The Official 2017 Grand Prix of Azzerbbaijananan ***SPOILERS WITH CHAOS***

Vettel should be black flagged for that. What a child!!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2017 04:08PM by Laton.

Massa should have won the race ! Or at worst P2. Unbelievable

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X (@ed24f1)

That was a chaotic race, I have to say I was entertained from start to finish. Great race imo, with overtakes all tge way to the finish line. Special thanks go to:
Vettel's kid taking over for him again
Hamilton's cockpit failing him (poor guy)
Raikkönen and Bottas tangling
Force India taking themselves out and Raikkönen with them.
Holy hell, both Merc and Ferrari had some moments this race. Completely crazy race, sad and happy for Stroll for his 3rd place, which should have been 2nd.
My father was great as well. Comes in in the last few laps and ask me "and this is supposed to be thrilling?" Which, to me, it was...
Turns out he meant the commentators talking bullshit about Bottas deliberately slowing to allow Hamilton to pass Vettel and him. Which I just ignored :D

Last but not least, thanks RTL for the last race I watched on your channel. I mean mistakes can happen but the only race where I'd be delighted to watch celebrations and highlights and you have to abort the broadcast because of technical issues...

Well, gotta rant a bit. I'll try to be as impartial as possible, so I'll apologise in advance for any bias that gets past the radar

First of all, this was a fairly entertaining race, shock winners are always good for the sport, especially in times like these, so I was quite happy to se Danny win this one. Hoped Ocon would finish on the podium, the guy is showing exactly what his skill level is, shame the car is not good enough. Don't get me wrong, the Force India is a great car and can certainly defeat a RBR on a straight fight but against a Merc? Zero chance. Also mixed feelings for Stroll on third, he owes a lot to the team for managing the chaos well. Credit where it's due, he handled the enormous pressure on the last laps quite well, no mistakes, Bottas simply had an OP car.

Now onto the interesting bit. Lewis has had that awful need to slow down so much after a SC for quite a while now. I recall Rosberg having a bit of the same as well, possibly to counter Lewis specifically. The thing is that an incident like that was something I expected for a long time. There's actually a regulation regarding that:

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FIA Sporting Regulations, Article 27.4
At no time may a car be driven unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner which could be deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers or any other person.

Shifting into 1st on the exit of the corner is something I would consider to be slowing the car down, way too much. Vettel was caught off-ward and slammed. I don't think Lewis did it to break Seb's wing as some fanboys are saying, it's more likely he did that just to put the pressure into Vettel, as usual.

Now what Vettel did, oh deary me, that was the single most damn idiotic thing I have ever witnessed from him. What's worse is that if you look carefully he did not steer deliberately into Lewis, he let go off the steering wheel to wave his hands at Hamilton, italian style, and the car turned right because of that. If you ask me, I think hitting the other guy because you released the wheel is even dumber than doing it on purpose. I was screaming at Hamilton for doing these s**t tactics, but even more at Vettel for falling for them.

TL:DR, Both are stupid, Vettel should've got a DQ maybe +5 places in Austria and a fair share of points in the superlicense, Hamilton should've got a 10 sec stop/go and some points in the license as well.

My 2 cents right there. Race was still great though. I genuinely thought Massa could win it at one point.



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

Vettel deserved the penalty for turning into Hamilton, but I don't understand the uproar asking for his disqualification. It was at what, 20-30mph or so, and in no way was 'dangerous' as such. I could see why he was annoyed, and Hamilton has past history for his erratic speed changes behind the safety car (as Vettel has past history in crashing due to it - see 2007) - nobody would expect the guy ahead to apply the brakes coming out of a corner. But the 10 second penalty was about right for me - you can't do that, no matter how annoyed you are. Amatuer hour at that point in the race.

Speaking of amatuer hour, Bottas made a complete mess of the start, bouncing into Kimi (who had pulled a great move on him). That, with the debris puncture later... well, if Kimi didn't have bad luck he'd have no luck at all (as I believe philosopher Murray once said).

Hamilton was terribly unlucky with the headrest. It's very unusual for Mercedes to make such mistakes. He easily deserved to win today, so to have it ripped from you for such a basic reason is cruel.

Another horror show for Force India after throwing away the podium in Montreal. Heads will be knocked together.

And finally Stroll. Obviously he lucked into the podium position, but he's a changed man from the guy that started the season. The erratic steering movements have gone, the speed has increased and all weekend he's been on it, and kept his head while all around lost theirs. Top drive.

Well.. what a bonkers race. I was actually on the edge of my seat at the end as I was genuinely willing Stroll to hang on in there for P2. Massive DRS effect..

It's seems a combination of the difficulties in clearing debris allied to the long warm up time of the tyres conspired to produce an almost Indycar style 'cautions breed cautions' race where some drivers could come from seemingly nowhere to the front. But this time it was genuinely fun.

I do think Ricciardo will have checked into accident & emergency though.... with excessive jaw ache. Even for him that grin was wide

Aw come on, the lead car dictates the pace. He took the corner the same slow speed every lap followed by a quick blast to heat the tyres.

Seb was asleep on the first restart so tried to stay closer for the second one, got too close. Caught out with it then felt stupid, took it out in the worst way possible.

