In the round-up: Max Verstappen says penalties in Formula 1 were too inconsistent this year.
What they say
Full 2011-18 F1 penalties data
Verstappen was asked whether he still disagreed with the five-second penalty he was given for failing to leave Valtteri Bottas enough space when they tangled during the Italian Grand Prix:
For me to be honest I think it was still unfair because I did leave him a car’s width. I think it happened the year before as well with Felipe and his team mate at the time.
I think penalties in general the whole season have been a bit all over the place. Sometimes yes, sometimes not.
Of course looking back at it I could have braked a bit straighter instead of going to the left but when you’re in the car it’s really difficult to judge that when you arrive at 300 [kph]. But for those moments for sure next time I’ll leave a bit more space just to be safe. But I’m also there to race hard I’m not there to give up my podium position.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
Five-times @F1 world champion (and vegan) @LewisHamilton has been named Person of the Year by @Peta.
"Lewis Hamilton's healthy vegan eating and kind heart make him a winner and a role model," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. pic.twitter.com/Zzj6qpVXZW
— RaceFans (@racefansdotnet) December 6, 2018
#BREAKING. The only real #F3 Championship of the world, our #Formula #European #Masters series receives 25 SuperLicense Points. Really happy the #FIA World Council understands the true value of a proper #Formula3 series. #2019ISON #STILLTHEBESTTHEREIS
— VanAmersfoortRacing (@VARmotorsport) December 5, 2018
Great car, great debut, awful haircut. #MyFirstFormulaSeason #TBT pic.twitter.com/ZqeabfwKNa
— Giedo van der Garde (@GvanderGarde) December 6, 2018
20 years since it left @F1 and @goodyear still has the 'Eagle F1' in its range:https://t.co/QojEqmkYol#F1
— Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine) December 6, 2018
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Links
More motor racing links of interest:
Halo saved Leclerc from visor strike in Spa crash (Autosport)
"From the available data and video footage, we are confident that the wheel would not have hit Leclerc's helmet. But, as Alonso's car continued to yaw relative to Leclerc's, we believe that Alonso's front wing endplate would have just contacted Leclerc's visor."
Montoya on driving for Helmut Marko, beating the Schumachers and why he quit F1 (F1)
"Nowadays with the DRS you get within a second, you're going to drive past. When we race, there was no DRS. You get within a second and you've still got another second to go. And you've still got to figure out how you get a run on him and take advantage of any mistake, and when you've got a run you're still behind the guy so you've got to divebomb the guy and hope you can make the corner and don't take each other out. So it was a lot different than today."
Mercedes F1 boss Wolff injured knee during post-season celebrations (Crash)
"One of the very famous racing drivers who was there at the party said in your body only your brain works and the rest is a wreck."
Gold in the Desert (The Players' Tribune)
Romain Grosjean: "Above everything else, I’m glad nobody was hurt. I learned a lesson — a big one — that day: An F1 race is not a sprint, it’s a marathon."
Ocean and Formula E team up for media partnership (Little Black Book)
"As official out-of-home partner, Ocean will broadcast race highlights across its full motion digital out-of-home (DOOH) network The Grid, which is located in eight UK cities and reaches more than 15 million people."
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Comment of the day
Was Lewis Hamilton right to say he’s aiming to become F1’s all-time greatest driver?
I’m not sure I’d admit that if I were him, it invites all sorts of impossible direct comparisons and pointless debates, in my opinion, and gives his opponents an extra incentive to help derail his ambitions.
But I appreciate where he’s coming from and his approach in trying to achieve his goal: seeking to eliminate weaknesses in himself, and inviting criticism to help identify where those weaknesses might be. It’s funny how one of the biggest criticisms Lewis has gotten through the years has been his “inconsistency”, but by the numbers, none of his peers are remotely as consistent.
Also, it’s crazy to think that all it would have taken to be equal with Schumacher on titles already would have been a few more brain cells on the McLaren pit wall in 2007 and a reliable engine in Malaysia 2016.
Aldoid
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Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
7th December 2018, 0:43
The FIA accident study Autosport quoted is clearly up to its usual highly-technical standard. I can think of few other contexts where anyone would bother differentiating between the helmet (by which they’d be meaning the carbon fibre “body” of the object that usually gets called a helmet) and its visor (the transparent part that tends also to get lumped into the popular concept of “helmet”, at least for this variety).
mog
7th December 2018, 1:05
i’m still trying to wrap my braincells around the concept of yaw relative to another car and how this would have been modelled….
