2011 Brazilian Grand Prix

Thanks, it is :D I also believe it was to let Webber win, but that is in no way cheating either.
 
I don't understand why they would fake it. To give Mark more confidence [because of a win] for next season? Please, he's a big boy...

EDIT: It's not the first time Red Bull have had gearbox issues this year. Remember Mark Webber at the European Grand Prix?

EDIT2: Position and points of top 5 compared to last year... '10 -> '11.

Sebastian Vettel
Position: 1 -> 1, Points: 256 -> 392 = +136

Jenson Button
Position: 5 -> 2, Points: 214 -> 270 = +56

Mark Webber
Position: 3 -> 3, Points: 242 -> 258 = +16

Fernando Alonso
Position: 2 -> 4, Points: 252 -> 257 = +5

Lewis Hamilton
Position: 4 -> 5, Points: 240 -> 227 = -13
 
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^
LH: We sure put on a show for them this year, they really believed we hated each other.

FM: I know right! I mean Ferrari helped to with Lucca saying I have to pick it up next year or else. HAHAHAHAHA that old bit again!

LH: I know right, and me complaining that I'd switch teams and all those F1 fans thinking I just didn't have my head on straight. Cant wait for next season.

FM: You mean 2012 where we use gentelmen hand gestures to allow each other to pass one another without even a scratch!

LH: You know it.
 
A good season ending, just glad to see Webber winning since his last victory in Hungary last year. That's more than a year ago! Button securing 2nd place is already making me happy because his last stint pace was really awesome. And did anybody see Massa making a donut before coming back into the pit? I think I've never seen anybody in F1 doing that after a race.

Well, here comes the long 3 or 4 months break before the next season. As usual, end of January and February is a favourite time for most teams to reveal their 2012 challenger while the testing usually starts somewhere in February. I can't wait for it!

Driver of the day for me has to go to Mark Webber, see he took all the chances and romps away to his first victory of the season. Skiver of the day? It's hard, but it's Senna. He made an unnecessary contact with Schumacher (the one that broke his front wing) and with the penalty and such, he can not even battle out with the Team Lotus car of Kovalainen and just losing time on him. He also lost to Schumacher despite Schumacher have to go around the circuit on a punctured tyre and having a much slower stop to examine the underbody.
 
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And did anybody see Massa making a donut before coming back into the pit? I think I've never seen anybody in F1 doing that after a race.

Doing a donut after the race or specifically right outside the pits?

Either way,



And I remember Vettel saying in an interview that he only did it because he knew it was the last time that gearbox would be used. Ted Kravitz (I think) asked if he wrecked that gearbox and Vettel just smiled back at him.
 
Doing a donut after the race or specifically right outside the pits?.

After the race, right before the enterance of the pit... Owkey, right on the start-finish straight. I must've missed Vettel's so I guess it's no longer new :P
 
Skiver of the day? It's hard, but it's Senna. He made an unnecessary contact with Schumacher (the one that broke his front wing) and with the penalty and such, he can not even battle out with the Team Lotus car of Kovalainen and just losing time on him. He also lost to Schumacher despite Schumacher have to go around the circuit on a punctured tyre and having a much slower stop to examine the underbody.

Lets ignore that he also lost 4th gear for most of the race shall we? As always, people judge too harshly knowing so little.
People are talking up Vettel's performance, but for me, losing 4th gear is a fair bit more damaging for your speed than simply short-shifting 2nd and 3rd.

Thats not to say Senna had a stellar race though, his contact with Schumacher was fairly amateurish (though it was a racing incident - perhaps more experience would have avoided it). Bruno has really been very inconsistent for his half-season. Flashes of speed but not put together for a full weekend. It has to be said though that for a driver jumping in mid-season with little to no testing, he has been respectable and done as good as if not better than all previous examples of mid-season switches (Heidfeld, Fisichella, Grosjean, Kobayashi, Alguesuari etc). I'd say his switch hasn't been as impressive as Kobayashi's but its certainly better than Grosjean or Fisichella's.

When Bruno has shown his speed, he has been several tenths faster than Petrov. I still can't decide what to think of him but there is clearly something there.
 
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Just hoped better for Button.. Still next year he should be more competitive, mclaren as a whole are pushing forward.. Need to topple the redbulls an quickly too much dominance! But still an amazing season, gonna miss it while it's gone.
 
