# Grand Prix



## chefy

Well, nearly that time again - any 3rd place onward predictions ?
I'm going to Silverstone again this year :thumb: anyone else going ?

Should be an interesting season, Ferrari will / should be along side the Mercs, Williams have also upped their game, Renault are back, and I'm sure Red Bull will be back at the sharp end, also changes at Force India, and, a new team - Haas, with their racing back ground, I don't think they'll be to shabby ! ?

So, quite looking forward to it.


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## Crafty

I'm looking forwards to it too.

Someone will be along shortly to tell you its rubbish and a waste of time though!

Thread here: http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=375738


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## adlem

Can't wait, just a shame I don't have sky to watch it all.


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## BrummyPete

Won't be going to Silverstone this year, have been going for a number of years now but finding it an expensive day out now and prefer to put the money towards a family holiday


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## turbosnoop

Really looking forward to it. Its kinda felt like something's been missing all winter tbh. I'd really like Honda to shock us all with an amazing engine, that would really mix things up. There's videos on utube already as the new Honda engine has quite an individual sound. Apparently they are due to fit in more upgrades in time for the first race


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## chefy

I think it'll be a good season, not sure about this new quili idea ?


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## tmitch45

Its rubbish and a waste of time!



Seriously I've watched every GP inc. qualifying for some 20 years and last season was the first that I actually missed a few and really wasn't that bothered. Don't get me wrong I love the whole GP show but last year it was so boring for the second half. the only decent bit was seeing a Brit winning and that grumpy Rosberg loosing and taking it so badly! I really hope this year there is more competition for the top spots and I hope channel 4's coverage is good without the adverts getting in the way.


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## Bulkhead

I always look forward to it but it does seem to need an injection of something new. The recent token system has stunted growth and development and resulted in the best original design remaining the best. I do find Dietrich Mateschitz's comments about Mercedes domination making it boring a bit 'pot and kettle'; it was even worse when Vettel won his four in a row as the team did not allow Webber to compete. At least Rosberg and Hamilton can race. I'm hoping it will be closer this year so Rosberg has something/someone else to moan about or blame for him not winning. It will be interesting to see how long Alonso lasts at Mclaren if they are not competitive too - he must be seriously regretting his move from Ferrari. I think the main threat is Ecclestone's relentless drive for money, at the expense of history and heritage. Let's face it, the viewers like the old tracks, the drivers like the old tracks but it seems to count for nothing if a government-funded, sterile, uneventful track throws the grey midget a few quid. I'm all for the globalisation, but not at the expense of the classic venues. 

The priority should also be about racing rather than conservation of fuel, tyres, engines etc. Remove tyre restrictions, permit re-fueling, lessen the penalties for new engines/gearboxes and let's get back to the fastest, most telented/big-balled drivers winning and not the Sunday drivers who can save tyres and fuel.


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## alfajim

Agreed^^
Can't see red bull doing any good this season though.


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## chefy

I agree with most here, last season was a bit uninteresting at times, I too have followed F1 for decades, getting up very early / staying up all night to watch the Australian GP, and like wise all other early showings.
I also didn't watch all of quite a few races last year, and a couple of my friends - also big fans did same.
I've been to 9 GP's - 7 at Silverstone, 1 Barcelona, and 1 Budapest, and its all very exciting, so I'm hoping this year with Ferarri making headway, as is Williams etc etc, and more noise, that it'll be a lot more interesting this year !

I agree with Bulkhead re B Ecclestone - he is just "ripping" it for as much as he can get ! poor thing, he's only worth about £4b - that's 4000 thousand million FFS.
Also, too much team decisions ! eg, last year, cant remember which race, Hamilton ordered to come in for tyres, he's on the radio saying "my tyres are fine man" but, in the end he had to go in, but there are many "team" decisions like that ! and I think, FFS, let the drivers decide, after all' they're the ones that are out there - let them do their job, and give the spectators something to see.


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## adlem

There is too much control, but the cut in radio transmissions should help. Mercedes are supposed to be letting their drivers race more this year but we'll see.

There has always been periods of dominance, Shumacher and Ferrari from 2000-2004 was one of the most boring.

The fuel flow restriction needs to be abolished. The engines are more economical now, I don't mind the hybrid element as it's more relevant now but don't try and make F1 green with limits on fuel! Leave that for Formula E, you can't go transporting all those people and kit round the world for 21 weekends then try and be green, it's not relevant!

Agree that BE needs to go - no German GP from next year, unlikely to have the Italian GP at Monza after this year as he wants them to pay an extra few million euros. It's €20M to host a race each year now Bernie charges. That's why Silverstone tickets are the most expensive as it's not partly funded by the government or manufacturers so they have to cover the race fee and all associated costs with running the event. 

