2021 Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Amereto1 said:

And when has F1 EVER, I repeat "EVER" been different in it's entire history?

Let's take Fangio as an example so people can better understand this sport.
Openly considered one of the greats by winning 5 world championships and always included in the so called conversation of the "GOAT".
He won 4 of his champions between 1954-1957 with 3 different teams, he did not sign multi year contracts because he had heavy financial backing and could buy his way into whatever team had built the fastest car that year, he was even racing for Maserati one season, when Mercedes built a faster car he left mid season to drive the Mercedes to clinch another title, he would even take over his team mates car if it was quicker or more reliable.

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Let's not forget Senna who did *everything* he could to get a Williams contract at the end of 1992 because it was the dominant car that season. He could not do it for 1993, almost sat out the 1993 season because he was stuck at McLaren and *finally* got his wish in 1994... and we all know what happened then.

F1 frequently has these dominant associations between a terrific driver and a terrific car: Clark and Lotus, Senna and McLaren, Schumacher and Ferrari, Vettel and Red Bull, Hamilton and Mercedes. And many others.

Motor racing is all about having the best driver in the best car. To me, that's the interest of racing: the combination of the two.

But let's not forget this: the best drivers usually end up in the best teams. Can you imagine a title fight in 2028 between Mazepin in a Mercedes and Latifi in a Red Bull? Yeah, me neither.

Well, well, well...

Amereto1 said:

he was even racing for Maserati one season, when Mercedes built a faster car he left mid season to drive the Mercedes to clinch another title, he would even take over his team mates car if it was quicker or more reliable.

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Fangio had already signed with Mercedes at the beginning of 1954, but the car wasn't ready until the French Grand Prix at Reims that year. So he drove for Maserati until his Mercedes was ready. He didn't leave mid-season because they had a faster car.

As for taking over teammates' cars, that was common in the 1950s. I can point to numerous cases where this happened throughout the era (it happened 18 times just during the 7 championship races of the 1956 season, by my count). The team leaders always got first choice of car, even if that meant taking a car from another driver mid-race. It is hardly an example of Fangio using undue influence to deny points to other drivers.

Amereto1 said:

In his last championship winning season his team mate a very good driver by the name of Peter Collins was about to win the title, Fangio had the influence to stop Collins finishing the race so he could jump in the car, they shared the points and Fangio was crowned champion.

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I assume you are speaking of 1956, when Fangio was at Ferrari. (His last championship was 1957 when he was driving for Maserati, and Collins was not his teammate). Going into the last race of the season, Fangio had 30 points and Collins had 22. To win the title outright, Collins would have had to win the race and get fastest lap, with Fangio not scoring any points. (If he'd won the race but not gotten fastest lap, they would have been tied, and I'm not sure how such a thing was handled at that time.)

When Fangio went out of the race, Musso was ordered to give Fangio his car, but refused, so Collins voluntarily turned his car over to Fangio, and was widely praised for doing so (Source: Formula 1 Car By Car 1950-59 by Peter Higham). At the time, Collins was in third place in the race, which would have placed him in a tie for second (with Stirling Moss) in the championship standings. So it is by no means a given that Fangio prevented Collins from winning a championship. He was certainly not "about to win the title."

It's also worth pointing out that Collins himself had commandeered cars from other drivers multiple times throughout the season.

Amereto1 said:

This was in the 50's so the relation between car and driver in this sport has always been about which team builds the best car.

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I understand and agree with the point you are making, but you are making some factually questionable statements to do so.

To me, this is an example of how much respect drivers showed to one another during those days, and how little respect they show to one another now. Could you have imagined Hamilton handing his car over to Alonso, or Senna handing his car to Prost?

I would love to see Max and Lewis swap cars with Russell and Latifi for the weekend, watch them both have to scrap to get a point to win WDC....
Would also hopefully let them both realise how lucky they are to be in their cars and having the team built around them.

McGherkin said:

Nobody in the ‘Hamilton camp’ tries to sweep Silverstone under the carpet. If you can’t accept your driver’s mistakes then you’re a Max fan.

