Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo, Monaco, 2016

Ricciardo: Hamilton’s Monaco 2016 move a more clear penalty than Vettel’s

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In the round-up: Daniel Ricciardo says there was a stronger case for giving Lewis Hamilton a penalty for his driving in the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix than there was for Sebastian Vettel’s incident with Hamilton at the last race.

What they say

Why Hamilton didn’t get a penalty in Monaco – but Vettel did in Canada
Hamilton prevented Ricciardo from passing him after going off the track while leading the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix but wasn’t penalised:

There’s certainly some similarities with it, there is. And if they do take that then he didn’t get a penalty so Seb shouldn’t have got one. They were pretty similar.

I think to be honest in Seb’s defence – to bias that situation even more towards him, and I’m not taking sides I’m just putting it how it is – he had to go across grass. So he made a mistake, yes, but in a way he kind of paid a bit more of a price because he went across grass, could’ve maybe lost the car there, had dirt on his tyres. So he kind of already paid a little penalty, where Lewis went across Tarmac so he just kind of cut the corner and got away with it. So I would bias it even more towards not giving Seb a penalty in that scenario and they didn’t give Lewis one.

And I think that day I was pretty filthy about it. But I was more filthy about the pit stop incident. I probably said Lewis should have got a penalty. I’m not mad that it didn’t get handed. But looking at Montreal I don’t think that should have been.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Does the plan to add banking at the final corner at Zandvoort make sense?

The corner is being designed to be ‘flat out with DRS open’. Sounds a lot like a straight. Should be a good spectator area, but no grandstands, just some grassy banks.

The concept of building a banked, high-speed corner to avoid the cost of a larger run-off area, while I understand the physics and logic, sorry, this one just doesn’t seem right.
NS Biker (@Rekibsn)

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Keith Collantine
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44 comments on “Ricciardo: Hamilton’s Monaco 2016 move a more clear penalty than Vettel’s”

  1. *facepalm*

    No, Daniel, they are different in several important aspects.
    Get over already!

    1. Whether it was or wasn’t, or the rules were same/different then, the lesson should be “leave the track, pay the penalty” subject of course to situations like avoiding an accident etc. and if several seconds are lost returning to track safely that should be penalty enough, but short cuts due to going too fast must be penalised.

    2. Ricciardo explained it really well and is over it.

    3. Ricciardo was over it. On the day of the race. Did you hear him on the radio complaining. Did you hear him complaining to the media later.
      All Ricciardo is doing is pointing out an inconsistency in the application of the rules. And he is actually doing it for the betterment of all drivers. A discussion needs to be had.

      1. @mickharrold
        Ricciardo still feels the need to cry about it more than two years later and you think he’s over it?
        LOL!

        1. He was quite clearly asked about it due to the incidents being very similar.

          1. He could have shrugged off his shoulders and said -whatever.

    4. Daniel, with all the due respect, you’re a great F1 driver, have won multiple races, but there’s this guy @dallein here on the interwebs and I want to believe him

      1. @m-bagattini
        In all fairness, it wasn’t a guy named dallein.
        It was a board of stewards.
        Get over it, for god’s sake.
        You all are acting like a bunch of crybabies.

    5. Love his take on cutting corners. If you cut a corner and its grass its like youve already paid a penalty. So lets just ignore any corner in future if its grass on the inside and sail straight across it.

      1. Yes that’s how it’s done. Standard practice at the start in Mexico until they put the sausages down.

  2. Now we see why some football officers do not oppose controversial refereeing: Canada would already been forgotten but Vettel penalty keep it on the headlines.
    Not a memorable race, besides HAM effort to pass, the incapacity of the F1 to allow that, and VET mistake.
    Although terrible on the personal level for VET, it is very hard to imagine that this championship will be decided by 7 points – even if we consider BOT.
    The current PR backlash for F1 is probably similar to that expected if no penalty were imposed.

    1. No such thing as bad PR.

      Netflix will be thrilled to get a month’s worth of trailers from it. Lights, Action, Controversy!

    2. 14 points, not 7.

      1. @Krommenaas – It’s only 14 if you are comparing Vettel and Hamilton. If you are comparing Hamilton and anyone else (say, Bottas, like maiagus mentions) the difference is 7 points.

