2010 Formula One European Grand Prix

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Although recently he has been pretty dozy, this is the 3rd time in 4 races that Fred has been caught napping. Schumacher at Monaco (kind of understandable), Button at Montreal and this time Kobayashi. He's made a lot of mistakes this year.

The car is simply not good, I dont think anyone can deny that Ferrari today is at best a distant third, way behind Red Bull and McLaren and possibly not even better than Renault. Like niky says I think he is being very cautious trying to save as many points as possible with an inferior car. Better to let Kobayashi or Button through and gain some points instead of defending and risk crashing.
 
To be fair... Kobayashi's overtake was spectacular, but remember, fresh, fresh tires versus worn ones. Schumacher's... well... it was a safety car... the overtakes by Hamilton and Button were doozies, though.

Alonso is being quite cautious this year... trying to preserve whatever points he can get from his position... I think he can be forgiven for not trying to punt overtakers off the road like Schumi does... :lol:

And despite those lapses, he's one of the few guys out there challenging the Red Bulls and McLarens. At times, his pace versus Massa has been incredible.

Still think he's a prat. Even more so than Vettel and Hamilton (consider how much older he is!)... but that's part of his charm.

The car is simply not good, I dont think anyone can deny that Ferrari today is at best a distant third, way behind Red Bull and McLaren and possibly not even better than Renault. Like niky says I think he is being very cautious trying to save as many points as possible with an inferior car. Better to let Kobayashi or Button through and gain some points instead of defending and risk crashing.

Even so, he could have stopped all 3 overtakes if he had been awake.

Schumacher was not expected and I defended Alonso for that, because he simply didn't expect it.
Button's overtake was terrible though - why did Alonso not hold the racing line after overtaking Chandhok? He practically gave Jenson a clean run past Chandhok without ever having to lift from the throttle. He should have forced Jenson to take the inside, which would have meant waiting to get past Chandhok, possibly slowing down to avoid hitting Alonso and not taking the best line out of the previous corner.
With Kobayashi, we are at a circuit where it is accepted that it is difficult to overtake, Alonso's tyres couldn't have been that bad otherwise how did Kobayashi set such scorching times on his tyres that had done 50 laps! Brand new soft tyres or not, Kobayashi had it fairly easy really, Alonso didn't even try to make him go the long way, again he didn't expect it.

Alonso is being too cautious and making these mistakes which are losing him more points than what he lost at Valencia.

As for the car....:lol: it was certainly better than the Sauber! And they were on pace with McLaren at Montreal, Alonso could have won that race.

Kobayashi has kind words for Alonso (hard to tell if in nowadays F1 this is a compliment, people seem to think good drivers are the ruthless ones)

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/84883

Its genuine but it kind of finishes my point off about Alonso being asleep. He reacted far too late and had to concede.
 
Wow, there are some interesting if not wild theories in this thread regarding the race :lol:.

I missed the whole weekend but managed to watch the race yesterday.

I won't go over too much again that has already been discussed but, I would like to say I'm pleased that Webber and Kovalainen walked away from their accident unharmed.

I think it's time to draw a line under this circuit and find another 'European' location. I thought the marshalling and event control looked awful and spoiled the race for many teams and their drivers.

I'm also disappointed by Ferrari and Alonso for their lack of respect for Formula 1.
 
I think this article explains the whole Hamilton incident pretty much:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8770322.stm

"There is the option of having the safety car wave cars past until it picks up the leader but it is not a regulatory requirement."

This is what should have happened though. The race should not be decided by who gets stuck behind the safety car and who, by sheer luck, makes it through.
 
Conveniently missing the following sentence are we?
"Whiting adjudged that escorting the medical car was the priority - without regard to which competitors it affected - and so no-one was waved through until after the accident site."

Which is absolutely the correct thing to do - at that moment we didn't know how serious Webber's condition was.
 
I'm also disappointed by Ferrari and Alonso for their lack of respect for Formula 1.