Lewis ****ed up, once, at Silverstone. Max fans need to get over it, and get on with their lives, like Lewis fans did half a season ago.

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Sadly on farcebook there's loads who maintain Silverstone was Max's fault.

Richard Wilks said:

You don't get it, do you.

I am not a Max fan. I said here earlier that he is a dirty driver that should have been heavily punished a long time ago.

I can't make it any clearer than this.

But the FIA SHOULD NOT ignore the CONSEQUENCES of the actions of the drivers, because if it does, then for the sake of consistency, Max can put Lewis off the track next race, and then get a punny 10 second penalty, and win the WDC, don't you think?...

That's not how to manage this. That's not how the FIA should have dealt with this. But now its TOO LATE, at least for this year!

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I think the penalties should be judged on the intention of the driver.

Lewis intended to pass Max on the inside at Silverstone, he did not want to cause an accident, no matter how much as the orange army deny it. He would not have run wide off the exit or the corner, he did not hit Max hard, he simply ran a metre or so too wide accidentally. It deserved a penalty, but not a harsh one.

If Max were to do a Senna/Prost then it would be an intentional act, and be punished accordingly, which given that he's already been punished for causing a collision, would be more severe. But if he made a genuine mistake on the same level as Hamilton's and won the WDC, that would be fair. There would be uproar from the fans, but no matter what happens this weekend that will happen.

McGherkin said:

I think the penalties should be judged on the intention of the driver.

Lewis intended to pass Max on the inside at Silverstone, he did not want to cause an accident, no matter how much as the orange army deny it. He would not have run wide off the exit or the corner, he did not hit Max hard, he simply ran a metre or so too wide accidentally. It deserved a penalty, but not a harsh one.

If Max were to do a Senna/Prost then it would be an intentional act, and be punished accordingly, which given that he's already been punished for causing a collision, would be more severe. But if he made a genuine mistake on the same level as Hamilton's and won the WDC, that would be fair. There would be uproar from the fans, but no matter what happens this weekend that will happen.

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Oh so now you (or the FIA) are able to read minds? How do you know the intention in any of those situations?

Did schumacher really wanted to put Hill out of the race?

Did Mansell wanted to ruin Senna's chances in 1989?

Did Hamilton wanted to put Verstappen out of the race or not this year?

They all denied this. So how you prove it? Its whatever fancies the stewards?...

Max can just "miss" his braking point, and smash into Lewis, just like Bottas did in Hungary, then what? He will deny it was on purppose.

See the problem here?...

McGherkin said:

I think the penalties should be judged on the intention of the driver.

Lewis intended to pass Max on the inside at Silverstone, he did not want to cause an accident, no matter how much as the orange army deny it. He would not have run wide off the exit or the corner, he did not hit Max hard, he simply ran a metre or so too wide accidentally. It deserved a penalty, but not a harsh one.

If Max were to do a Senna/Prost then it would be an intentional act, and be punished accordingly, which given that he's already been punished for causing a collision, would be more severe. But if he made a genuine mistake on the same level as Hamilton's and won the WDC, that would be fair. There would be uproar from the fans, but no matter what happens this weekend that will happen.

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How are the stewards to judge intentions? They can't know what is going on inside a driver's head.

Mr. Malarkey said:

How are the stewards to judge intentions? They can't know what is going on inside a driver's head.

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That's what judges do.

LeSunTzu said:

That's what judges do.

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But that's what is creating the inconsistencies and problems - stewards making decisions based on things they couldn't possibly know. To this day, no one can be sure why Senna and Prost collided in 1989 or 1990. Both said it was the other's fault and they did nothing wrong, and both made convincing arguments. It was impossible for the stewards to make an objective decision. Somebody was going to pissed off and claim bias, no matter what happened.

Mr. Malarkey said:

But that's what is creating the inconsistencies and problems -

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Yes, you will always have problems because the decisions are made by human beings, not machines. People make mistakes. Sh*t happens. It’s the same in every sport: referees make bad calls. F1 can’t be exempt from that.