    3. But it was a memorable race. It was an intense battle and it was great to watch. The ruling however made it a race to forget. It was terrible.

  3. Alonso says he spoke with Wolff at end of 2016, I just wonder if the conversation went roughly like…

    Alonso: “Will you hire me alongside Lewis”
    Wolff: “No”

    1. Why do you have to assume the worst?

      1. F1oSaurus (@)
        21st June 2019, 22:22

        Is that the “worst” you can come up with? Alonso tried to blackmail McLaren to get his position of preference back because he couldn’t beat Hamilton.

        I doubt it gets worse than that. Perhaps it would be worse if he had his team mate crash his car after a pit stop to help Alonso to take the lead of the race. Now that would be really bad.

  4. I have to disagree with Ricciardo on this one. The penalty handed to Vettel was for ‘joining the track in an unsafe manner’. In Monaco, Lewis wasn’t unsafe in how he joined the track. He lost momentum for the exit of the chicane and that’s where he squeezed Ricciardo slightly. It was a slightly harsh move, but he didn’t scramble across the turns, straight on to the racing line while another competitor was already there like Vettel did.

    If we want to have an apple’s to apple’s comparison of events and penalties, then we need to look at Max’s penalty at the Japanese Gp in 2018.

    1. To me it mainly shows that the drivers are just human @todfod, just as prone as many of us not to look at the facts (stewards report), but their feelings; also, maybe that’s why they are not the only stewards, but joined by others with judging backgrounds etc.

    2. I reckon I did not bother searching for the (full) reasoning the stewards gave in VET’s case… so, maybe there’s something I missed, but please do care to explain why VET return to the track was more dangerous than HAM’s. It’s about the car (VET not being fully in control of the car when he decided to rejoin), it’s about the track OR both?

      1. Neither.

        In Hamilton’s case it was seen as two separate incidents.
        Hamilton left the track and rejoined safely before he started to squeeze Ricciardo.

        In Vettels case it was just one incident. Leaving the track and rejoin unsafely.

      2. @mg1982

        It’s not Vettel’s fault, as it wasn’t Hamilton’s fault either. Both drivers made a genuine mistake. However, when Vettel scrambled back on the track, he would have made contact with Hamilton, and put Lewis in the wall if Hamilton hadn’t lifted.

        Hamilton had gone off at the start of the chicane, and joined the track in front of Ricciardo, so it wasn’t an unsafe joining on the track. Hamilton then went aggressive on the exit of the chicane not to give up position to Daniel. Both drivers were already safe on track before Hamilton went aggressive on the exit and squeezed Daniel. Lewis was defending his position AFTER he rejoined the track safely.

        Hope that explanation of my point of view helps. As I mentioned, maybe look at the Max incident from Japan, which was a closer reference to the incident that occurred in Canada.

      3. @mg1982 If he wasn’t fully in control when he decided to rejoin, isn’t that by definition unsafe?

    3. Because I think it’s the opposite, HAM’s return being more dangerous. He returned directly on the racing line, I mean directly on the path from the track where all drivers, lap by lap, are placing their cars. Plus, Monaco as a track is more dangerous because is narrower and barely has run-off areas so, if another driver suddenly decides to rejoin the racing line (from an off-track position, like HAM did), the driver from behind in most cases will hit the car in front or the barriers.

    4. Hamilton wasnt back up to speed yet in monaco and blocking the racing line – so i’d argue that he was still rejoining. If not, we can say that vettel rejoined safely since he didnt crash into hamilton the moment his tyres touched the asphalt

    5. isaac (@invincibleisaac)
      21st June 2019, 10:25

      @todfod I agree with you here. They are different incidents as Hamilton had rejoined the track safely and directly in front of Ricciardo. He was back on the normal racing line so when RIC went to pass him HAM shouldn’t be penalised for an unsafe re-entry of the track. Also, people commenting on VET having just gone across the grass so he lost grip must remember that it was still wet offline in Monaco so HAM’s tyres would’ve lost a lot of temperature and grip as well. On the replay of Monaco you can clearly see at least a car’s width for Ricciardo on the right hand side, which can’t be said for the incident in Canada.

