Hamilton - Verstappen Crash Frame by Frame Analysis

[_cerber1]

Note that Hamilton presses on the brake already before contact, and his steering wheel is turned in the direction of the turn, he was trying to avoid a collision. Max cuts the corner at full speed, not thinking that someone is there.

[Jolle]

Note that Hamilton presses on the brake already before contact, and his steering wheel is turned in the direction of the turn, he was trying to avoid a collision. Max cuts the corner at full speed, not thinking that someone is there.
https://ibb.co/2hf08g8
https://ibb.co/qnNDHcv
https://ibb.co/rfhP61X

This telemetry is also crooked. According to this, Hamilton is a few kphs faster while Verstappen gained about 40cm on him.
Anyway, from the onboard ist pretty clear that Verstappen was going faster than Hamilton.

It’s also very clear that both driver until the touch were fully in control of their cars, just the normal understeer in a high speed entry. They both choose a line, stuck to it perfectly but they were going to the same point (the apex), while both not on the normal racing line (the normal is much wider at entry).

Verstappen his line was 100% his choice. Hamilton had to react on the squeezing line even before the turn started (which came pretty close to the wall).

If you squeeze a driver on the inside, and know that he’s still there when you turn in, expect him to still be close. He still went for his line anyway.

[RZS10]

Uh interesting... higher res from their site https://www.formulapassion.it/wp-conten ... -clash.jpg

Still doesn't make much sense given that the graph has Lewis at a higher speed than Max the entire time when he must have been slower in order to fall back relative to him. Unless that bit is covered by the massive X. I really wonder where they get that data from.

Really? That shows the lack of understanding on how much impact Lewis had with that toe. [...]

Just_a_fan has already explained what was fairly obvious from the start, of course he was faster than Max up to the point of maximum overlap which would also have to be the point at which their speed traces meet, afterwards Lewis' trace would absolutely have to drop below Max' since Max then goes faster than Lewis up until the contact.

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Anyways, the data in that trace is most likely exactly the same data as in the telemetry in the side by side video, or was probably at least extracted from the same source like the F1 timing app or elsewhere, so both are highly inaccurate and contain obvious glitches and delays.

It would be cool to have better data but that probably isn't available anywhere ... unless we hacked Merc's F1 servers.

(This is a joke please to not try to hack Mercedes AMG F1, i do not condone hacking)

[dans79]

Can the moderators please do something about the people trolling and ignoring basic physics? This is supposed to be F1 technical, not some Fanboy group on facebook!

[hollus]

Topic locked. Guys, if you want to discuss who is in the wrong, you already have the race thread for that. And many are doing it in the team threads anyways.
Check the title, no fan cheering here.
I’ll clean up and reopen tonight.

[hollus]

If you think that Max did absolutely, absolutely everything right and that Lewis did absolutely, absolutely everything wrong, and you want to tell Lewis' fans how they are all also wrong... why come to this thread to do that?
If you think that Lewis did absolutely, absolutely everything right and that Max did absolutely, absolutely everything wrong, and you want to tell Max's fans how they are all also wrong... why come to this thread to do that?

In my eyes, that line of debate is not in the the style of the forum. You did not find F1T and join for the fan-hits-fan action, but for detailed analysis, am I right?
But if it must be, a) Keep it respectful. b) Don't make it personal. and c) In its right place. The race thread is an obvious place where such posts could be argued to be on topic. The team threads... one could argue the same if one is very, very good at arguing.

But this thread has a clear title: "Hamilton - Verstappen Crash Frame by Frame Analysis" and quite a few people have put a lot of work to analyze what happened, and how it happened. NOT who is wrong. Not between Max and Lewis and certainly not relating to other users.
It is NOT OK to go with that song to every thread where one can scream Lewis's fans suck!!! Or Max's fans have no brains!!! This place can debate a level above that, I hope. Many posts have been deleted, the patience will be thinner second time around.

Now, back on topic.

Thread opened.

[TNTHead]

Thanks for the effort to contribute to an objective analysis of the incident.

What I like to add is this, namely: the difference of overview both drivers have: the driver in front needs to rely on his mirrors and project the placement of the following car, the approaching driver has a full overview. It may be that VER didn't see HAM on the right, then making a mid-apex trajectory, while HAM started on the line on the right, going for a early apex trajectory. With both trajectories interfering, with some overspeed by HAM, a contact would be inevitable unless one or both would change line or change speed (which was quite difficult with high fuel load and high speed corner).