Kingkoenig said:

Yes, you will always have problems because the decisions are made by human beings, not machines. People make mistakes. Sh*t happens. It’s the same in every sport: referees make bad calls. F1 can’t be exempt from that.

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Very very true. So, really, this is what we're stuck with.

LeSunTzu said:

That's what judges do.

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Judges rule based on the CONSEQUENCES more than anything.

You killed someone. Sure, if it was an accident, then you get a lighter sentence than if it was premeditated. But if the other person didn't die, then you get attempted murder, and your sentence is not as harsh.

Thats a CRUCIAL difference that the FIA stupidly ignored.

Lewis might not have wanted to take Max out (i believe indeed he didn't) but he DID, and not only that, Max was his main rival in the championship, and lost a lot of points and 1 engine with that. As such, there should have been a HARSH penalty, no matter the intent.

What about climbing on Hamilton's head then?

LeSunTzu said:

What about climbing on Hamilton's head then?

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Are you suggesting Max should have been penalized for that?

Mr. Malarkey said:

Are you suggesting Max should have been penalized for that?

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I am suggesting fanboyism leads to wrong conclusions.

Don't go to war with Mr Tzu, he wrote the book on that subject!

Richard Wilks said:

You do realize that Schumacher 94 is hardly the concensus you, or the british press for that matter, thinks it is right?

Even if we can all assume he did it on purppose, it was never proven, and the man himself denied all the way to the end (as opposed to Jerez 97). Much in the same way Lewis has been denying Silverstone, an incident that the Hamilton camp now tries to sweep under the rug as much as possible, because if any collision decided a championship, it was that one, with the MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES it had, which according to the FIA, should be ignored when judging the incident.

So for that token, who can blame Max for having a bump with Lewis that causes a DNF, and demanding the incident be judged without taking the consequences into account too?

THIS is the stupid corner the FIA painted themselves at this point.

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There's a huge difference between a genuine racing incident and a deliberate attack to neutralise someone. F1 (and others) have a history of both. Politics also does come into play sometimes, but making the accusation that it's a season long conspiracy is ridiculous. See Occam's and Hanlon's razor if you need to understand why.

I've personally lost a World Championship once (FAI, not FIA) due to perceived political backroom horse-trading that affected the outcome of a competition, but it's extremely difficult to prove even when it's done in plain sight. Sometimes, again, it's also just Occam's and Hanlon's razor.

The FIA is correct, incidents need to be judged within the context of the event that happened. Ascribing motivation due to a wider consequence is another issue entirely. Part of that is taking into account a driver's whole racing record, to determine if they have a pattern of dirty driving, or just a hard competitor but a generally good record. But a driver's history doesn't lie, patterns reveal themselves over time. Accidents happen even to the best of the best, they're driving very fast cars in a variety of conditions and nothing is guaranteed.

**** happens, deal with it.

Mr. Malarkey said:

Fangio had already signed with Mercedes at the beginning of 1954, but the car wasn't ready until the French Grand Prix at Reims that year. So he drove for Maserati until his Mercedes was ready. He didn't leave mid-season because they had a faster car.

As for taking over teammates' cars, that was common in the 1950s. I can point to numerous cases where this happened throughout the era (it happened 18 times just during the 7 championship races of the 1956 season, by my count). The team leaders always got first choice of car, even if that meant taking a car from another driver mid-race. It is hardly an example of Fangio using undue influence to deny points to other drivers.




I assume you are speaking of 1956, when Fangio was at Ferrari. (His last championship was 1957 when he was driving for Maserati, and Collins was not his teammate). Going into the last race of the season, Fangio had 30 points and Collins had 22. To win the title outright, Collins would have had to win the race and get fastest lap, with Fangio not scoring any points. (If he'd won the race but not gotten fastest lap, they would have been tied, and I'm not sure how such a thing was handled at that time.)

When Fangio went out of the race, Musso was ordered to give Fangio his car, but refused, so Collins voluntarily turned his car over to Fangio, and was widely praised for doing so (Source: Formula 1 Car By Car 1950-59 by Peter Higham). At the time, Collins was in third place in the race, which would have placed him in a tie for second (with Stirling Moss) in the championship standings. So it is by no means a given that Fangio prevented Collins from winning a championship. He was certainly not "about to win the title."

