2011 Formula One Grand Prix de Monaco

[YellowG1]

What do you guys think of Ferrari's line on Massa's crash?

From my understanding, Lewis just swept past Massa who went onto the marbles then crashed?

Massa tried to pin blame on Hamilton for his crash in the tunnel. Spoken like a guy who hasn't gotten over 2008 yet, and is just frustrated over his terrible season thus far.

I know Ferrari has said kept up formalities regarding keeping Massa on, but I'd be stunned if Ferrari kept Massa on after this year. He's just been atrocious.

 

[sems4arsenal]

Wow Fantastic Race (Arrived 45 minutes late to class as I was so Glued to my chair)I tell you what having seen the Footy Yesterday F1 is really giving it a run for it;s money regarding entertainment .

'BUT' What a dissapointing End ,Button or ALonso deserved it more but looks like Seb has the luck of champions(yes he will be again)why were all Teams allowed to change tires and Wings during the Red flag (really spoilt it).

Regarding Lewis Well I have mixed feelings True that he was very very very reckless and ruined Malodonado's fantastic result amongst others.'BUT' I really Respect Lewis for this I mean the I am not going to wait untill you make a mistake attitude is Brilliant unlike someone Like Mark Webber who need an Openening bigger than the Pirates of the carbbien Premier to Overtake someone .

Webber and Massa are really getting on my nerves what is wrong with them.Button really had a great one and was unlucky not to win .

 

[Saidur_Ali]

"Why can't all the drivers give way when I dive-bomb up the inside like Jenson usually does?"

He did not exactly dive-bomb up the inside though did he. Otherwise he would have taken out both Maldonado and Massa long before they had the chance to think about turning in to close the gap. He was relying on both drivers giving him some space but they ended up giving him nothing. Maldonado did not see him and Massa was maybe a bit preoccupied with trying to overtake Webber. Hamilton should have not really attempted the one with Massa as he was too far back to take that risk. I wonder if Massa's contact with Webber caused Massa to run wide in the tunnel in the first place due to his front wing damage caused in that incident.

I can understand Lewis's frustrations, he had two drivers give him no room and then two drivers drive into the back of his car, maybe that is why he thought the drivers were ridiculous at the time of the interview. Click here to read his comments after going to the stewards to "make peace".

 

[YellowG1]

Regarding Lewis Well I have mixed feelings True that he was very very very reckless and ruined Malodonado's fantastic result amongst others.'BUT' I really Respect Lewis for this I mean the I am not going to wait untill you make a mistake attitude is Brilliant unlike someone Like Mark Webber who need an Openening bigger than the Pirates of the carbbien Premier to Overtake someone .

I'd rather see someone dive and go for the pass than spend 20 laps behind the guy in front when the championship is on the line and then blame the guy for being slow. It boggles the mind that Alonso wouldn't even have made one move on Petrov at Yas Marina when the pass would've won him the championship. If a guy is within his rights to drive down the middle of the road and make the pass near impossible, then the following driver has to be able to be aggressive. I just hope FIA doesnt fall back into the 2007-2009 mindset that any pass that isn't picture-perfect requires a penalty of some sort.

 

[ExigeEvan]

"Why can't all the drivers give way when I dive-bomb up the inside like Jenson usually does?"

In the case of both contacts his front tyre was sustained and marginally behind the front tyre of the defending driver before they turned in. He didn't dive-bomb anyone.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I'd rather see someone dive and go for the pass than spend 20 laps behind the guy in front when the championship is on the line and then blame the guy for being slow. It boggles the mind that Alonso wouldn't even have made one move on Petrov at Yas Marina when the pass would've won him the championship. If a guy is within his rights to drive down the middle of the road and make the pass near impossible, then the following driver has to be able to be aggressive. I just hope FIA doesnt fall back into the 2007-2009 mindset that any pass that isn't picture-perfect requires a penalty of some sort.

The Renault was set-up for high top speed. Alonso needed more than overtaking Petrov to win the championship. I think he needed also to pass Kubica and Rosberg to win. Otherwise he might have certainly made a desperate move at the last lap but you could see he was trying very hard to pass in most of the laps behind Petrov.