Warheart (@warheart)
7th December 2018, 7:24
@alianora-la-canta I think that, after Massa’s incident with the loose spring, many people realized that visors are way weaker than the rest of the helmet. That quote just highlights it: it’s not just that the halo would prevent a loose wheel from hitting a driver’s head; it also prevented a sharp part of the car (the wing) from contacting the weakest part of a helmet.
RP (@slotopen)
7th December 2018, 2:43
Of course the penalties we’re “all over the place”. F1 stops in cities all over the world, and Verstappen had incidents in many of them.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
7th December 2018, 2:54
LOL 😊
Aldoid
7th December 2018, 3:41
I thought about making a snarky comment about Max’ penalty complaints, but this beats whatever I was gonna come up with. LOL!
Chaitanya
7th December 2018, 4:45
Lol.
SonicSP
7th December 2018, 5:06
Very good one mate, LOL.
J
7th December 2018, 5:38
100% correct
ColdFly (@)
7th December 2018, 7:13
;)
Carsten Nielsen (@carstenb)
7th December 2018, 8:49
LOL Got a good laugh out of that one – spot on!
erikje
7th December 2018, 18:20
Nice, so you agree with max ;)
bosyber (@bosyber)
7th December 2018, 5:32
Great response @SLOTOPEN, LOL
Bart
7th December 2018, 6:57
If you lay Monza 2018 Bottas-Verstappen and Monza 2008 Webber-Hamilton side by side it is hard to explain how Max got a penalty while Lewis did not.
And Lewis was the victim of the likewise incident with Button in Canada 2011, where Jenson did not get a penalty for, even though it ended Lewis’s race.
Things like these were fully acceptable… until Max did it.
Mashiat (@mashiat)
7th December 2018, 7:10
The difference is that 10 years had past since then. The regulations on wheel-to-wheel battles has changed. There are numerous examples of drivers who have gotten penalties for not leaving a car’s width on the outside of a corner. Examples just off the top of my head are Grosjean in Hungary 2013 and Sutil in Silverstone 2013. I don’t get the need to keep justifying why Max doesn’t deserve penalties, especially when it’s as clear cut as in Monza. That was a slam dunk penalty, that broke the rules put in place.
peter
7th December 2018, 13:38
@Mashiat “There are numerous examples of drivers who have gotten penalties for not leaving a car’s width on the outside of a corner.”
yeah, except Max did leave enough room. Bottas refused to use the green that everybody -including himself- uses all the time.
Bart
7th December 2018, 14:03
That’s the point. Every driver uses that patch every lap if they get the chance, yet when trying to overtake Max on the outside (which was pretty chanceless anyway) Valtteri decided to take a tighter line?
Webber got a whack when he was full on the green stuff, right to the edge. That is different, that could have been penalized.
I’d like to see a statistic showing which stewards gave which drivers penalty points. That would be quite revealing.
Mashiat (@mashiat)
7th December 2018, 7:12
And as for Canada 2011, that was 100% a penalty in the dry. But visibility was so poor, that the stewards took that into account.
ColdFly (@)
7th December 2018, 7:17
Had Verstappen caused that incident in 2008, then he would not have received a penalty either!
Until the age of 15 they would hold the parents responsible ;)
Phylyp (@phylyp)
7th December 2018, 8:40
What if the parents are irresponsible? 🤔
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
7th December 2018, 11:09
@phylyp: Then they’d need a note from Charlie.
Balue (@balue)
9th December 2018, 20:37
Good examples. The consistency of the stewarding in F1 is awful and really needs to be addressed.
I find it weird that all stones are turned to make F1 as good a show as possible, and then there are these hair-pulling inconstent rulings that define races (and possibly championship) and borders on putting the sport in disrepute which I believe is a rule break even FIA and FOM could be charged with (Concorde).
Mashiat (@mashiat)
7th December 2018, 7:04
From 2010-2013, the FIA was constantly looking for ways to ban devices and aerodynamics bits that any of the front runners (especially Red Bull) in order to keep the field close. And it worked to a certain extent. However, since 2014, they seem to have completely abandoned this. Given how dominant Mercedes was in 2014-2016, I’m surprised they didn’t outlaw something on the PU or the aerodynamics to limit their potential. Could this be because they have realized that it was wrong? Just a random thought that has occured to me. (I could just be completely wrong and have a poor memory).
anon
7th December 2018, 7:52
@mashiat, or maybe it is because people seem to keep trying to find a single magic solution to everything when no such magic solution exists.
