2019 British Grand Prix - Silverstone, July 12-14

[Godius]

Excuse the poor filming technique but I thought some may appreciate a view of the cars going round Stowe, this is the first lap.

Honestly, the TV slows the cars down so much.

https://youtu.be/oUrMWsefn-U

Nice footage but if you want to display something closer to real life speed, select 60 fps in your recording settings for the next time.

[Dazed1]

Watching Hamilton's onboard from his second stint, there is a lot of lift & coast going on.

At first I thought that maybe Verstappen would've done it, snatch 2nd position, but after the onboard shot I can't help but think that, even if he had been into play, Ham (+ Bottas) would have gone faster and would have covered him as well.

Kinda like Bolt.

[NathanOlder]

Toto Wolff

And as has been pointed out ad nauseam Hamilton changed his strategy to make the difference. Hamilton, not the team. Bottas just drove the race without thinking about the options. Hamilton used his experience and the knowledge he personally gained on Friday, to try an alternative.

Sorry that your driver didn't win. "Must try harder" as it says on so many school reports.

Well now Bottas never had the option to change his strategy now did he?
I have tremendous respect for Hamilton and Bottas isn't my driver so I have no qualms about the stupidity of his side of the garage. Read the ESPN article. The safety car neutralized what was and should have ended as a dramatic race end. Point is after the safety car it was your normal boring Mercedes 1-2 and the only real entertainment came from Ferrari and more so Red Bull for hounding them down. Hamilton got an easy win, Leclerc waltzed onto a podium and got driver of the day. It could have been a come from behind win, it could have been an epic battle for 3rd, perhaps even 2nd. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, sure. But we were denied that. I've been watching Formula 1 since 1986 that very race Mansell overtook Piquet and sent the crowd bonkers. Sure was hoping for something like that again.

Wrong again, that'll be 1987. Or maybe, just maybe you have been watching F1 from an alternate universe where you are a year ahead, Mercedes screw Bottas over with strategy and Hamilton wins the 2020 British Grand Prix.

Thanks for the tip, ill be placing a big wager on that next year.

[izzy]

Just to throw in another point of view. With the videos on the F1 site, I don't get the feeling that Vettel braked so late that he automatically rammed into Verstappen. I get the feeling that both braked very late, but at approximately at the same time, and, for a moment, it appears that both slow down similarly.
Verstappen brakes so late as to barely make the corner, which is 100% his right.
Vettel braked equally late in a line what was arguably to the left of the apex (but on tarmac). Essentially he dive bombed (which is why he apologized, likely), into a gap that he hoped would appear.
But the gap did not appear, Max closed it perfectly to a bit less than a car width.
Once braking, Vettel could not go left (grass) and could not go straight to the apex (would meet a red Bull in there which was, clearly, ahead), so he tried to go right. He would miss the apex, miss the corner but slow down to almost zero before running out of tarmac, lose 3-4 seconds, and survive... except that that got him into Verstappen's wake. Downforce drops, wheels lock, car slides, ---> ramming from behind. It might be just my imagination, but Vettel's wheels lock exactly as he get in the wake.
Vettel, IMHO, got himself too optimistically into an imaginary gap, but he would not have rammed Verstappen it he had not crossed into his wake. Which of course was the only possibility once the gap did not appear.
Physics is a bitch.

Well there was a real gap as the images i posted prove, then the question is did Max have a right to close it

For me, yes if it wasn't going to cause a collision, be dangerous, or crowd another driver off the track. But it always was, same as Baku

[rogazilla]

the white lines are the track and the racing line is near the other one, not the left one. Nice try but

Look at Dan79's picture and I am done with this.

Some people have already decided that some driver can do no wrong and other can do no right. These people will not look at each incident objectively. It is the same discussion 3 races in a row, no matter the evidence or discussion.

[rogazilla]

Wrong again, that'll be 1987. Or maybe, just maybe you have been watching F1 from an alternate universe where you are a year ahead, Mercedes screw Bottas over with strategy and Hamilton wins the 2020 British Grand Prix.

Thanks for the tip, ill be placing a big wager on that next year.

Kind of agree with this. On another note, the fact that Ham did the fastest lap on 32 lap old tires. They are faster than they showed.

[Justthatek]

Just about to watch the race replay again on sky and Crofty constantly saying "milliseconds" really?!?

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[izzy]

the white lines are the track and the racing line is near the other one, not the left one. Nice try but

Look at Dan79's picture and I am done with this.

Some people have already decided that some driver can do no wrong and other can do no right. These people will not look at each incident objectively. It is the same discussion 3 races in a row, no matter the evidence or discussion.

stop talking about it then if your mind is closed, nobody's asking you to comment. dan's picture isn't evidence it's two lines drawn on a picture, and talking about "some people" isn't evidence either

[dtro]

Please go and take a good look at the track

we both know the track, it doesn't save you from the obvious fact there was a GAP do i need to quote Ayrton? The track has an apex coming up and a racing line and they are on opposite sides, as you know perfectly well

He didn't go for a gap... he drove into the back of him on a piece of track where he should know that the gap wil not be there because the track stops to exists.

I find it strange with Vettel, for the past few years he's been driving (almost) into other competitors on the most strange occasions, Baku, Singapore, Imola, Russia, Canada and now Silverstone and even this time he took full blame himself, his fans keep trying to blame everybody but their guy. Is it because his car is red and therefore has no blame?

I've been a fan of Vettel for years, still I can see that his errors in a sense since at least 2017 onward (maybe even earlier tbh) have been mainly on him. Like you mentioned the fiasco in Singapore 2017 taking out Verstappen/Kimi/et al at the start, all those weird moments at any time when he was near another driver almost guaranteed contact and a recovery drive, to say nothing of Hockenheim last year and Canada this year- too many unforced errors.