The token system is being dropped from next year, too little too late really but better than nothing. I don't mind the limit on engines and gearboxes too much but it's not the cost cutting measure they reckon it is. The aero regs for next year aren't as drastic as they were made out to be either. The 5-6 second cut in lap times is now more likely to be 2-3

As for tyres, Pirelli are in a very tough spot. They were asked to make fast degrading tyres to spice up the races which they did then the teams and drivers moaned. They have to manufacture the tyres so far in advance with guesswork of what stresses the new aero and tracks will put them under with no real testing. They get one or two days during a season or at the end of the year to try and develop a tyre for a completely different car the following year. Unless this changes and Pirelli can test and develop more they won't be able to make the tyre everyone wants. It will either be hard, offer no grip and last forever (which they'll moan about) or be soft and grippy but won't last, possibly leading to failures (which they'll moan about


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## GleemSpray

Gave up on GP a good few years back, after many decades of following it, as the cars were becoming identical, it was just too political and races were increasingly determined from outside the car.

For me, F1 is about 6 wheel Tyrells, fan effect cars, cars bottoming out through Eau Rouge, getting airborne at Zandvoort , Senna and Mansell playing wheel to wheel chicken, and drivers getting out and punching each other after collisions ☺ 



... Not the current bore of 20+ identical cars, drivers who barely break a sweat and row after row of technicians and telemetry screens.



I blame Benneton for starting the decline with their big money + lawyers approach to winning F1.


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## Bero

I'm definitely looking forward to it, hopefully a bit tighter at the top, would be good to see Rosberg and Vettel put in a serious fight. Although I suspect Mercedes are holding back on some upgrades to make it look like Ferrari are close. Look at all the press releases from Niki, Toto and Rosberg, they're all saying Ferrari have closed the gap and it will be close this season. They really really don't want some equalisation measures, I'm sure this is why they were letting their drivers race a bit more at the end of last season to increase fan excitement after it was clear they would win the championship.



turbosnoop said:


> Really looking forward to it. Its kinda felt like something's been missing all winter tbh. I'd really like Honda to shock us all with an amazing engine, that would really mix things up. There's videos on utube already as the new Honda engine has quite an individual sound. Apparently they are due to fit in more upgrades in time for the first race


They had an individual sound last year.....something akin to a bag of spanners being rattled. I never realised how different they sounded until I hear them in the metal....carbon.



tmitch45 said:


> Its rubbish and a waste of time!
> 
> Seriously I've watched every GP inc. qualifying for some 20 years and last season was the first that I actually missed a few and really wasn't that bothered. Don't get me wrong I love the whole GP show but last year it was so boring for the second half. the only decent bit was seeing a Brit winning and that grumpy Rosberg loosing and taking it so badly! I really hope this year there is more competition for the top spots and I hope channel 4's coverage is good without the adverts getting in the way.


Last season had quite a few amazing races. Looking at the results may not look exciting, but the racing was different. Take Silverstone, Mercedes 1-2 in Quali and 1-2 in the race.

Buy the race was probably the best I've ever watched with both Williams beating Merc to the 1st corner and rain in the dying minutes of the race.

The era of Kers/Ers/DRS has made a colossal improvement, a few years ago you could see a whole GP with 2 overtakes the whole race.

They tried grooved tyres etc but that affects each car equally and of no net benefit to overtaking. ERS and DRS nails this problem perfectly.



chefy said:


> Also, too much team decisions ! eg, last year, cant remember which race, Hamilton ordered to come in for tyres, he's on the radio saying "my tyres are fine man" but, in the end he had to go in, but there are many "team" decisions like that ! and I think, FFS, let the drivers decide, after all' they're the ones that are out there - let them do their job, and give the spectators something to see.


All drivers are part of a team, their 1/2 of the garage team, and the greater manufacturer team. They're all involved in the winning or losing and making calls on things.

They will have a team of people back in Brackley working out lifespan, degradation, strategy and safe running limits on a minute by minute basis.

The penalty for failure could be huge. Remember Vettel and Rosberg's tyre failures a few months ago? Or the ones a few years ago? If this happens at the wrong place they could easily lead to severe injury or death....at the very least nil points in the GP.

Although with the case you refer to I think Merc were being particularly cautious as they had the opportunity to pit and still lead the race.

Rosberg's tyres were probable also fine, but it would have been unfair to force him to pit and let LH carry on. In anycase I'm sure LH was just playing for time, arguing for a couple laps then conceding allowed him to come out on newer tyres than Rosberg in a hope of chasing him down.