To be honest with you guys, I really do like Alonso. His driving skills are tremendously excellent! But there is something that makes me to not really like him which is his attitude. Sometimes he's being too selfish on track, and this one as an examle. He should respect the rules, as all the decisions are final by the stewards. Nothing to rant off now...
 
why the 🤬 did webber do that to kovalinen. He has to show more respect to smaller teams. That was completly webber's fault.

Firstly, he was caught by how early Kovalianen had to brake. Secondly, Kova does appear to twitch around which does not help the situation.

Mark is clearly shown moving to the right, just as Heikki starts to brake. He was obviously expecting an extra 20-30 metres or so in which to complete the overtake.

Sure, Mark should perhaps not have run so close-but it was a big racing incident.

That's my conclusion, anyhow.
 
why the 🤬 did webber do that to kovalinen. He has to show more respect to smaller teams. That was completly webber's fault.

It was Webber's fault, but it had nothing to do with lack of respect.
He simply made a mistake by driving way to agressive and not judging the speed difference correctly...
 
Portimão? I know Algarve is almost Morocco but it's Europe's border :D

I was thinking more along the lines of Donnington or Brands Hatch ;) :lol: To be honest though, France or Portugal or even Poland or Holland, any where but Spain. We have the Spanish GP, which I think should stay but no more than one event in Spain please.

To be honest with you guys, I really do like Alonso. His driving skills are tremendously excellent! But there is something that makes me to not really like him which is his attitude. Sometimes he's being too selfish on track, and this one as an examle. He should respect the rules, as all the decisions are final by the stewards. Nothing to rant off now...

It's fair enough to have a favourite driver or express displeasure with another but, you should always respect all of the drivers for their ability, they would not be in F1 if they did not deserve a shot at it.

The problem Alonso seems to have is one of arrogance. It almost comes across like he genuinely believes that he should be given every race win and championship just for turning up, IMO.

I don't doubt the guys ability but surely it can only be compromised by spending half a race and the subsequent week moaning about something that is entirely out of his control and none of his business.
 
The problem Hamilton seems to have is one of arrogance. It almost comes across like he genuinely believes that he should be given every race win and championship just for turning up, IMO.

Fixed it for you ;)
 
I was thinking more along the lines of Donnington or Brands Hatch ;) :lol: To be honest though, France or Portugal or even Poland or Holland.


It's fair enough to have a favourite driver or express displeasure with another but, you should always respect all of the drivers for their ability, they would not be in F1 if they did not deserve a shot at it.

The problem Alonso seems to have is one of arrogance. It almost comes across like he genuinely believes that he should be given every race win and championship just for turning up, IMO.

I don't doubt the guys ability but surely it can only be compromised by spending half a race and the subsequent week moaning about something that is entirely out of his control and none of his business.

It is more of a problem of can the circuit pays an amount of money to the FIA? I borrowed my friend's Formula 1 Official Magazine and so far, the most expensive a circuit has to pay is Sepang with an amount of MYR30 Billion!! As for F1 nowadays, they are more concentrating towards the Paddock, Corporate facilities bla bla bla instead of real racing action...

Indeed I respect all the drivers out there even those who only racing for Formula Palmer Audi and such. They all have a very high skills in driving compared to me and all of you guys. They risk their lives for their passion.

Absolutely, I can see since 2005 the main attitude problem with Alonso is his arrogance and being selfish sometimes on the track. How successful and skilled he is, he still needs to respect the stewards decisions, other drivers and FIA.... There's absolutely no point to moan about this, he's just a race driver in the end.
 
Fixed it for you ;)

:lol:

I don't think it's fair to assume there was any kind of under-current or conspiracy to the incident.

What ever you may think of Hamilton's personality, he is 99.9% concentrated on the job in hand when racing. Sure he made a bad call with the safety car but that was a split second decision and he was judged and sentenced by the appropriate authority.

Do you think Hamilton is that cold, hard and calculating that he might dream up the consequences of that circumstance and get that result in the matter of seconds in which it unfolded, whilst driving a F1 car? He'd be the head of some seriously high-powered government quango or military department if that were the case.
 
I think that in order to win a driver's championship unless you are in a vastly superior car (like Button last year) you have to more or less be an arrogant bastard who thinks only of #1. I honestly don't see the difference between Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel or, the grandmaster, MSC when it comes to that. Sad but true.

