People remember this:
"On June 5, 2011, Mücke was involved in incident with
Richard Westbrook during
FIA GT1 World Championship race at
Silverstone. First, Westbrook hit Mücke who spun as a result, while Westbrook damaged his own car. Mücke continued and clipped ahead of Westbrook who was driving down Hangar Straight. Both cars were wrecked as a result, and were out of the race.
Mücke received 10-place grid penalty for the next race and he was also reported to
DMSB to have his licence withdrawn."
Hamilton didn't brake check anyone, that's apparently been established via telemetry...
First of all you can not trust fia to read telemetry and come to any kind of conclusion. When piquet crashed fia did not find anything odd there either. And first fia claimed there was no difference in the two starts with hamilton's driving but it was soon noted that there was a difference. In the 2nd start hamilton slowed down more.
but he was (legally) manipulating the pace to maximise his advantage for the restart, while also making sure he didn't pass the SC prematurely and get himself a penalty...
Hamilton's first start was perfect. He got it just right. On the second start the team asked hamilton to leave more buffer so he won't accidentally pass the safety car before the line. All hamilton had to do was to start accelerating little later. But instead hamilton chose to slow down to even slower speed and did so in wrong place. It was clear breach of the rules which dictate how to drive behind safety (no sudden moves). Of course everybody wants to play some games in that position and both hamilton and vettel try to do it as much as they can and I think both have been penalties in the past for driving erratically behind the safety car.
As far as I could see and read, no-one else drove into anyone else through the safety car period. How serious was it? Probably not that much.
The third car was to far behind that he did not even need to brake when hamilton suddenly slowed down or when vettel drove into hamilton. Had the cars all been bunched up behind vettel it could have been massive chain reaction with half of he grid losing their front wings.
Vettel's attitude post-race though has undeniably been pretty shabby.
Generally it is always bad idea in f1 to admit your mistake. You don't ever gain anything from it. I'm sure there are now people in fia who are still wondering whether vettel actually did his thing in purpose. There are lots of people who need confession before they believe it was intentional. The same thing with the video I've added above. Despite being clear as day incident some of the judges only believe it when the driver says the words.
I think vettel should word his stuff a lot better. And he should have not done it. Of course we also need to remember that hindsight is 20/20. At the time when hamilton slowed down and vettel could not avoid him vettel did not know how badly damaged his front wing was. It could be almost nothing or it could be vettel needing to come pits asap. Or maybe the wing breaks when they go 350kmh little later and ends up with vettel going into the barriers upside down 300kmh+.
So in vettel's mind his race was ruined. So he wanted to take hamilton out too. Eye for and eye. In hindsight we all know vettel's car was in decent state. They did change the front wing but he could have probably finished the race with the wing he already had on the car.
In larger scheme of things I find it a bit odd how fia is willing to start yet another hearing. The dice has rolled I'd guess. The mücke incident and maldonado's incident with hamilton in spa give pretty clear indications of how these kinds of things are usually penalised. Vettel got 10s stop&go, mucke got 10 grid slot penalty and maldonado got 5 spots. Does f1 have a nascar rule which says something along the lines of "actions detrimental to stock car racing" kind of rule? I think they do. Would be kinda odd to give it now.