I just worry that drivers will shut the door now as people will know the other driver will get a penalty for making contact. Others might not even think about making an overtake unless you can get a full car length ahead before a corner. I think fair play to Lewis for trying to make the DRS overtaking zone work, did anyone else try in the whole race? I think on both occasions he ended up being better off as the penalty with Maldonado did not cause him to lose any positions. However with Schumacher he got passed into the hairpin but he gave room like some others should have. At least he was not a hypocrite in that race.

 

[sems4arsenal]

IS it me or did Lewis call the Drivers 'Stupid"

 

[F1 fan]

IS it me or did Lewis call the Drivers 'Stupid"

Unless I'm mistaken, yes.

Saidur Ali, The stewards have full use of onboard shots to help them come to their decision. They examine everything before giving out penalties.

 

[Ardius]

I'd like to clarify this as it seems to be getting all murky again:-

Both Lewis' incidents with Massa at the hairpin and Maldanado at St Devote were racing incidents. That is to say the blame was 50/50, while both Massa and Maldanado perhaps should have watched their mirrors more, its fair for them to not expect moves in those places and both were quite desperate moves from Hamilton. But there wasn't anything terribly wrong with those incidents.
Now, Hamilton in theory shouldn't have got a penalty for the Maldanado crash as it was 50/50. The Massa crash was following Di Resta's which ended in a penalty, so its fair to the stewards to award a penalty for that. I reckon they handed a penalty for the Maldanado crash not because of fault, but because of Lewis' driving today and to maybe remind Lewis to calm the aggression, as he didn't seem to learn from it.

Again, these were racing incidents and Lewis didn't do anything hugely wrong in them.

The problem is his attitude, and its not just him as other drivers have this problem too, but it was pretty arrogant to basically blame everyone else, and suggest only he gets penalties for these incidents. I hope Lewis realises later that these were racing incidents and that he should share some blame as they were optimistic. If he doesn't then I fear his head and his attitude is in completely the wrong place and he will no doubt continue to rack up the penalties and incidents until he does one day learn. The only penalty Lewis got today which was perhaps unfair was on Maldanado, but as I say, there is some precedent to this as he had caused earlier incidents, which suggests the driver is driving far too aggressively.
If the Maldando incident was the only one today, he possibly would have gotten away without penalty.

 

[UK-Gamer]

IS it me or did Lewis call the Drivers 'Stupid"

I re-heard he said
"Some of the drivers are ridiculous.. It's stupid"

 

[F1 fan]

I re-heard he said
"Some of the drivers are ridiculous.. It's stupid"

Ah. Apologies. I'm at work now, so I couldn't watch the video again.

 

[F1GTR]

The more I see replays of Hammy's pass on Maldonado the more I'm convinced that Maldonado turned in way too early - even after being hit by Lewis he still drives across the inside rumble strip. Should have been chalked up to a rookie mistake: Schumacher and Hamilton both proved earlier on in the race that they had the experience and awareness around them not to turn in.

 

[Ardius]

Maldanado clearly didn't know Hamilton was there as he turned in like he wasn't. But Hamilton wasn't cleanly alongside and was relying heavily on Pastor noticing him as Schumacher did, it wasn't like it was inevitable.
So its a racing incident, where both are partly to blame. But as I said above, I think the penalty wasn't for the incident itself, but more because Hamilton was in trouble earlier and perhaps hadn't appreciated the meaning of punishment.

Hamilton was lucky with Schumacher, Michael very nearly made the same mistake as Maldanado did. This isn't a good way to go about overtaking for precisely this reason, its not giving the guy ahead much of a chance to notice, react and/or defend his position. It will always end in contact unless you get lucky and the guy ahead notices.
Its not a fair way to go racing.

The fact it took out Maldanado completely from the race after a great drive only gave it all a bitter taste, and probably was also a factor in the penalty as Lewis didn't suffer at all from the incident.

 

[MagpieRacer]

Just finished watching the BBC's F1 forum, turns out when Vettel stopped they put the wrong compound on! RBR/Vettel are amazingly lucky. Also 'Red Bull Floaterhome' is a rather unfortunate name.