I also don't think that Hamilton knowingly broke the rules after having already calulated the end result. He just got lucky. The luckiest guy in the race was Vettel though because I don't think he would have won without the safety car.
 
why the 🤬 did webber do that to kovalinen. He has to show more respect to smaller teams. That was completly webber's fault.

So by saying Webber had no respect for the smaller teams he purposely crashes his car into them to prove his point of no respect rather than wanting to finish the race???? :crazy:
 
why the 🤬 did webber do that to kovalinen. He has to show more respect to smaller teams. That was completly webber's fault.

I wouldn't say that Webber disrespect Kovalainen and smaller teams as he's in a much more developed team. It was just a complete misjudge error by both Kovalainen and Webber. One not knowing who's going where and vice versa. Those things happens anyway when you only have around 5 seconds travelling on that straight and lack a bit of time to think and communicate within each other.

But by the looks of it, this duscussion has been all over the place in a couple of pages back and I would say it was more of Webber's fault...
 
I was thinking more along the lines of Donnington or Brands Hatch ;) :lol: To be honest though, France or Portugal or even Poland or Holland, any where but Spain. We have the Spanish GP, which I think should stay but no more than one event in Spain please.



It's fair enough to have a favourite driver or express displeasure with another but, you should always respect all of the drivers for their ability, they would not be in F1 if they did not deserve a shot at it.

The problem Alonso seems to have is one of arrogance. It almost comes across like he genuinely believes that he should be given every race win and championship just for turning up, IMO.

I don't doubt the guys ability but surely it can only be compromised by spending half a race and the subsequent week moaning about something that is entirely out of his control and none of his business.

The guy (Alonso) was just asking the question over the radio to see what was going on and giving his opinion. It gives him every right to question the situation. Just like we have the right to question everything in this forum. It's more frustration really than arrogance or anything else. If I was risking my life and limbs to win a race and suddenly felt cheated. I would ask that question too. Wouldn't you? :dopey:
 
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Bunkum and balderdash. They just wanted to watch the England game.

Come to think of it... I watched a little bit of the F1 forum. That clip from the link I posted, cut out the part where Jake said to Mark Webber that England were 2-0 down :dopey:

Anyway, i'm looking forward to Silverstone now. I don't think Mclaren have much chance, I think it's an easy Red Bull win providing they don't screw up with their strategy. So many high speed corners. I think it's interesting that the Sauber is better in the high speed corners as we saw in Spain so we could see Kobayashi get another decent finish. I'm certainly hoping he gets a top 5 finish.
 
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The guy (Alonso) was just asking the question over the radio to see what was going on and giving his opinion. It gives him every right to question the situation. Just like we have the right to question everything in this forum. It's more frustration really than arrogance or anything else. If I was risking my life and limbs to win a race and suddenly felt cheated. I would ask that question it too. Wouldn't you? :dopey:

I don't think that's entirely correct. Alonso and Ferrari are still pursuing further action over the incident. Of the many radio transmissions that were broadcast, it was clear that Alonso remonstrating in a fashion more akin to a rabid dog chasing his own tail than simply 'asking the question' as you put it.

The point I'm making is that once the question had been put to the FIA, it was only the FIA's prerogative to declare any further action was necessary; not Alonso's or Ferrari's. This is why I think that Alonso and Ferrari are being disrespectful.

In regard to your point about frustration; I think it's plausible that in his frustration in knowing Hamilton is a better driver, Alonso thinks it's acceptable to direct his frustrations about having a less competitive car into 'Hami-hate'.
 
But by the looks of it, this duscussion has been all over the place in a couple of pages back and I would say it was more of Webber's fault...


The fact that Kovalainen weaved a little bit was probably just because he knew what's gonna happen next with Webber coming up behind him way too fast, with little to no way escaping the situation. :scared:
 
I think after finding out how early Kovalainen braked in relation to where Webber had braked on the previous lap (around 80 metres earlier), I think we can dispell any blame from Webber, because it caught him completely by surprise.

