber's rear wing so I doubt Hamilton could have tightned his line even if he had seen Vettel coming.
Just_a_fan wrote:WhiteBlue wrote:Hamilton did a solid job expect for the accident
So you blame Hamilton for Vettel's puncture? Vettel blameless?
In actual fact I did not criticize Hamilton. I said that Hamilton had enough room to go round that corner without colliding with Vettel. Nobody denied that and we can take that as a fact. To answer just_a_fan's question again: I blame no driver. Neither Hamilton nor Vettel. Vettel did better by leaving enough room. Perhaps Hamilton was unable to use the gap properly because of loss of downforce and steering control. But he also may simply not have seen how close Vettel was. It was a racing accident and I have said this before.
I did actually criticize the rules and said that the driver position should be less reclined so that drivers should be able to see their wings. myurr makes a misrepresentation of my post when he says I criticized Lewis, I didn't.
myurr wrote:WB also came out with a ridiculous comment that Vettel had passed something like 17 cars on track! Watching the race I saw a whole load of incidents where Vettel got past cars that had either retired or made huge mistakes or pitted or had a penalty, etc. coupled with maybe four true on track overtakes.
Ps. Again sorry WB, this isn't meant as a personal attack on you!
This comment rewards a bit of an investigation which I have done. As I have initially said Vettel made up 17 positions on track. None of the position changes was due to a driver pitting and Vettel passing him while he was in the pits. myurr is wrong to make that assertion. It is easy to check by reading
the FiA lap chart.
Next he talks about retirements. Di Grassi, De la Rosa and Kubica retired while they were ahead of Vettel. That is a valid point and I have acknowledged that earlier. Alonso got penalized and Vettel did not pass him on track. That was another correct claim. This brings us to a residual 13 passes on track. Other users claimed that Vettel only passed cars after the safety car brought him back into the race. That is easily dismissed by the study of the lap chart. These were the passes before the safety car came out in lap 28.
lap 14 Yamamoto
lap 16 Chandhok
lap 23 Kovalainen
lap 24 Glock
lap 25 Trulli
lap 28 Liuzzi
lap 28 the safety car came and those were the passes after the safety car:
lap 32 Alguersuari
lap 33 Massa
lap 34 Hülkenberg
lap 37 Kobayashi
lap 38 Buemi
lap 40 Schumacher
lap 51 Sutil
I don't know how many drivers made mistakes that invalidated the pass in myurr's view. My view is that any pass is earned if you get the driver to make a mistake. So those are all valid on track passes and they were not four!
Considering the facts I have presented I do not consider my comment ridiculous. I feel that claiming four valid passes is a lot more ridiculous than my statement. I leave this to the users to judge.
Re, attacking me I have myurrs word that he isn't doing it. I cannot see him making compliments either. Perhaps we can agree that my statement wasn't ridiculous and his assertions were inaccurate.