Im starting to love the forum. Was worth a watch just to see EJ and DC get a dunking.

 

[Matti_Dude]

I don't think there was a problem with either of Hamilton's attempted overtakes, as Ardius said they were both racing incidents. But the FIA seem too keen to give out penalties for drivers that are involved in these racing incidents. Take Di Resta's accident, he was the one that damaged his own wing and had to come in to the pits to get it replaced, that should be enough of a penalty without being given a drive through on top of that. Alonso and Hamilton's fight in Malaysia seemed very fair to me and yet both drivers were awarded a penalty, even though Alonso had to come in to the pits with a damaged front wing and Hamilton damaged part of his rear wing which lost him performance.

The FIA are introducing all of these rules which are helping cars overtake such as KERS and DRS, yet they are awarding more penalties than ever for incidents which to me look like racing incidents. Soon drivers will only attempt an overtake when they are certain that they can get passed cleanly and we will see less and less of these opportunistic overtakes. I thought having a former racing driver helping to delegate these penalties would help to reduce these poor decisions, but if anything it seems to have gotten worse over the last year or so. But back to Hamilton he does need to realise that these were racing incidents rather than pinning the blame on the others. Maybe Massa and Maldonado would have been given penalties as well but both ended up retiring before a decision was made.

 

[Ardius]

I think drive through penalties are fair to give out in those kinds of incidents though because lunging overtakes at a track like this give no chance to the driver ahead and aren't fair racing. I think its perfectly fine for the stewards to punish drivers for getting far too optimistic in their driving. Its not that bad anyway, I certainly don't think Lewis has a leg to stand on in this regard.

I think people need to realise that a diving, "kamikaze" overtake is not clean racing. It relies far too much on the guy ahead noticing and puts both drivers at risk of crashing if he doesn't. Yes, it can sometimes work and we do applaud it sometimes when Hamilton or Kobayashi pull it off, but usually its at circuits or in situations where they have the room to do it and they give the other driver some time to see it coming and react. Doing it here at Monaco is pretty foolish as obviously the guy in front is never going to expect it and has pretty much no time to see it coming when he is focusing on such an intense circuit layout.

I have a hard time really blaming Maldanado or Massa as I understand why they would not expect or have the time to see it coming. But I do accept that they are always partly to blame as they could have possibly predicted it (particularly Maldanado as it was after the DRS zone and Lewis was clearly very, very close). Its certainly not 100% Lewis' fault or 100% Massa or Maldanado's, but I feel the onus is on Hamilton to choose his place to overtake and I feel his attitude to racing is completely wrong.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Unless I'm mistaken, yes.

Saidur Ali, The stewards have full use of onboard shots to help them come to their decision. They examine everything before giving out penalties.

Yes I'm fully aware of that. They were pretty consistent in that if the driver gives room, no penalty, if the driver doesn't then penalty for the guy attempting to overtake. Kobayashi however did get off very lightly with just a reprimand but then again you could say it is more of a punishment as if he got a time penalty he would have finished in the same position but ended up getting a needless reprimand. I'm happy for him though as I'm a fan of his too, his highest place finish this year and he has gone above Schumacher in the driver standings.

Anyone thought of Van Persie's interview after getting sent off against Barcelona when seeing Hamilton's interview for the first time. Maybe Lewis had it fresh in his mind after maybe watching the final the night before the race and he is an Arsenal fan. Lewis did end the interview well though as he realised what he was saying could end him in trouble and maybe someone from McLaren in front of him was telling him to zip it.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

I don't really know what Hamilton is complianing about here. He did, after all, cause two avoidable accidents and attempted to drive a car with terminal damage; if it weren't for the red flag, he surely would have been disqualified, even behind the safety car. He's lucky he got away with a twenty-second penalty (and one that didn't affect the final standings).

