Japanese GP Race Thread ***SPOILERS***

The vettle/Webber collision, was caused by Lewis hitting the brakes, the video shows that quite, clearly. he was very lucky to get away unpunished with that.

however, his comments regarding Webber, i kind of see where he's coming from.
i thought something similar when watching the race.

in the laps prior to the accident Webber was constantly very close to the back of him (and before anyone says it, this was without the help of lewis's brake tests). which given the conditions, and the fact that the safety car wasn't even coming in at that point, seemed unnecessarily risky(lewis had already been hit by someone he couldn't see). though as i said, what happened in the end was lewis's fault.


With regards the punishments dished out, i think the stewards need a bit of rethink of how they apply the rules, as some of their decisions didn't make sense.

In conditions like that there are certain things that happen that may result in a penalty in bone dry conditions that the given wet + poor visibility some degree of leniency has to be applied. (eg kubica)

But then there other things that wouldn't result in a penalty in the dry, but given the increased dangers of driving in that sort of weather, a harsher tone needs to be adopted. (eg hamilton's brake tests)

maybe some sort of 'wet weather charter'? or at least a clarification of what is/isn't going to be allowed.

tricky to decided exactly what would or wouldn't be permitted and exactly when to allow it i know, but that would certainly have to be better than the pick 'n mix approach they seem to be taking at the moment. a bit of common sense would go a long way.

Unfortunately, other than the 5 car length rule, it's all down to interpretation. Quite clearly he should have been penalised anyway (as should others to be fair), but to force stewards to hand out penalties, and so removing any potential bias, there needs to be a clear black and white rule in this case. Any car seen warming brakes and/or tyres through sudden acceleration or de-acceleration while behind the safety car should receive a drive through penalty once the safety car has entered the pit-lane. The same should be enforced on the warm-up lap too, and the lap on the way to the pits, though that's not much of an issue.

agreed. it's dangerous, it risks an accident and needs to be stamped out.
(to be fair to him , hamilton isn't the only one who does it, its just that being at the front he's the one everyone noticed doing it on sunday)

but there are other rules where they always seem to take the black and white approach, that given difficult driving conditions a bit of common sense would see fewer seemingly uncessary penalties.

marwood82 Wrote:
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> agreed. it's dangerous, it risks an accident and
> needs to be stamped out.
> (to be fair to him , hamilton isn't the only one
> who does it, its just that being at the front he's
> the one everyone noticed doing it on sunday)

Yes but he was doing it under those terrible conditions. If it was dry then it wouldn't have been a problem but in the spray with cold tyres and brakes you have to avoid putting yourself and the competitors behind you at risk.
Lewis was, imo, obviously worried about Mark and pulled the same tactics as he was doing on Fernando to unsettle him, he was lucky he wasn't rammed up the jacksy if you ask me.

Now after that its easy to see how Vettel thought there was an issue with Lewis, though, given the conditions he should have been concentrating more, but Lewis was no driving too well there.

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

anyone know about this bit from my previous post?:

after Monaco '04 when MS and JPM collided in the tunnel, the FIA changed the rule so they wouldn't notify the teams and drivers of when the SC would be going in, precisely so that drivers wouldn't start accelerating/braking heavily to warm their tyres/brakes which causes the concertina effect.

why has that never been implemented? i seem to remember everytime there was a SC after that incident, its lights still went out to signal it would be pitting at the end of that lap.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

defend him (razgriz) as much as you want, but there is something incredibly wrong about that guy.

[www.grandprixgames.org]

[www.grandprixgames.org]

sorry, the above post was ment to be posted at "ralf leaves toyota" thread. sorry

Muks_C Wrote:
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> anyone know about this bit from my previous
> post?:
>
> after Monaco '04 when MS and JPM collided in the
> tunnel, the FIA changed the rule so they wouldn't
> notify the teams and drivers of when the SC would
> be going in, precisely so that drivers wouldn't
> start accelerating/braking heavily to warm their
> tyres/brakes which causes the concertina effect.
>
> why has that never been implemented? i seem to
> remember everytime there was a SC after that
> incident, its lights still went out to signal it
> would be pitting at the end of that lap.

hmmm, the only issue with not telling the teams is that the 1st 2-3 guys can see the lights go out.(although on sunday, i reckon even lewis would have had trouble seeing them ) the rest of the field would only realise what was going on when the 1st few cars disappeared off into the distance.

i think the teams + drivers should be told the lap its coming in. its just a case of cutting out the sudden starting + stopping, especially in poor visibility conditions.

i seem to remember that the rule change would be that the "lights going out" signal would not be given anymore, the SC would just peel into the pitlane and the race would be on again.

but it's probably easier to just tell them to keep a uniform slow speed until the leader decides to bolt, and that he's not allowed to stop/start. once he goes for it, he has to continue.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

The field NEEDS to know when the safety car is coming in.

better to actualy make it so drivers cannot speed up and suddenly brake as everyone has been saying in this thread.

yes but their logic at the time of the Monaco incident was that the crash was caused because MS was accelerating and braking because they knew the SC would be coming in that lap. had he not known, he might not have done that (but drivers probably do it anyway). removing that knowledge would possibly stop it happening again (the FIA's thinking).

but they never implemented it anyway, which i what i was wondering about.

i agree, it's easier to just make a rule that they can't accelerate/brake while behind the SC.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

But then again, tyres temps drop too much, pressures drop and we know what can happen then...

Yeah, nothing at all. The tyre and brake temperature importance is overhyped to the extreme. NASCAR, IRL and CART all disallowed warming of brakes and tyres during safety car periods, and if they can cope with it, F1 with its "best drivers in the world" should be able to cope with it too. Tyres will be up to temperature within a lap (especailly wet tyres) and brakes will be up to temperature within 1 or 2 corners. They do not need them warm and if warming them is banned then everyone will still be on a level playing field.

If F1 drivers cannot cope with cold tyres and brakes whilst the exceptionally poor CART grid can then F1 needs to take a long hard look at why its drivers are unable to cope with such a basic situation.

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And before anyone even thinks of uttering the name I'll do it first. Senna. I'm still absolutely adamant that tyre pressures played no part whatsoever in his accident, and even if F1 teams did feel they had a problem with pressures, then hey hey, we've got a single tyre manufacturer with a control tyre. Why not use it to the sport's advantage?

Anyone who still believes that Senna went off due to the tyre pressures is obviously mislead. For starters he did a lap at full speed before that tragic seventh lap.

There was a theory though, that in '98 or '99 a deluded ferrari fan offered his services to shoot Mika Hakkinen's tyre with a shotgun. So could it be that this guy already did similar thing. That the metal part that pierced Sennas helmet were actually bullet. He didn't do that deliberately of course, he was aiming at tyre, but missed.

Well it's probably not true, it just crossed my mind that's all.

brnco Wrote:
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> Well it's probably not true, it just crossed my
> mind that's all.

You should probably try to stop things going anywhere near your mind if thats the crap it comes out with.

But it makes sense, if you think about it. Everything fits into the story.

The assasin was in the bushes just behind the tamburello wall, it would make a good scenario for a movie though.

Sly are you interested?

Even if Senna went off because of low tyre pressures, that wont happen now-days. The regulations have the car set to a minimum height when the car is on low pressures, so as long as the car is legal it is safe on the low pressures.

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