I think I agree with you Ardius. Perhaps I was too harsh on him because I'm fairly dissapointed as that'd be one of his greatest race. Qualified impressively in that Renault only to be ruined by that contact... I also only now got to know he had a Gearbox problem. I think the STAR SPORTS commentators Steve Slater and Gary Anderson needs to find something because recently their commentating quality has gone down tremendously that we lost so many informations during the race. I didn't know anything about that during the race...

Maybe I should change my skiver of the day to Maldonado. He overtook Senna and spun out onto a barrier. Another race gone for him.
 
I'd say the worst driver today was probably Maldonado just for being the only one to crash. Other than that, everyone else was pretty good really bar Senna as we have already mentioned.

I do not envy Eric Boullier's position right now of deciding who to stick in the seats. Grosjean is clearly a massive talent out of F1 but can he really cut it - is 2009 representative? Senna clearly has some impressive speed hidden away but is totally inconsistent, can a full season+testing really help? Petrov is still an unknown quantity really, he matched Heidfeld but has been beaten at times by Senna. He has a contract and a bag of cash so I guess his seat is straightfoward enough.
I honestly don't think Sutil, Barrichello or anyone else is really in the frame. Boullier has already tried that with Heidfeld, I think the question is whether its Grosjean or Senna, and considering Boullier's personal interest in Grosjean (he manages him as well as being involved with DAMS) its difficult to see Senna there sadly.
 
We could do with cars 25 and 26 to be honest, so many quality drivers without a space, we have the has-beens of Scumacher and Trulli and the never-will-be's of De La Rosa and Liuzzi taking seats.
 
Commentators can only comment on what they pick up on the feeds. If there was no news of Schumi losing fourth gear, they wouldn't have reported it. I don't remember any of the BBC watchers commenting on it, either.
 
No need for the commentators to judge harshly on the drivers though either without knowing all the details. I think the usual comment from Brundle about drivers like that is more along the lines of "<driver> not making much progress from 15th" or "a terrible day for <driver>".
In fact I can barely recall at all Brundle ever criticising any driver based on results alone except perhaps Badoer. Usually he simply states the finishing positions or their current positions and praises those that have done well. Normally his criticism comes for incidents he is commentating on, such as the many Hamilton incidents - where he can see himself what happened and we get a fair bit of detail.
But for the lower positions where a lot of the story is never told, Brundle/Coulthard are rarely critical. Something perhaps he has learnt from Murray Walker - who never spoke negatively of anyone. Brundle tends to go for sarcastic remarks rather than direct criticism, at least with regards to the back of the field where Brundle knows less.
Brundle isn't perfect though, he did have a thing in mid-2010 for criticising Kobayashi pretty unfairly. Murray was (for me :P).
 
Yesterday Steve and Gary were pretty harsh on Michael for the contact. As soon as Senna got a penalty, they brought Alex Yoong in with the same thought as mine but Steve and Gary seemed to disagree and keep on with his harsh view towards Michael as the culprit. I forgot to who, where or when but Gary did say '''Stupid'' to one of the driver which is out of all, very harsh... This is not the kind of commentators quality that I'd expect to see from a very expereinced man behind F1, Gary Anderson.

Another thing I'm not satisfied is that they always get the drivers and cars wrong on the track and neither any two of them even bother to correct each other. Their reason is because they have to commentate with a small TV in the booth but seriously that has never happen in the last 5 years of me watching an F1 race with them and being sarcastic with viewers that are watching in HD. It happened a lot during the race yesterday.

You know what, I'd love to see Karun Chandok get back into the commentator booth together with Will Buxton. Well, Will is also harsh in GP2 but he provides a lot of fun commentating a race...
 
@Ardius, I totally agree with your post regarding Senna. He seems to have impressive speed, but terrible inconsistency. I'd still like him to get a seat for a full year in a reasonably good car to see how he can do.

On his clash with Schumacher, I'd love to see the onboard cameras. I really don't know if Senna went too wide or Schumy turned too soon. But I was almost anticipating a mistake from Senna. This was the last race he had to show he deserves a seat for next year, so the pressure on him was definitely immense.
 
Perhaps they were a bit harsh on Michael, but I had the same reaction yesterday as I saw him turn in on Senna before completely clearing him.

But on reflection and seeing the replays, I suppose the penalty for Senna was for not yielding the corner once Schumacher had established position... certainly Schumacher was ahead (finally) when they got to the corner and Senna just tried to muscle his nose through. I agree with Alex Yoong that neither driver should have gotten a penalty for that... it was just racing. Shame it ended up that way.
 