 

[Terronium-12]

I'm a couple of pages late (read through majority of them, skimmed over the last page) but let me go off of one of the last things I said:

1. I'm not "hating" on Vettel, I've been quite impressed with him all season thus far. His craft, not to mention his overall maturity, has improved a great deal; seemingly twofold. My issue is with the changing of the tires. What was the point of restarting the race after a red flag if you were going to swap the compounds? It was a real close race and judging by how close Alonso was on lap 73, I'd really to infer that he would have passed and the fight would have been between Alonso and Button.

Vettel even implied that himself. Changing the tires was, in my opinion, an absolute joke. I'm not taking a thing away from Vettel's overall performance today but like I said earlier, I consider his victory here to be a falsified one.

2. Hamilton drove like a jackass and then acts like a jackass during that interview. Joke or no joke, it was nonsensical and arguably undermined an already horrible performance on his part even further.

Love how he "decided" to explain himself to the Stewards though.

3. Back to the tire issue, as I've said if Vettel had continued to hold them off with the same compounds then it would have been a better ending...but as it stands I feel just as robbed after the real ending to the race, as I felt when everyone originally thought the red flag meant "game over".

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I just saw this on YouTube which you didn't get to see just through race coverage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv_6xrkS77A&feature=channel_video_title
It shows Hamilton respecting Petrov being there at the hairpin and not just turning in not expecting it which might have resulted with Petrov with a chance of receiving a penalty and maybe Lewis out the race. For sure it is a bit different situation though.

 

[SaberFire]

Who's everybody got for their driver of the race?

Predictably, but no less undeserved, Kamui Kobayashi. This guy has a great career ahead of him, definitely.

 

[sems4arsenal]

I'm a couple of pages late (read through majority of them, skimmed over the last page) but let me go off of one of the last things I said:

1. I'm not "hating" on Vettel, I've been quite impressed with him all season thus far. His craft, not to mention his overall maturity, has improved a great deal; seemingly twofold. My issue is with the changing of the tires. What was the point of restarting the race after a red flag if you were going to swap the compounds? It was a real close race and judging by how close Alonso was on lap 73, I'd really to infer that he would have passed and the fight would have been between Alonso and Button.

Vettel even implied that himself. Changing the tires was, in my opinion, an absolute joke. I'm not taking a thing away from Vettel's overall performance today but like I said earlier, I consider his victory here to be a falsified one.

2. Hamilton drove like a jackass and then acts like a jackass during that interview. Joke or no joke, it was nonsensical and arguably undermined an already horrible performance on his part even further.

Love how he "decided" to explain himself to the Stewards though.

3. Back to the tire issue, as I've said if Vettel had continued to hold them off with the same compounds then it would have been a better ending...but as it stands I feel just as robbed after the real ending to the race, as I felt when everyone originally thought the red flag meant "game over".

I would love also for some one to make me understand why the race passed the 2 hours mark when the changing of tires and other damaged parts clearly killed any entertainment the Fans Expected .We expected 2 hours of 'Racing' but the way I see it after the Red flag we just entered a whole other race that lasts only 6 laps



Well I was feeling a little Sympathy for Lewis for atleast Trying to overtake but that there shows really poor sportsman ship and the 1:00 part is the part in question

 

[Müle]

So let me get this straight...

People complain that the drivers are told what to say and are not allowed to show any character, yet when someone actually does, they're a baby and/or a spoiled brat?

What if the roles were reversed and it was your hero Ferrari driver who collided in a racing incident with Hamilton. Would he have been given a penalty? If he did, and went on a similar tirade, would he be a baby?

 

[sems4arsenal]

So let me get this straight...

People complain that the drivers are told what to say and are not allowed to show any character, yet when someone actually does, they're a baby and/or a spoiled brat?

What if the roles were reversed and it was your hero Ferrari driver who collided in a racing incident with Hamilton. Would he have been given a penalty? If he did, and went on a similar tirade, would he be a baby?

Don't think anyone here would have reacted differently had it been Ayrton Senna who did that.

