Heroes and Zeros - Belgian GP 2016

[Jericoke]

Finally a race with some clear ups and downs!

Heroes:
Hamilton.  Starts from second last (Even though he got 55 demotions to Alonso's 35) and winds up with a podium.  Yes, he was lucky there was carnage ahead of him, and a red flag, but he made the most of his opportunity.  There were plenty of other races behind the carnage who could have taken advantage and didn't.  He raced sensibly but intelligently.  A textbook back-of-the-field-start race.

Alonso.  A former double WDC, he knows how to drive sensibly and intelligently.  If it wasn't for Hamilton, Alonso would have had the drive of the race.

Ricciardo.  Sometimes in life all you need is to show up with a smile on your face.  He's on the cusp of greatness, and today was another sterling example.

Kimi.  He means more to F1 than any other driver on the grid.  A true racer and not interested in anything getting in the way of that.  He needs to stay forever.  His race was compromised and he just did what he does.  I can think of a few drivers who need to learn from his example.

Zeroes:
K-Mag.  He let his car get away from.  An f1 car is tough to drive, they need the best drivers being at their best 100% of the time.  No room for a lapse at this level.

Sainz.  When your car is broken, get off the track.  Seriously.

Wehlein.  Pay attention.  Sometimes the car in front will go slower than your car.

There was one more... I'm not sure if anyone else noticed but... I think it was the guy who took over for Kvyat.  Max something?  He's lucky that most of the other drivers are competent professionals.  If we had 22 guys driving like him, we'd have 22 wrecks.  He might cling to the idea that he wasn't breaking any rules, but he was not driving safely.  They're not out there to be friends, but all of them are out there to drive another day.

Other
Not heroes, not zeroes, but noteworthy

Rosberg.  100% competent race.  He's getting the raw end of history.  He's doing a great job, but when the chips are down, he doesn't deliver.  No chips down today, and he was on point.

Engineers at Enstone.  Thank you for showing how safe a modern F1 car can be in a horrific crash.  It's been a while since we saw a car wrecked that much, but Sainz walked away (not unscathed, but far better than that Renault would lead us to believe).

The Marshalls.  They could have done a lot today, but they didn't.  Everything was settled on track.  It wasn't satisfactory, but I think that she 'show' benefited from the hands off approach.

Christian Horner.  RBR keeps giving him 'high maintenance' drivers.  I don't know how long he can handle having to publicly support these kids.

[Alianora La Canta]

Heroes

Alonso.....22nd to 6th is no mean feat. Bravo!

Hamilton....21st to 3rd is also no mean feat (only missing top spot due to Alonso managing his version in a slower car). Bravo!

Raikkonen...for putting up with a heap of nonsense with aplomb and realism.

Zeroes

Verstappen...for driving as if rules only apply to other people. Putting 30,000 on the gate at Spa may have immunised Michael Schumacher from some rules, sometimes. It may even do that for Max Verstappen. It does not mean I will be impressed with anyone who drives as if under such an assumption (even if the assumption is accurate).

Race Control...for restarting the race with a sprained guardrail assembly. If anyone else had hit that wall, they would not have been as well-off as Kevin Magnussen (who, it appears, will be fit for Monza as he only got a sore ankle despite his headrest flying off instead of absorbing energy).

Sainz...For being almost as bad at working out when to drop out of a race as me (though that's a story for another thread).

[Dare]

Can't add much to Ali and Jeri

Hero's

I'd have to add Hulk and Perez dor getting FI near podiums

I'd also have to add Max for not killing anyone with his I can
do no wrong driving.Seriously something needs to be done with him

Zero's

Max for driving like a kamikaze,RB for giving him a ride,the
stewards for having their heads in the sand,and Horner for constantly lying for wonder boy

[cosworth151]

Heroes:

I have to add Lewis again. Except for a slow pit stop, he might have been second. And, of course, Nico gets very nervous & mistake prone when he sees Lewis in his mirrors.

Zeroes:

I hate to say it, but NBCSN's coverage. They've got the best on-air team in the business, IMO. On air, they go split screen during the adverts so that fans can keep up with the race. On line, they cut completely away and play the same block of ads over and over and over.....