[El Scorchio]

I feel this incident really highlights how the stewards have a really difficult job to do and decisions to make at times, even though we slate them a lot if we don’t personally agree.

After so much really good detailed analysis and a few days, there is still nowhere near a unanimous agreement.

[SmallSoldier]

Interesting 3D Animation of the incident:

[RZS10]

I feel this incident really highlights how the stewards have a really difficult job to do and decisions to make at times, even though we slate them a lot if we don’t personally agree.

After so much really good detailed analysis and a few days, there is still nowhere near a unanimous agreement.

Assuming this collision happens with two laps to go it would be one of those that would be investigated after the race with both drivers being allowed to give their input/view and the teams being able to potentially put forward more data than the stewards have (i actually wonder what data they have, does anyone know?).

It's quite possible that the deliberations would have taken hours and might have resulted in a different decision one way or the other.

What i'm getting at: decisions "on the fly" during the race are probably even trickier than those post race.

[zeph]

Interesting 3D Animation of the incident:

Yes, this demonstrates it was a racing incident. Both drivers could have avoided it, neither one wanted to be the guy to blink first.

Verstappen is a bit of a bully, used to getting his way, and Hamilton has relented until now.

It will be interesting to see whether Verstappen takes this as lesson learned, or comes back more aggressive.

[Hoffman900]

Interesting 3D Animation of the incident:

I’m glad they overlayed Max’s qualifying run on this, because it reinforces my point that Max was never going to make that corner either. Unfortunately for both, they made contact, but Max was either going to have to give up the spot or he was going to end up in the boonies and take himself out. The fact that he let Lewis trick him into that situation shows a kink in the armor / lack of maturity that Lewis will undoubtedly take note of.

Ie: Max can be baited into seeing red and risk taking himself out of it.

[straightline]

There is a nice video by Auto-Motor-Sport, for those speaking German: https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... -hamilton/

Schmidt mentioned one thing I haven't heard yet: Mercedes realized on Saturday, that Red Bull didn't use full power going into Copse, they didn't use the MGU-K there. In theorie this is a good idea, as you don't need that much speed in copse, it's wasted energy. But with the low downforce setup, the draft, the different line through Luffield, combined with the knowledge of having more power, Copse was THE overtaking spot for Hamilton.
The other thing he mentioned was the criticism, that Hamilton should have been closer to the apex of the corner. His argument was, that in 2018, Grosjean was much closer to the apex when he had a crash in copse with Sainz. He claims, that this would result in aerodynamic problems causing oversteer, so taking a narrower line might not have prevented an accident.

The other thing he mentioned is, that Hamilton is much further ahead going into Brooklands than Verstappen is in Copse. But Verstappen divebombs Brooklands and Hamilton breaks early.

[RZS10]

In the race thread there has been a repeated argument about whether the contact put Lewis wider than he was going to be or not, some even claiming that it helped him take a tighter line somehow.

At normal speed it's not noticeable right away but his car gets unsettled quite a bit, but slowing the onboard video down to 0.25x speed (or going frame by frame) shows it really well, instead of a normal up/down bouncing there's a rotational element to his car's movement for a relatively long period of time, arguably 20-30frames (0.4-0.6s) potentially even more.

I made a gif and slowed the frames around the incident even further and painted in some lines over the suspension and left tyre and also some objects further away, once for initial turning before the contact and then for post contact, those objects obviously don't stay in the same place but it stil accentuates the motion, i believe:


It's best visible on the right edge of the treeline.

Given how sensitive the aero on those cars is this surely must have had an impact on his line.

[codetower]

As a neutral observer (as much respect as I have for both Max and Lewis, they are both great drivers, I don’t care for either), I am more and more aligned with the stewards call. From a non-biased point of view, this definitely seems like a racing incident, with arguably 60-40 blame going towards Lewis, no more. Take out “intent” as there are only two people who know the true intent, and that is Lewis and Max. With that aside, it appears that Lewis is a little too far off the racing line going into the Apex. Maybe because of the speed, fuel load, etc., but they were both coming in very hot. The way I see it, Lewis was side by side for a split second, but could not hold it into the curve (hence front left tire hitting rear right) AND he was a little too far off the line. This is why I feel the 60-40 was accurate… but it was a racing incident.

We’ve all spent days reviewing videos, on-board, heard comments from all, even seen 3D renderings. The stewards had to make a decision within ~20 minutes. I don’t feel Lewis should be suspended, lose points, get further penalties. I think 10 seconds was fair.

Now my only wish, as a Leclerc fan, was that it was 15 seconds… but thats for selfish reasons