      One thing I find amusing is the constant cry for “Hamilton should’ve been given a penalty for the Monaco incident” but HAM won by over 7 seconds so a 5 second time penalty wouldn’t have influenced the race result anyway :)

  5. Again, these two incidents aren’t directly comparable. The most similar one to this infamous race-win deciding Canadian GP incident is the one between Max and Kimi in Japan last season as has been pointed out before, and that set a precedent.

    1. If anything Lewis case if solid. He asphalt to go over and complete control of the car. To add to this the crowding happened because of his lost time due to the mistake, not directly because of the mistake and trajectory of the car. Lewis also had infinitely more time to decide to crowd Dani than Vettel did Hamilton. You can not argue Seb deserves the penalty and Lewis doesn’t. It’s just obvious you’re a Lewis fan.

  6. There’s no white line indicating the track limit on the Monaco picture, and theres a car width gap to the barrier.
    In the Canada picture Lewis has been pushed completely over the white line and there’s less than a car width to the barrier.
    In my opinion, Vettel steered to the right, he says to correct oversteer, but there doesn’t look like there was any oversteer. He left his foot on the throttle and took the racing line which was dangerous. He could have lifted and joined the track safely.
    If he’d hit Lewis, then everyone would then agree it was dangerous and his fault, it was only Lewis hitting the brakes which prevented the collision.

  7. Ricciardo is completely right. Hamilton clearly blocked him out of choice. Vettel can credibly claim that he had not enough control of the car to prevent blocking Hamilton. If the rules say you can get away with deliberately blocking someone to prevent being passed because of a mistake you made, but you have to be punished if your car slides in front of another car after a small mistake, then the rules are simply retarded.

    1. Hamilton didn’t block him while rejoining the track.
      He made his life harder after having rejoining in a safe manner.
      Danny Ric should grow up and get over it.

      1. And blocking someone by choice rather than the actual and only trajectory of the car from off the track is better you think? That’s just incredible the amount of mental errors you’ve got going on there.

    2. @krommenaas Someone finally gets it!
      So much rubbish being spewed about this, and certainly not from Ricciardo.

  8. Oh dear, all I can say is thank goodness the stewards have a set of rules they have to apply.
    “You can please some of the people all of the time, and you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

  9. Lewis made a mistake, cut the corner easily, saw RIC coming and closed the door. On a track where overtaking is not really possible.

    Vettel made a mistake, cur the corner fighting with his car going on and off grass, drifted to the outside of the track, saw Lewis and closed the door. On a track where overtaking is possible.

    I don’t really think there should be a penalty in both cases, but if it’s done I’d say Lewis deserved it way more. But then there are these micromanaging rules blablabla

    anyway, France GP it is

    1. Don’t know if it’s a mistake on your part but you forgot the part where Lewis left space for Ric, where as, Seb didn’t leave any space! @anunaki

      1. Well RIC backed out so we never know if there was enough space. I also forgot that it was a wet race, making the situation more difficult too

  10. Oi Dan, this happened 2 years and 40 races ago. It was dead and buried until the social media obsessives dragged it out again, as they have done with a couple of other incidents, one of which is decades old. Get over it and remind people of your win last year in a pile of junk.

  11. Can we at least all agree how horrifically ugly those tall, skinny rear wings were? I hated them at the time but even more so now.

  12. And if Alonso was in serious talks with Mercedes when Rosberg retired—and by that I mean more than just Merc being nice to a respected driver—he should have offered to drive for free for a season or to pay Mercedes to drive for a season to prove he’s worth the risk of cranky attitudes. There was no point in anything less. They weren’t going to pay him his normal salary (McLaren wasn’t even doing that, right? Wasn’t it Honda covering that?). And they probably really didn’t want him because that would have made Hamilton upset (that is not a dig on Hamilton, but most #1s don’t want a strong driver alongside them).

    So, in my mind, he should have come in guns blazing with a deal that only benefitted Merc. Give them no downside. Had he come in and lost to Hamilton, they could have dismissed him after 1 year. Hamilton would look like even more of a God and they would have a year to suss out a longer term #2. If Alonso had beat Hamilton, then it wouldn’t really matter if Hamilton was upset as they would have a winner regardless.

    I’m sure there was a lot more at stake and there are a lot more decisions and politics than I’m mentioning. But if anything would make a streak of Mercedes dominance more palatable, it would have been Alonso v Hamilton II in the same gear.

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