Formula One - 2016

Raikkonenen back in a red car for 2017. Ferrari reups the flying Finn.

The look on Lauda's face immediately after qualifying...

I know they explained it but the exceeding track limits random bs got on my nerves. Either enforce 100% of the time or don't do it.

Finally get to see what the penalty for coaching is.

Interesting race with full wets going quickly to inters and then a long stint for the field on mediums.

Hamilton did a great job managing his lead. One mistake didn't mean much in the end.

Fans booing at Nico rinded me on my experiences at many tracks and to and from tracks, the British are the worst fans!

Riiiiiiiight...

markwemple wrote: Fans booing at Nico rinded me on my experiences at many tracks and to and from tracks, the British are the worst fans!

Like the Austrian fans did last week?? They were a lot louder, I thought.

How many of you have been to races abroad to see them start fights, cut people off while driving, piss on your camp site and generally stand head and shoulders above all others for rudeness?

In reply to markwemple:

I have. Didn't see what you saw. Saw Italian fans have a standing ovation when Hamilton was punted in the first lap at Monza, though.

None the less, what was heard today was no worse than last week in Austria.

Well, to that, Hamilton and Vettel have a lot of haters. I don't put that to chamionships but to antics on and off track.

In reply to markwemple:

Lol. Whatever makes you happy, I suppose.

Condemn the booing to bad fans in England, but it's due to bad racers in Austria. That's funny.

At least we have a better understanding of you anti Hamilton bias.

Rosberg gets 10 second penalty and drops to third. Stupid rule.

More like I'm not a blind fan boy like so many British commentators. I'm an Alonso fan so I do have boas towards him. If you think I'm wrong about Hamilton and Vettel, I'd wonder how many F1 groups you belong to.

Rosberg penalized. Not surprised. But since it was the team thst violated and not him, shouldn't the team, and not him, be penalized. I hope they appeal. This weekend showed how random they really are in imposing penalties.

Iusedtobefast wrote: Rosberg gets 10 second penalty and drops to third. Stupid rule.

While I agree that the rule isn't smart, the penalty laid down was more than fair. Rosberg would have lost more than 10 more seconds having to figure out what to do to solve the problem on his own. Could have even cost 3rd place.

markwemple wrote: More like I'm not a blind fan boy like so many British commentators. I'm an Alonso fan so I do have boas towards him. If you think I'm wrong about Hamilton and Vettel, I'd wonder how many F1 groups you belong to.

Not blind? Did you not see the hatred laid down onto Hamilton in Spain during pre season testing years ago? Wow.

Hey, good luck with that. No point in further debating it.

My comment was regarding the team vs driver. If the driver asks then hit him but here the team initiated so why should Rosberg be penalized. The team yes, Nico no.

markwemple wrote: My comment was regarding the team vs driver. If the driver asks then hit him but here the team initiated so why should Rosberg be penalized. The team yes, Nico no.

An engine failure is a team failure. A battery failure is a team failure. How is this different?

In the end, the failure of the team causes the drivers to have problems. Be it coaching or a mechanical failure.

It looked to me that had Nico not gotten coaching, he would have lost more than he did. A lot more. Which would have made it just another mechanical failure.

I'm addressing the coaching. He didn't get punished for having a problem. He got penalized for the team communicating with him.

Booing sucks regardless.

Hamilton got lucky to avoid a standing start. So all he had to do was get a good rolling start when the safety car went in and for whatever reason Rosberg sucks in cool wet conditions. By the end of lap one Lewis just had to worry about bad pitstops, car failure, or tripping over traffic.

Nice battle between Verstappen and Rosberg. I think we missed something on Lap1 between Ricciardo and Verstappen. A red bull went way wide and the other looked to come alongside but the spray and camera angle didn't show what happened next.

Sainz channeled his dad's rally skills. Nice save.

Rosberg must be pretty depressed losing his huge points lead so fast.

Ricciardo needs to win one or two races or else he is probably going to be put into Weber status.

markwemple wrote: I'm addressing the coaching. He didn't get punished for having a problem. He got penalized for the team communicating with him.