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## Crafty

The teams/manufacturers are actually the biggest problem in F1.

If you stretch back to the 70s (and earlier) teams like Hesketh would turn up and have a bash at racing, they forgot to submit their application form for one race - oops, we won't go then... Chapman, Tyrell, Williams and their ilk did what they could, it was a casual affair.

Then people started to get a bit serious, instead of cars being put together in a shed somewhere engineers started testing, prototyping and developing things. They started using wind tunnels and putting funny "wings" on cars. And it worked. The old man called them _garagistes_ - roughly translated it means garage mechanics, they couldn't compete with thoroughbred racing cars he said.

He was wrong.

So, it snowballed.. six wheeled cars, carbon monocoques , traction control, active suspension, aero devices and so on. Teams had realised that spending on research and development won races and so started investing huge money in it. F1 gets the image of (and to be fair promotes itself) as being at the forefront of technology.

Fast forwards to today (well, ish..). Engine manufacturers complain, old N/A V8s aren't relevant they say, we need a refresh. Lets impose a fuel limit, lets go small displacement turbo, lets ban certain materials.

Oh, but this could cost huge amounts. Ok, well we'll restrict development by a token system. Its all finally agreed and everyone is happy.

Mercedes do an outstanding job. Ferrari - eh, not bad. Renault ? oh dear.

Meantime all hell breaks out with accusations of dumbing down the sport, massive costs etc. The engine manufacturers join in and start complaining how unfair it is, we need to change the token system they say, the system collapses in failure.. Costs began to soar again, more complaints about the cost of competing. But, ultimately no-one really cares - the big teams grumble a bit and then pony up the wedge. The small teams complain like hell until something is (temporarily) done to lower costs (bernie bailout or whatever).

The small teams say that the distribution of prize money is unfair. Yet they signed up to the deal with FOM, they knew exactly how much they'd receive. Even before the enw engines hit the track they were complaining that the engine costs would be so much higher than first suggested - so they had a pretty good idea of costs too... so why did they sign the FOM deal with no assurances ? Why accept a deal that makes your business unsustainable ?
Meantime some start signing twice as many drivers as they have cars for and deliberately break contract.

The big teams just throw their weight around and threaten to leave if they don't get the deal they want.

No one is actually making any effort to solve anything. Bernie offered to tear up the concorde agreement and start money distribution etc again, from scratch. Did any team actually accept his offer ?

Whilst Bernie is incredibly rich lets keep in mind that he is technically an employee of FOM, although he does appear to still have some sort of holding (his business affairs are very complicated and unclear). His job (for FOMs owners) is to make money and he's bloody effective at it. Even at 80 odd years old he's actually a lot smarter than people give him credit for. Very rarely should we taken anything he says at face value, he's usually making comments about something to influence another situation.

Meantime, on the R&D front engineers have got very good at applying technology to the cars. Active suspension, FRIC, F-ducts, flexi wings and so on. They know so much about how the cars work and why this or that problem occurs, basically they know too much - we can't unlearn this stuff. The cars are engineering masterpieces. Every year less and less is left to chance, or to the driver to make a difference. We don't even really need drivers any more, engineers can make the car go around a track faster and more consistently than a human, drivers are there purely for the show aspect. Its not just engineering either - endless numbers of race strategies are run on data to pick the best strategy, drivers (and reserves) do thousands of miles in expensive simulators (because testing real cars is banned under cost grounds) to try and find an advantage, these sims have whole teams behind them to change the behaviour of the sim to reflect a particular car or change to the car.

There is a choice to make - do we let this level of engineering continue with uncontrolled costs and unrestricted ? (the big teams used to run wind tunnels 24x7 for months at a time, CFD computer systems the same). This will result in bigger gaps between big and small teams.

Or, do we start trying to restrict it ? introduce a little more chance, try and reduce costs ? The problems with this could be that F1 loses its boast of being the most advanced race series and with it a certain amount of commercial appeal. It could even increase costs - ban an exotic material, which then forces the teams to spend money developing the usage of a more common material. You might suggest that by closing off certain avenues of R&D would save money but as far as the big teams go it just means they spend more time and money chasing smaller and smaller gains in areas of permitted development - using resources that small teams don't have.

Its a difficult problem to solve and I don't know what the answer is really.