Don't know why I keep waiting for his form to improve. Yesterday's incident with Verstappen was yet another one of those unforced errors...

Still able to enjoy seeing Verstappen mature/grow as a racer over the last few years, Hamilton finding a home for his dominance (McLaren wasn't for sure), LeClerc coming to grips with/overcoming* Ferrari's politics/form, and so on down the grid.

TL:DR Rose tinted glasses aren't worn by every Ferrari fan when it comes to how the drivers perform.

[jz11]

the white lines are the track and the racing line is near the other one, not the left one. Nice try but

Look at Dan79's picture and I am done with this.

Some people have already decided that some driver can do no wrong and other can do no right. These people will not look at each incident objectively. It is the same discussion 3 races in a row, no matter the evidence or discussion.

I wrote few pages back and Hollus just now said about the same thing - Vettel expected Max to move closer to racing line, that would open the inside - that is the reason why he was aiming there, not the gap that everyone is talking about looking at the pictures, Vettel then would have proceeded to ram Verstappen off the track - which thanks to the ruling after Austria - is totally legal move

Max knew all this very well, hence why he, contrary to the lesson he must have learned at Baku, was defending the inside to the death, regardless how fast/close Vettel was, Vettels fault for expecting the inside to open up, that is what he apologized for, and I'm quite sure there are no hard feelings because of this, IMO it was a racing incident, and penalty well deserved for Vettel, but I very much doubt the likes of Hamilton or Kimi would have defended that way which in turn wouldn't have led to the contact, at least not in the braking zone

this is why I don't like Maxes shenanigans, he for sure is very talented, but there always seems to be that special case he is exploiting that later leads to more harm than good over all, like the "impossibility" for him especially to pass Leclerc on the outside but Leclerc later demonstrated how to do it successfully

and think about this small statistic - Leclerc 31 GP starts, Verstappen 91 GP starts, but from the action on the track one would get the feeling that it should be the other way around, isn't it?

edit: I just hope Leclerc can keep his cool with all the politics going on in Ferrari and keeps delivering performances like these in the future

[rogazilla]

...
stop talking about it then if your mind is closed, nobody's asking you to comment. dan's picture isn't evidence it's two lines drawn on a picture, and talking about "some people" isn't evidence either

Ok, let's discuss it then. Was Vettle to the left side of Max' car? No, he was BEHIND. There is no crowding or pushing anyone off the track. VET was behind MAX. Did Max make more than 1 move to defend? Not even if Max did move to the inside to block, it is well within his right and one move.

Did Max brake checked? No, he brake late into the turn. Minimum amount of track day with both car and bike that I have done, (All my bike event, the brake light has to be disabled) you cannot rely on brake light and it is the person following's job to judge the braking point. It is VET's job to make that judgement call and whether he could have brake in time but Aero played a role, it is still his job to not ram into the car in front.

[dans79]

A slightly different topic!

[Juzh]

Verstappen's onboard was absolutely thrilling to watch, a real shame for that crash.

Hey man can you do lewis' fastest lap onboard with telemetry?

here you go. fastest lap with telemetry and no abnoxious commentary
https://streamable.com/984e8

[jz11]

and a P.S. to what I wrote earlier, here are couple screenshots of Maxes overtake on Vettel, have a look at the white line and where the 4 wheels of the RB are:



and P.P.S.
the reason why Ferrari isn't really protesting these moves not in Austria, not here, is that they keep this rabbit in the hat in case they need it when it really matters, just wait...

[zibby43]

If we are to take Andrew Benson's word for it the decision was made before the race

"What Hamilton did next was going to win him the race, safety car or no safety car. He had already decided before the grand prix started that he was going to try to go for a one-stop, knowing Bottas was doing two."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/48984959

Peter Windsor said the same thing. Which proves the point, SC or not, Lewis was going to go with a one stopper because he knew he could. The best race for us as fans may have been if Bottas also went with a one stop on the hard compound. He's got a history of problems getting them back up to heat after a SC.

Yep, same with Laurence Edmondson. Another nice piece that has its own unique nuggets of information to supplement the Hughes article and Windsor video.

This is another well-written, very detailed piece on how Merc's pre-race strategy meetings generally operate. After that foundation is laid, Edmondson goes into the specifics of how the British GP pre-race strategy meetings unfolded for each driver.

"I already in the morning decided going into the race that I was going to do a hard tyre on my second.

When he pitted on lap 16 my plan was to offset as much as I could so I think I went four laps or something [before the Safety Car came out] and probably could have done another lap or two. At the time Valtteri was not catching me which he should have been on fresh tyres, but I was keeping the gap the same.

I think he came out of the pits 0.7s inside my pit stop window, so I would have pitted and he would be 0.7s ahead, then it came to 1s, 1.5s, stayed around 1.5s to 2s. If I did another lap maybe it would be 2.5s and I would have come out on my fresh hards and I could have just sat behind him if I wanted to and he would have had to pit [again], so I still would have had that 21-second gap. So it didn't really make a difference. Even though if I was behind him I would of course have tried to overtake him, but in hindsight I didn't really need to do that."

So does that mean Hamilton went against the wishes of the team by planning to abandon the two-stop strategy even before the Safety Car came out?

"No, it wasn't agreed, we said that you could do a two-stop. I looked at the options and of course I want to try and always offset."

Even with seven laps remaining, the Mercedes' engineers were keen for Hamilton to pit again to eliminate concerns about wear, but Hamilton ignored the call. He could feel where the tyres and see that his fronts showed only limited signs of wear. As far as he was concerned, a second pit stop carried unnecessary risk.

https://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/27 ... gp-victory