The coaching fixed the problem he had with the car that would have cost him more time than he was penalized had he tried to do it on his own.

Rosberg gained time via the coaching.

Again, it's no different than any other team rooted failures.

I can repeat that again, if you need to.

alfadriver wrote:

markwemple wrote: I'm addressing the coaching. He didn't get punished for having a problem. He got penalized for the team communicating with him.

The coaching fixed the problem he had with the car that would have cost him more time than he was penalized had he tried to do it on his own. Rosberg gained time via the coaching. Again, it's no different than any other team rooted failures. I can repeat that again, if you need to.

Let's try it a different way.

Lewis asks for help with settings in Baku and team comes on and says, "We're sorry, Lewis, we can't help you with that.". He asked again and the team says, "We can't tell you that.". No penalty.

Nico says he has a gearbox issue. He does NOT ask for help. Team comes on and starts giving him things to do to the car. Nico cannot control what the team tells him. The team chose to give help him as opposed to saying, "We can't help you", as they did with Lewis. Had Nico done nothing and the car survived, they still would have penalized him. The only thing that "might" have prevented him from getting a penalty is if he just parked the car or if he responded with, "You can't help me", but their initial response was setting changes, so I assume the penalty would have still applied.

The whole radio rules thing is really kinda weird. While I understand removing the coaching type of stuff ("Move one foot closer on the apex in turn 8" or "Brake 50 feet deeper in turn 3") shouldn't be allowed, helping a driver with a broken or breaking car should be allowed. Modern F1 cars are extremely complicated. It's gets a little silly to think the driver could know everything the TEAM of engineers knows about the car.

The tinfoil conspiracy crowd will claim that Mercedes specifically sabotaged Nico.

-Rob

In reply to rob_lewis:

Had Nico NOT done what he was told to do, that, indeed, would be an interesting gray area. I get that.

But you can't really argue that he gained massive time by doing what the team told him to do for some kind of failure. Both team and driver benefited. I don't see the actual issue as anything different than a mechanical problem, except that this time, it could be "reset" by driver controls. We have seen before that it's not common for the driver to know exactly what to do with these kinds of issues- Hamilton lost more than 10 seconds trying to deal with his car's issues.

One also can note that Nico didn't really have time to ask what to do, as the radio transmissions came pretty fast for the core fix. After that, the genie was out of the bottle, and telling him to avoid 7th gear was no worse.

I get that drivers can't know what engineers know. But a reliability issue is a reliability issue- software, hardware, electrical, cooling- whatever. The driver isn't going to be able to fix a broken pedal or turbo, too.

What's being suggested is that the subset of failures that can be fixed by a specific method of driver interaction be taken out of the picture. That's the key for what happened to Nico.

As an engineer, I would tell Mercedes that they need to have a more reliable and robust system.

Still- 10 seconds for coaching. That's a pretty weak penalty for what we think is a pretty strong rule. Now that we know the penalty, it's easy to calculate time lost due to a problem and determine if a fix should be told or not.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to rob_lewis: Now that we know the penalty, it's easy to calculate time lost due to a problem and determine if a fix should be told or not.

Exactly, the team took a gamble that telling Nico the fix was going to be less than risking losing more time/retirement for not changing things.

Actually, the core fix transmission was probably okay according to the rules. They can tell him how to avoid a failure ("go to chassis default 0-1"), but they can't coach him on how to drive the car ("what do I do if it gets stuck in 7th again?" "Downshift out of it").

It was apparently the latter part that ran afoul of the rules.
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/blogs/rosberg-radio-rule-breach-explained/

I don't have a problem with disallowing driver coaching on how to eke more speed out of the car. But as noted, these things are incredibly complex and the driver is trying to fix them at speed. The engineers should be able to coach on how to fix and manage a problem such as a power unit setting (Lewis last race) or a dodgy transmission (Nico this race). Looks like Mercedes agrees, they're going to push to get the rules clarified.

This may not have been a calculated decision, to tell Nico how to fix his problem and hope that the penalty was worth it. More likely it was an engineer on the spot who did what engineers do. There was no time to discuss the grey area of the communication rules.