It is not just one single item that made them dominant, but a wide range of things – a car that, as a whole, is well executed, combined with a strong team that has strength in depth and works together co-operatively. You might say “I’m surprised they didn’t outlaw something on the PU or the aerodynamics to limit their potential”, but I would say that the reason is simple – there hasn’t been one single thing that you can point at in that fashion and say “that is what must be making them so exceptional” in that way.
Mashiat (@mashiat)
7th December 2018, 8:20
That is true, some very good points. I was thinking back to how every week, it seemed that there was talk of the FIA banning a certain aerodynamic device from the top teams. Anything innovative was basically outlawed for the following season. F-ducts, double diffusers, double DRS, the exhausts, all of these had changes in regulations the moment they became an important part of the aerodynamics. It even got to the point that Newey became less interested in the sport.
ColdFly (@)
7th December 2018, 7:12
When I read the autosport Leclerc article earlier it had this image included.
The Halo seems cracked!
How can they say that it was not damaged and that it can withstand double the impact.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
7th December 2018, 7:29
I’m not sure if that is the actual part that matters that is damaged. Surely there is more inside it. Maybe they meant that bit isn’t damaged. In that case, it could well withstand more.
anon
7th December 2018, 8:00
@thegianthogweed, you are correct about that – what @coldfly is seeing in that image is superficial damage to the external aerodynamic housing that is fitted to the halo, not the internal load bearing structure. That housing will crack like that because it is just a thin skin of carbon fibre, but the internal load bearing structure, being made from titanium, will not crack in that way.
Warheart (@warheart)
7th December 2018, 7:31
@coldfly I’m not sure about how the Halo is built, maybe that’s just a carbon fiber layer for aerodynamic purposes? If I recall correctly, the Halo itself is titanium built.
Warheart (@warheart)
7th December 2018, 7:34
So an answer to myself: https://www.fia.com/news/how-make-f1-halo
@coldfly @thegianthogweed
ColdFly (@)
7th December 2018, 8:29
Thanks @thegianthogweed, @warheart, @kaiie, and anonomous guy (please register so I can properly address you).
I knew I could rely on the racefans.net community to give me the answers.
KaIIe (@kaiie)
7th December 2018, 7:35
The article (and the FIA report) states that the Halo remained “structurally intact”. The damage you see is just superficial.
JohnH (@johnrkh)
7th December 2018, 8:37
Well to be fair so where you.
JohnH (@johnrkh)
7th December 2018, 8:39
*were
HJ
7th December 2018, 16:51
Hahaha Max could take that as a compliment;-)
erikje
7th December 2018, 22:35
That’s why Brazil 2016 was so beautiful ;)
Jere (@jerejj)
7th December 2018, 9:43
I can see his point although I still don’t necessarily agree with him that the penalties were ‘all over the place.’
PETA. The first thing that came to my mind when I first came up with the tweet was one SP season 8 episode, LOL.
“Nowadays with the DRS you get within a second, you’re going to drive past.”
– That isn’t the case most of the time these days, though, far from it as I’ve pointed out before.
That’s a fascinating column by Grosjean. A couple of things from it:
A Swiss Indiana Jones, LOL, and the other being this, and it is something that baffles me a bit. How is 24 too old for a cooking school, LOL? Not that I’d want to, but If I wanted then I guess I’d have to do it now as I only have less than four and half months left before I reach 24 myself.
Tango (@tango)
7th December 2018, 13:49
He talks in depth about it in the beyond the grid interview he did this year, a quite fascinating interview btw. @jerejj
Pjotr (@pietkoster)
7th December 2018, 10:23
About everybody complains about the lack of overtaking during races, but if somebody does 50% chance he will get a penalty. It is difficult so there are risks involved, take no risk and just cruise around or go for it. Stop these onexplainable penalties.
hobo (@hobo)
7th December 2018, 16:07
In response to the COTD, it is a good point that with a few small changes, HAM could be on 7 titles already. However, if you change the first thing—more support and better decisions at Mclaren—then all of the titles with Merc may have never come. If Mclaren had made better decisions (in hindsight admittedly) and got HAM the 07 title along with the 08, and had played nicer (giving drivers trophies and whatnot), it at least makes the move to Merc more suspect.
Aldoid
7th December 2018, 18:28
That’s a great argument, tbh. I’ll concede that.
gotit
8th December 2018, 10:46
We don’t need all this PC stuff. Just let em race FFS