Maldonado deserves to be banned from Formula 1.

[David Garcia]

I think banning Maldonado from F1 would not be enough and would have no effect, he possibly should be sent to jail for the next 10 years.

 

[Chris Jenkins]

I love how people over-react on this board.
I do think that a 5-place grid penalty was a bit light. I personally would've disqualified him from the race.
But then again, Mansell has been notoriously hard on Hamilton this season.

 

[Chris Butcher]

I'll say right now I'm not a Hamilton fan but I regard myself as fair towards him. I think this thread should stay open as it is an interesting debate, although it does risk turning into a flame war so I remind people to avoid that, no ranting and stick to your point please. There shouldn't be attacks on members in the forum just because they have a different point of view than you do.

Nothing wrong there, just racing.

F1 is supposed to be strictly non-contact. That gap was always going to close, but it's right to say Pastor should have seen Lewis coming. I highly doubt his reprimand was for what happened at the bus stop, more so the quick swerve to the right after La Source.

Penalty isnt fair, nowhere near harsh enough, he should have the book thrown at him for intentionally causing an accident, the sooner Williams get rid of him the better.

I don't think it was intentional, but indeed very stupid. Looking from the track cameras after La source (we didn't get to see anything else, his onboard is further down the track) you can clearly see Lewis make a quick left-right dart off of the racing line. I'm not sure what it was for and I can't say it was to scare Pastor, he was clearly behind when Lewis swerved. I simply think Lewis didn't see him coming down quicker, which is why he moved back across to the left. I think that Pastor may have misread this, and taking into account previous races (which he shouldn't be doing), was just trying to get close to say "Hey, what do yo think you are doing?". Unfortunately he me misjudged it and made contact. I don't think any sane driver would risk wrecking their car in qualifying for some kind of revenge attack.

That's just my opinion on what happened, of course the stewards have access to much more information and we are just speculating here. I think the penalties were correct rather than DQ, but I think maybe putting Maldonado at the back of the grid would have been a more appropriate penalty.

Hamiltons fault. He clearly moves to the right before contact is made. Have never liked hamilton...

Yes he does, but he moves back to the left and follows the curve of the track. When Maldonado is alongside, at no point does Hamilton turn towards him.

I think banning Maldonado from F1 would not be enough and would have no effect, he possibly should be sent to jail for the next 10 years.

I can't agree with that, doesn't seem like a deliberate action, more like a foolish one and the stewards made the right call.

In summary, my point of view on this would be that the contact in the Bus Stop shouldn't have happened but neither driver was really to blame, it's just one of those things that happens sometimes. As for La Source, Lewis shouldn't have made that flick right, whichever way you look at it, so a reprimand was appropriate. As for Pastor he was right to receive a grid penalty rather than a race ban, but I think the penalty should have been more harsh.

I think it has to be said that Pastor actually did quite well in the race, Lewis was running superbly until his unfortunate incident with Kobayashi, and Bruno Senna - never thought he had it in him but great job, awesome result on his return to F1 and has been consistently quicker than Petrov all weekend.

 

[Ramon Alonso]

Maldonado is nothing but a billboard for Venezuela's oil industry. The braces wearing Neanderthal, is a half-ass talent that stayed in GP2 until he could win. Just looking at other recent GP2 drivers like Hulkenberg and Perez, shows the beast is not at their level. When he got asked by the BBC commentators about the incident you can tell a lot about his body language, he got caught in a big mistake and couldn't pay his way out of it. If you have to blame someone for this Neanderthal being in F1, blame Williams. Crappy management and leadership has led to their downfall. Replacing Hulkenberg with Maldonado, what a joke!

 

[Sérgio Marques]

I don't know why?

What a troll!

 

[ufunacaoenn]

What a troll!

That made me lol.

 

[Ramon Alonso]

Look at those shifty eyes !! It's like a lizard tongue is gonna come out any minute.
I wonder if he's half reptilian.