Just sounds like another "it's the car" argument. I still stand by my statement.

Maybe not, I just skimmed through it. But regardless, I still think he's the best qualifier in F1 history. Feel free to think otherwise.

The quote is actually stating that it's all relative, and that there is usually a bias to recent events.

Please don't use the fact that he's broken Mansell's record as proof of that. Records like that, with a calendar that is growing constantly and is larger than the past when it was set, will be broken eventually. Mansell took 14 poles in a season, back when there were 16 races in a season. Vettel takes 15 in a season with 19 races. If you were to calculate the percentage of races he has taken poles at compared to Mansell, you would see that Vettel has taken 79% of pole positions this season. Mansell took roughly 88% of pole positions in 1992, so you see, that while Vettle has beat his record, Mansell was more dominant in qualifying over the course of the 1992 season than Vettel has been this year.

Why isn't Mansell considered the best? Because you're biased to the more recent events, and almost completely disregard the old events. Look at Senna's record. 13 out of 16 poles in 1988. 81% pole record. Same thing for 1989. Higher percentage than Vettel.
 
I don't know I still think Vettel is the best qualifier in history. He just has that way of getting the absolute most out of a car in qualifying when it really matters. And one could say a few things about the '92 season. Perhaps the level of competition wasn't nearly what it is today. Or that the FW14 was so radically advanced, it proved too much for the competition.


I am highly suspicious of Vettel's "gearbox problem".

It was probably Vettel's immaturity that caused the gearbox problems. That immature little kid.

:rolleyes:
 
People wouldn't mind him so much if he stopped screaming and stopped doing the finger thing, I think it's ok to come up with some little sign to do every time you win, but the index finger is too generic to be likeable.

I don't mind him winning races, he just needs to cool his jets. I was absolutely pleased with him winning the 2010 season, but 2011 has been bad for F1.
 
I don't know I still think Vettel is the best qualifier in history. He just has that way of getting the absolute most out of a car in qualifying when it really matters. And one could say a few things about the '92 season. Perhaps the level of competition wasn't nearly what it is today. Or that the FW14 was so radically advanced, it proved too much for the competition.

You could say that about Senna as well. Could get the absolute most out of a car in qualifying. Vettel isn't the only person who was able to do so, and perhaps isn't even the best at it. Regarding the 1992 season, Williams was definitely a fair way ahead of everyone else, but then again, Red Bull is also fairly faster nowadays as well, though maybe not to that extent.
 
It's sad to see the season is over, even though I was able to call the championship winner after the 4th race in Turkey. Hopefully there will be at least 2 contenders next year.
 
After the race, right before the enterance of the pit... Owkey, right on the start-finish straight. I must've missed Vettel's so I guess it's no longer new :P

Lewis did donuts in front of the crowd after silverstone this year. Seems like F1 drivers do their fair share of crowd pleasing
 
I never knew that they actually allowed to do donuts. When Massa did his, I thought ''Well he could get a penalty for that, right?''.. Thanks for the video and info share guys 👍
 
I suspect that the teams would prefer the drivers not to do that as it may increase the chances of damage in the cars itself.

However, provided that the drivers and the cars are off the track or in a safe place, I am sure the stewards wouldn't really mind the donuts as it can be part of the atmosphere of motor racing.
 
Lets ignore that he also lost 4th gear for most of the race shall we? As always, people judge too harshly knowing so little.
People are talking up Vettel's performance, but for me, losing 4th gear is a fair bit more damaging for your speed than simply short-shifting 2nd and 3rd.

Thats not to say Senna had a stellar race though, his contact with Schumacher was fairly amateurish (though it was a racing incident - perhaps more experience would have avoided it). Bruno has really been very inconsistent for his half-season. Flashes of speed but not put together for a full weekend. It has to be said though that for a driver jumping in mid-season with little to no testing, he has been respectable and done as good as if not better than all previous examples of mid-season switches (Heidfeld, Fisichella, Grosjean, Kobayashi, Alguesuari etc). I'd say his switch hasn't been as impressive as Kobayashi's but its certainly better than Grosjean or Fisichella's.

When Bruno has shown his speed, he has been several tenths faster than Petrov. I still can't decide what to think of him but there is clearly something there.

sums it up nicely. This is where I'm standing too regarding Bruno Senna. Hope he gets a drive next year but it's not looking bright for him right now.
 
Seeing the donuts In the crowd grand-stand was an incredible experience! So fricken loud!
 
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