Speaking of NBC, David Hobbs & Steve Matchett speculated that the cockpit pad/headrest on K-Mag's Renault popped out as a result of the car's structure twisting during the shunt. It's certainly something that needs to be looked into.

[Jericoke]

David Hobbs & Steve Matchett speculated that the cockpit pad/headrest on K-Mag's Renault popped out as a result of the car's structure twisting during the shunt. It's certainly something that needs to be looked into.

I agree that needs to be looked into, but if the device (along with HANS) did it's job protecting his head/heck during the initial impact, and only flew away afterwards, it might have performed perfectly and only looked like a problem to viewers who have no idea how it's supposed to work.  Hopefully the FIA gets meaningful information from the crash and ALL the car's/driver's safety features.

[cosworth151]

I was worried about follow-on impacts. What if a second car was involved & hit K-Mag's car after the padding flew off? I'm thinking about something like Jules Bianchi's fatal shunt at Suzuka. He could just as easily hit Sutil's car instead of the tractor.

[J.Clark]

I think Alonso is the Hero

Verstappen - what everyone else has pointed out!!!! 

Max will continue to be a bit of a bull in a china shop, as he has served no consequences for any of his reckless driving, other than his own race was ruined yesterday.

[Alianora La Canta]

I agree that needs to be looked into, but if the device (along with HANS) did it's job protecting his head/neck during the initial impact, and only flew away afterwards, it might have performed perfectly and only looked like a problem to viewers who have no idea how it's supposed to work.  Hopefully the FIA gets meaningful information from the crash and ALL the car's/driver's safety features.

Headrests are meant to collapse in on themselves once they've absorbed as much energy as they can. For the headrest to come off is a failsafe failure, though as failsafe failures go, it's one of the better ones; the sheer amount of energy it takes to move a headrest that much means that's a lot of energy Kevin wouldn't have received. If it had simply stayed put or flopped onto the back of Kevin's neck/off the side of the car, that would have been properly concerning.

Fixing it would be relatively easy and cheap - increase the size of the retaining screws (they are already 10 cm long, which should tell you how much energy it takes to tear a headrest out of their grasp). My guess is that it wasn't done before only because headrests only usually fail like that when the rest of the car at that level is sliced off - something longer screws wouldn't fix. Now that we know the cars are capable of losing headrests in other circumstances, the problem is likely to be fixed quietly and quickly in the next version of the Technical Regulations. (It being a safety feature, and a minor one at that, this can happen even if every other member of the Strategy Group objects - the FIA has a special exemption for such situations).

[Monty]

This race could almost put 'young drivers' in the Zeros class.
Wehlein showed his inexperience and made a real rookie mistake taking Button out of a race where he looked certain to get some useful points.
Sainz allowed his youthful & inexperienced enthusiasm to get back to the pits to cloud his judgement - the car was obviously finished and needed to be parked safely.
However, Verstappen was just an idiot. Even in karting the saying 'you can't win the race in the first corner' is widely used. No sensible racer would have put their car on the kerb of the apex in the first corner - he says he was still going to 'make the corner' personally I think once he hit the kerb he would have locked up and understeered into the path of all the other cars. However, as we all saw, it never came to that because the two cars that naturally assumed they could cut back towards the apex had nowhere to go and the race was ruined at a stroke. OK this was a stupid mistake but then to claim it was all Kimi's fault was a major step too far. But was Verstappen finished with his bad driving for the day? Oh no, he then continues with his 'they shall not pass' antics on the straights! What he did to Kimi was incredibly dangerous and this is not the first time he has weaved to stop an overtaking manouvere. I am astonished that he then continues to claim it is a legitimate driving tactic (and that the stewards did nothing!). This is being done by a driver that was launched in the air when he misjudged an overtake last year - you would hope he would have more sense! If this tactic of weaving at the very last minute isn't stamped out immediately, everyone will simply watch their mirrors during a DRS zone and dart left or right to stop the faster car passing. There will be no overtaking or some massive accidents.

[lkjohnson1950]

Vettel said much the same thing in his interview, words to the effect-Everybody knows if you go that far inside you can't make the corner, you just go straight on. If Max hadn't hit Kimi, I think he would have gone straight on.