 

[Terronium-12]

I would love also for some one to make me understand why the race passed the 2 hours mark when the changing of tires and other damaged parts clearly killed any entertainment the Fans Expected .We expected 2 hours of 'Racing' but the way I see it after the Red flag we just entered a whole other race that lasts only 6 laps

~Hammy Video~

Well I was feeling a little Sympathy for Lewis for atleast Trying to overtake but that there shows really poor sportsman ship and the 1:00 part is the part in question

Technically, it didn't. Red flag stops the time completely.

So let me get this straight...

People complain that the drivers are told what to say and are not allowed to show any character, yet when someone actually does, they're a baby and/or a spoiled brat?

What if the roles were reversed and it was your hero Ferrari driver who collided in a racing incident with Hamilton. Would he have been given a penalty? If he did, and went on a similar tirade, would he be a baby?

Are you serious? You mean, for example, when Alonso was bitching about how faster he was than Massa last year (yet, he needed "official" help to actually get by)? Or when he was bitching about whom I think was Petrov "holding" him up in the same season? If the shoe was on the other foot I'd be calling him a jackass too. In fact I already have several times. In fact, I'd wager if that had happened to Hamilton he'd be expressing much of the same reasoning we are now.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

So let me get this straight...

People complain that the drivers are told what to say and are not allowed to show any character, yet when someone actually does, they're a baby and/or a spoiled brat?

What if the roles were reversed and it was your hero Ferrari driver who collided in a racing incident with Hamilton. Would he have been given a penalty? If he did, and went on a similar tirade, would he be a baby?

We actually missed out on something similar happening at the front. Alonso said in the press conference that on the last lap, he would have attempted to overtake Vettel and if he crashed he would be fine with it. Button being the spectator thought this was going to happen to. We could have quite easily seen a headline along the lines of Alonso crashes into Vettel on final lap gifting Button the victory at Monaco.

 

[Seismica]

In the case of both contacts his front tyre was sustained and marginally behind the front tyre of the defending driver before they turned in. He didn't dive-bomb anyone.

Sometimes you have to dive-bomb to overtake, especially in Monaco. The point of my comment was that Lewis can't go and say it's ridiculous/idiotic when they don't concede the place just because he thinks they were obliged to once he'd got his front wheels in line with their sidepod. In the case of the Loews hairpin, the apex speed is so slow that it bunches the cars together. A car length behind at Loews is actually pretty far back due to the speed they are going. It's a dive-bomb move because of how slow and tight it is, as we saw there isn't enough space for two cars through there due to the limited steering lock they have, Hamilton almost pushed Massa into the wall on the exit, he did try and get out of the way but Webber was there, what could Massa have done? With Maldonado it was just too optimistic, it was a very desperate move for which he was rightly penalised as it caused a collision.

With such a frustrating weekend for Lewis I think the comments he made after the race can be at least partially excused, he may be a racing driver, but he's only human. But the 'racism' comment? C'mon, anybody who has seen Ali G knows the sort of context that quote was in, it was a joke, he didn't seriously suggest that he'd been singled out because of his race.

 

[Tired Tyres]

I'd say the Maldonado accident was Hamilton's fault. As for Massa, he went into the hairpin too hot and collided with Webber, Hamilton had a lunge at him then. That's a racing incident. What happened in the tunnel is 100% Massa's fault. He's the one who decided to drive on the outside line in the tyre rubbish instead of backing out of it. He hit the wall without anybody else's help.

 

[zippy_the_cat]

We actually missed out on something similar happening at the front. Alonso said in the press conference that on the last lap, he would have attempted to overtake Vettel and if he crashed he would be fine with it. Button being the spectator thought this was going to happen to. We could have quite easily seen a headline along the lines of Alonso crashes into Vettel on final lap gifting Button the victory at Monaco.

Which would have made a bizarre bookend with what happened later at Indy.

 

[Terronium-12]

I'd say the Maldonado accident was Hamilton's fault. As for Massa, he went into the hairpin too hot and collided with Webber, Hamilton had a lunge at him then. That's a racing incident. What happened in the tunnel is 100% Massa's fault. He's the one who decided to drive on the outside line in the tyre rubbish instead of backing out of it. He hit the wall without anybody else's help.

Didn't Hamilton force him to the outside? I only got a quick look at the replay when they showed it on SPEED.