It's also worth pointing out that Collins himself had commandeered cars from other drivers multiple times throughout the season.




I understand and agree with the point you are making, but you are making some factually questionable statements to do so.

To me, this is an example of how much respect drivers showed to one another during those days, and how little respect they show to one another now. Could you have imagined Hamilton handing his car over to Alonso, or Senna handing his car to Prost?

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I probably could have gone into more detail but my point was Fangio joined teams that had the fastest car something not uncommon back then, There was no constructors championship just the drivers.
Fangio won races in the Maserati that year, Mercedes launched their car and it was faster than anything else on the grid, do you think Fangio still would have left if the Mercedes was a dog of a car?

At no point did I mention "undue influence", If a driver says to the team I need to finish the race and they give him the car of someone running in a points position like what happened many times over that period, different to sharing a car because the race is so long, be it lead driver or not surly that translates to using influence and denying a driver points. How else would they finish the race? But now they share the points of the driver who's car they jumped in.

Maybe I was being a bit speculative in my terminology and also didn't look up any dates, It was 1956, but Peter Collins was in a position to be champion because Fangio's car had broken down and he dropped out, if Collins won the race he would have 30 pts, 3 wins & 2-2nd, Fangio would have 30 pts & 3 wins 1-2nd 1-4th, he didn't need to get the fastest lap, and only 5 rounds counted.

Stirling Moss was leading so he would have had to pass him some how, and yes given the reliability of cars from that generation Collins had every chance of being the first ever British champion, he was the only driver who could stop Fangio winning the championship and Fangio dropped out of the race!!!

They wanted Musso to give over his car so Fangio could try and finish the race to secure the championship, ahead of who? Collins!! But he said no, so what happened, by handing his car over he ended up finishing 3rd in the championship.

Now I've heard the stories of the "Gesture" and they may very well be true because he was very close to Enzo Ferrari, but I just can't possibly imagine a driver on the verge of possibly being F1 champion, and the first of his country, something every driver from karts to F1 has had as their number one goal would just give over their car in that situation, not just give it over, but give it to the guy who will win the championship instead of you.
Not one driver past or present. Not even Bottas. Infact I can't think of a single person who would voluntarily do that. This happened during a pitstop so there was no discussion prior, he pulled up got told Fangio's cars damaged and just said don't worry mate take mine I don't mind. And Fangio the current world champion, standing right there had absolutely nothing to do with that decision! OK!

muzikant said:

you write very long posts on silverstone basically it all started, don't read that much british press they have quite an influence because 80% is. Schumacher and Alonso had the same, be happy that the FIA has leveled the score through all the decision
and that your hero with all the gifts from the FIA still has a chance to win the world championship that actually already went to Max because he made the fewest mistakes

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You make the mistake of assuming because I criticise you I must be a LH fan, but that's incorrect.

I couldn't give a toss who wins, as long as it's clean & the racing is good.

I criticise you (and others, you know who you are) because an objective analysis of your posts shows the most ridiculous bias of the facts due to your massive maxcrush. You've taken hero worship fanaticism to a level even the most dedicated LH fanbois hasn't gone to. Well done!

People have always had driver/team preferences, but the fanaticism and bias of "fans" like yourself is a big part of the problems with the sport now (along with a host of other issues that have resulted in the current shitshow football on wheels design)

The latest case is the MV Brake Test. Red Bull has even had to admit it was due to MV, yet you (and others) still go on with the most ridiculous reasoning to ascribe blame to LH over it.
ref:

It's a fast moving sport, decisions have to be made quickly, accidents can happen in a flash, mistakes as well, but the data doesn't lie - especially when supporting media rounds out the story. And sometimes the driver is just an asshole. Yes, even LH can be one too at times!

As I said, I don't care who wins as long as it's clean & the racing is good.

Unfortunately for F1, that horse bolted long ago.

Enjoy your football on wheels.