But we can't blame Kovalainen for this either, because he was just braking for his corner. He did move over to the left a couple of hundred metres before he braked, so there was room for Webber on the inside.

I don't think any of them were at fault. It was just the fact that the braking distance was around double for the Lotus and it caught Webber out. Not his fault at all.
 
It was clearly Webber fault in my opinion. Which did even wanted to get a tow to go pass Heikki ??? He just had to be patient, it was just matter of time before he would overtake him. I think Webber was anxious to overtake him and that caused this accident
 
I don't think that's entirely correct. Alonso and Ferrari are still pursuing further action over the incident. Of the many radio transmissions that were broadcast, it was clear that Alonso remonstrating in a fashion more akin to a rabid dog chasing his own tail than simply 'asking the question' as you put it.

The point I'm making is that once the question had been put to the FIA, it was only the FIA's prerogative to declare any further action was necessary; not Alonso's or Ferrari's. This is why I think that Alonso and Ferrari are being disrespectful.

In regard to your point about frustration; I think it's plausible that in his frustration in knowing Hamilton is a better driver, Alonso thinks it's acceptable to direct his frustrations about having a less competitive car into 'Hami-hate'.

Yet again your honest opinion and not fact. It seems the other way around when it comes to the hate mongering (you hating Alonso, Ferarri or anyone else maybe?).
 
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:lol: I don't hate Alonso, or indeed any other driver. As I have repeatedly said, I have the utmost respect for each and every driver who steps into a F1 car.

This isn't about who is the better driver though, this is about which driver is better at dealing with the present circumstance. I think it has been summed up by a journalist who asked Hamilton the question 'is this just sour grapes on Alonso's part?' to which Hamilton replied 'yeah'. I agree with this fact entirely.
 
Was a good race at valencia for a change. Webber's accident was scary. Anyone who watched the bbc footage wonder whether we actually saw it live or whether some director out there spotted it then hit the rewind button.

I knew something was going to happen when I saw webber closing in on heikki. Then when he was in the air it felt like I was watching it in slow motion. Scary.

What another bad showing from hamilton. He gets up the inside of vettel and basically forces vettel to either hit the wall or hit him. Vettel chooses the latter and lewis complains over the radio "vettel hit me". Almost like a footballer taking a dive. I wonder whether that first call over the radio was just an update to his engineers or if it was him trying to attract the attention of Charlie Whiting and get vettel a penalty.

I'm thinking the latter. And then at the end of the race, he apologised to vettel... I'm really starting to hate Lewis. What an arrogant little D*** he is. This is Formula One. Not "the Lewis Hamilton show".

Alonso was right to be angry. A drive through penalty simply wasn't enough and took far too long to happen. It's undeniable. Alonso was right behind Hamilton and stayed within the rules. Hamilton broke the rules, was penalised but still ended up much further up the field than Alonso.

It's not often I'll defend Alonso, but he is 100% in the right on this occasion.

I think it has been summed up by a journalist who asked Hamilton the question 'is this just sour grapes on Alonso's part?' to which Hamilton replied 'yeah'. I agree with this fact entirely.

Not necessarily. Alonso was just annoyed that Hamilton broke the rules and ended up where he did. If it was handled correctly, Hamilton should have been penalised and forced to rejoin behind Alonso.

Try looking at it the other way around. If alonso had been in Hamilton's shoes and vice versa the English media would've kicked up a stink. And Hamilton would have complained in his post race interviews about how alonso "cheated". When the shoe's on the other foot, he just laughs it off.

Tells you a few things about his character.

As for england versus germany... Well done germany. I don't watch football and couldn't care less that Scotland didn't qualify for the world cup... What bugged me was that you couldn't turn on a tv without being subjected to ruthless advertising stating England were going to win the world cup. I know this had nothing to do with the english team or 99.9999999% of the english population, but we are our own country. We are not Scotlandshire and I think it was a bad move showing these adverts in Scotland. Because realistically England had absolutely no chance, and these adverts portrayed it as if England had already won the world cup. So I was understandably glad when they got kicked out and the adverts were taken off our screens.

Anyway, I've gone off topic so I'll just end the post there.
 
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