ACE of the Race...and the DUFFER?

[SennaMan]

ACE

LH and KR 

DUFFER

Vettel 

[romephius]

Mark Webber for the following quoted fact:

CHRISTIAN  HORNER:  "In  Formula  One  you  face  many  emotions  and  today  Mark  was  driving  a fantastic race. He had food poisoning this morning, which he was battling with and he even threw up in the car during the initial pace-car period. In true Aussie fashion, he kept pushing and today he was quick enough to win the race. Obviously, it was very disappointing that an incident happened behind  the  pace  car  but,  on  days  like  today,  I  guess  anything  can  happen....

Kimi Raikkonen for driving from the back to the front with some great overtaking.

DUFFER

Vettel...needs to be beaten with a soap in a sock while he sleeps...

Honorable mention: Lewis for keeping his head and doing the job

Rom

[Steven Roy]

Raikkonen made up a lot of places but he was off the track half a dozen times doing it.  They need to do something about penalising cars that go off track and don't lose time by doing so.

[Alianora La Canta]

ACE - Kovalainen. I was tempted to give it to Hamilton and Webber, but Heikki put that Renault in a place where it didn't belong, particularly given that the car was basically on a dryish set-up today.

DUFFER - Is this a rhetorical question this time around? Vettel of course, and boy did he know it.

[johnbull]

Aren't you all being a little too hard on poor Vettel?

Every driver said the conditions were impossible. Visibility was nil. A few other guys punted the driver ahead of them. LH said Weber wqas a bit erratic behind the safety car, so perhaps it wasn't all Vetel's fault.

My aces of the day: LH and KR.

The thing I like most about Kimi is that he never complains. He just gets on and drives.

[Steven Roy]

One of the effects of the limited testing available to teams now is that they do not do wet weather testing.  It was mentioned in commentary that the first time Lewis Hamilton drove in wet weather was the race at the Nurbirgring.  And some people slagged him off for his performance.

This weekend is almost certainly the first time Vettel has driven an F1 in the wet and he has not exactly had a vast amount of time in the car in any conditions.

I thought the behaviour of a lot of the drivers behind the safety car was deplorable.  They are supposed to leave a gap to the car in front but they were three abreast at times.  Absolutely ridiculous.  I think Charlie Whiting wants to consider throwing out a few drive throughs for people who temporarily overtake behind the safety car.  I understand the difficult visibility etc and the need to be close to the car in front in case the safety car pulls in but there needs to be a clamp down on driver behaviour.

[Ian]

Your right about the safety car procession Steven, but the safety car doesn't just pull in suddenly and the drivers are all told when it's coming in

[Scott]

Raikkonen made up a lot of places but he was off the track half a dozen times doing it.  They need to do something about penalising cars that go off track and don't lose time by doing so.

No kidding - I know the paved run-offs are safer, but did you see Massa on the last corner?  He was off the track, but obviously that was a MUCH better line than Kubica - he came back at least a second ahead of where he went off.  If drivers start to understand that, there will be so many more off line excursions and grinning drivers apologizing afterwards for their 'mistakes'.  Fair enough they can't pass while doing it, but they can sure make up time.

I don't know what the solution is, but I sure don't like gravel..for one thing, it is too big a penalty to get stuck when a driver makes a small mistake or is pushed off by someone else, and the other of course is that I don't like to see cars upside down or airborne, which happens too often when cars go into gravel at high speed.

[johnbull]

Clearly drivers have realised that tarmac run offs can be used as an extended track.

I agree, Scotty, that gravel has it's disadvantages, but Massa's move on Kubica was a bit too blatant, and especially the amount he gained by it.

Like you, I don't really have a suitable solution. Perhaps a rule that you must enter the track from the same place you exited? I believe we had something like that in the past. It was actually a rule in RC racing, which is something we did in another life, and it worked. No reason it couldn't work in F1.

But the FIA will have to treat everybody's excursions equally, and not penalise white cars and silver cars but not red cars.

 JB............Standby for flak.

[Steven Roy]

The first paved run off I remember was at Hockenheim and the first year it was there Schumacher used it three or four times.

The problem with paved run off areas is that they are fine in the dry but if you are aquaplaning off the circuit you are going to aquaplane straight to the scene of the accident.

Returning to the circuit from the point you went off could be incredibly dangerous.  It means you will have cars running in the wrong direction in a run off area.  That could be disatrous if someone else goes off in the same place. 

Maybe the answer is to have a wide low traction(or high drag) grass area between the track and the run off.

It seems odd that you get penalised for missing a flag in zero visibility or for short cutting a chicane but not for gaining time by leaving the circuit.

[SennaMan]

re running off the circuit to gain a time advantage.

can we expect a time penalty like a "drive through" or simple time deduction?

[Steven Roy]

The big problem is to find a penalty that is fair to everyone else but doesn't absolutely ruin the race for the person who has made a small gain.  Time penalties after the race are messy because stewards seem to pick random numbers.  The driver may only have gained a second or two but by doing so a front runner can avoid 20 laps behind a slow car so do you add 2 seconds to his time or do you second guess what would have happened if he hadn't gone off the circuit?

[Chameleon]

It's really quite simple - we already have a rule regarding gaining an advantage by cutting a chicane.  Make it the same for using runoff areas.  Okay, that applies to overtaking by cutting the chicane - same for runoffs then.  Definition of "using the runoff"?  Having all four wheels off the track and on the runoff.

So, what about merely gaining time by using the runoff?  Mansell showed the way at la Source hairpin at Spa, I forget what year.  He tried a wide line that used the small runoff area opposite the hairpin.  It worked well enough for several drivers to use it the year following.  Eventually the organisers "officialised" the trick by making the runoff area part of the circuit.

That way we can have circuits gradually extending into runoff areas until a new runoff area has to be made.  And then that can be used too.  Ultimately, the whole world will be paved and we can forget silly rules about where you can and can't drive.  Is that not heaven, where all the world's an F1 circuit? 

[johnbull]

Chammy me ol' mate. I've been waiting years for the perfect description of heaven, and thanks to you I now finally have it.

Hopefully it's not designed by Herman Tilke.

[Steven Roy]

If it is the perfect race track it needs to be designed by John Hugenholz.