The guy is a complete tool, happy when he's winning but petulant and entitled when he's not.


Not sure if that was Merc's mistake or if the headrest just broke.

Ocon is fast but needs to leave more space. Perez has owned that team the last two years, he shouldn't just expect him to jump out of the way.


Impressed with Stroll today, would have preferred to see Force India on the podium though, doesn't matter.


Horrible day for Renault.

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Laton
Aw come on, the lead car dictates the pace. He took the corner the same slow speed every lap followed by a quick blast to heat the tyres.

Don't get me wrong, Vettel was slow in reacting to it, but Hamilton did brake on the exit of the corner, scrubbing off 20kph in the process. That's a third of the speed he was carrying. It's hardly surprising the driver behind got caught out.

May I just point out that the most shocking thing I learned during the race is that headrests are soft? I always thought it was another piece of carbon fibre with some foam in the inner sides. I swear I was shocked out of my mind.



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

I think they used to be an awful lot more brittle (see Coulthard's shattering into a million pieces at Silverstone).

I was surprised at how squishy Hamilton's was though. Obviously these have been tested to the nth degree and do what's needed, but it struck me that at peak deceleration that it didn't look like it would do much to absorb an impact.

Vettel is a poo for me since multi 21 code-breaking at Sepang in 2013, so there's not much news about him.
And tbh the race was not the thing what I wanted to see at all. I prefer racers to stay in, battling for positions, instead of retiring and having all sorts of troubles like puctures, failed cars, headset replacements, penalties and so on. Bottas getting Stroll on the finish line and Ricciardo passing both Force Indias during restart was the only 2 things that I really enjoyed to see during the whole race, but there was much more that I hated to see. Chaotic race - yes, but not lovely to watch.

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The 10 second stop-and-go penalty for Vettel was harsh because nothing bad happened, worse things have happened in past races that were punished less severely. What should have happened is that they showed this flag with a number 5 (Vettel's number) accompanying it:

This is the flag for unsporting behaviour and this "incident" was a perfect example of when it should be shown. Instead they decided to penalise Vettel because it's the modern trend to punish someone when they do something you don't like even when nothing bad actually happened.

Yea, deliberately crashing a car into your rival for no reason is nothing bad really...

Also LOL at all those comments praising Stroll (I don't mean people on this forum, this goes more to so-called "F1 experts" ). The guy did literally nothing to be impressed with him. Almost everyone (even the both cars, finished ahead of him) else had various troubles, just look:
1 - Ricciardo went in for additional pit-stop early in the race to clean off debris from his brakes - still finished ahead.
2 - Bottas collided with Raikonnen at the turn 2, was lapped down early in the race - still finished ahead.
If we'll take a look at the guys finished behind him:
Hamilton (additional pit to fix headset),
Vettel (penalized),
Raikonnen (crashed out by Bottas and Force Indias),
Okon and Perez (crashed together),
Verstappen and Massa (mechanical failures)
Every single one of them were AHEAD of Stroll by time when they faced their problems.
His only real rivals were:
Two Toro Rossas - Sainz (spinned in the first corner trying avoid Kvyat), Kvyat (mechanical failure)
Two Haases - Magnussen and Grosjean (struggling with the car, asked team to retire)
Two Renaults - Hulkenberg (driving error - crashed with a wall), Palmer (mechanical failure)
And finally too McLarens and Saubers are obviously too slow to be considered as a rivals to Team Williams.
So, you tell me that finishing ahead of Magnussen (who was his only real rival at this event - and indeed the Dutch was running third, right behind Stroll at some point of the race) is SUCH AN ACHIEVEMENT? Haha, what a joke

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Well, Stroll almost didn´t have issues in a weekend where almost everyone had problems, in a very tough track. He qualified ahead his teammate for the first time in the season... That´s something to be impressed, especially coming from a debutant 18-year old nicknamed "Crash Stroll" after his first 3 races... Of course he wouldn´t have finished 3rd without so much retirements, but he managed to avoid incidents in a race packed of incidents, and thats a virtue.

The Vettel thing, as Carlitox said, i dont think he steer deliberately into Hamilton. If i´m going to furiously crash into someone i´d use both hands to turn the wheel

gav Wrote:
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> Don't get me wrong, Vettel was slow in reacting to
> it, but Hamilton did brake on the exit of the
> corner, scrubbing off 20kph in the process.
> That's a third of the speed he was carrying. It's
> hardly surprising the driver behind got caught
> out.

The FIA examined the telemetry and found that Hamilton did not brake test Vettel. Taking the pace out of the pack and compacting it before you hit the throttle is a normal thing to do.

Edit:

Ricciardo, class of the field. No way he should have won, but he pulled it off. Stroll, lot of justified critizism during the season, but a MONSTER drive to podium. All praise is well deserved, but no reason to proclaim star future yet. Additional inside info, HAAS ran without their season low downforce spec, so what you had was the Monaco car. Their own assessment was that this race would be their WORST of the season. Needless to say, smiles are to be found everywhere in the team with how the race panned out. As Steiner has said several times during the season, this is EXACTLY why they worked hard to sign Magnussen. If you give him this kind of chance, you WILL get points on the scorecard, which was their main problem last season, that only one driver would get the results in the bag.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/2017 08:32PM by Morbid.