The other thing is that none of this stuff is particularly new - arguments about money have been going on since the FOCA days, small teams struggling, technical superiority etc - its all been going on for years. The difference is now that as spectators, we get to learn so much more about it. The motorsport media write ever increasing numbers of articles, rumours and tidbits of information. Mainstream get involved too, especially when it involves a bit of daily mail esque outrage or scandal ("multi billionaire Eccelstone eats breakfast", "F1 ace goes to celebrity event", "Red Bull in quit threat scandal" and so on).

I still like watching the rivalry between drivers, the psychological battles are fascinating. The race between engineers to make a car better than the other team is interesting as well. Its much bigger than just watching two drivers try and overtake each other - there are far more strands than that.


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## turbosnoop

Crafty great read that. Your last paragraph pretty much sums up how I feel. Lots of negative comments on here about the sport. I just take it for what it is and enjoy it. I really wouldn't change a great deal about it tbh. Things have moved on since the days of senna and prost etc. Its not better or worse IMO just different. My glass is half full not half empty 
Awaiting being trolled now :lol:


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## tmitch45

What did people think of the C4 coverage and the new quali rules?

The new quali for me doesn't work and something drastic needs to happen for the next GP. at least with the old system all the top guys had a couple of hot laps in the top ten shoot out.

As for the C4 coverage, I'm not keen on that Steve Jones dude and I just cannot stand all the breaks for adverts!


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## chefy

Didn't see any of the C4 coverage, as I watched it on Sky, I dint like the new Qauli  whats all that about ? I don't think this will continue, there was a meeting after the race with the team boses etc, so it will probably recert back to how it was - I hope.


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## turbosnoop

I watched it on c4. The advert breaks are really annoying


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## chefy

turbosnoop said:


> I watched it on c4. The advert breaks are really annoying


Did they have ads during the race ? thought they weren't going to do that !


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## turbosnoop

Yes they did. But the coverage was classed as extended highlights and wasn't live.maybe they won't show ads when they are covering a race live? 
Alonso's car looked a mess


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## Mr K

*Gp*



turbosnoop said:


> Yes they did. But the coverage was classed as extended highlights and wasn't live.maybe they won't show ads when they are covering a race live?
> Alonso's car looked a mess


And he got out and walked away without a scratch, amazing, just goes to show how far manufacturing has gone


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## chefy

turbosnoop said:


> Yes they did. But the coverage was classed as extended highlights and wasn't live.maybe they won't show ads when they are covering a race live?
> Alonso's car looked a mess


I didn't realise it was just highlights - Ye, I'm sure on the live races there wont be any ads during the race - only maybe when theres a safety car ! Sky does that !
Alonso's car is well and truly written off, its amazing how safe these cars are, for him to get out as quick as he did and just walk off :thumb:


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## adlem

Correct, C4 won't show adverts during the live races. As it was highlights they had some as breaks, I think it was only 2 or 3 during the actual race highlights. Personally I can forgive them that though as we had much longer highlights of the actual race than on the BBC, they didn't seem to cut much out. 

They had 3 ad breaks in the half hour leading up to the race but the quality of coverage was pretty good so I'll forgive them that as well. At least we can watch it free-to-view. I'll be interested to see how they do with the live races.

All in all, I think it was a pretty good race. With the safety car and three tyre compounds there was quite a lot of strategy going on and it spiced things up. Ferrari and a few others lost out, and Haas scored points for effectively not having a stop. All credit to them, you have to be there to take opportunities when they arise.

Alonso's crash was testament to the safety of modern F1, and was just a racing incident. I'm surprised he seemed to get away as Scott free as he did. McLaren will be at a disadvantage now as the car and engine are totalled


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## Bero

chefy said:


> I didn't realise it was just highlights - Ye, I'm sure on the live races there wont be any ads during the race - only maybe when theres a safety car ! Sky does that !
> *Alonso's car is well and truly written off*, its amazing how safe these cars are, for him to get out as quick as he did and just walk off :thumb:





adlem said:


> Correct, C4 won't show adverts during the live races. As it was highlights they had some as breaks, I think it was only 2 or 3 during the actual race highlights. Personally I can forgive them that though as we had much longer highlights of the actual race than on the BBC, they didn't seem to cut much out.
> 
> They had 3 ad breaks in the half hour leading up to the race but the quality of coverage was pretty good so I'll forgive them that as well. At least we can watch it free-to-view. I'll be interested to see how they do with the live races.
> 
> All in all, I think it was a pretty good race. With the safety car and three tyre compounds there was quite a lot of strategy going on and it spiced things up. Ferrari and a few others lost out, and Haas scored points for effectively not having a stop. All credit to them, you have to be there to take opportunities when they arise.
> 
> Alonso's crash was testament to the safety of modern F1, and was just a racing incident. I'm surprised he seemed to get away as Scott free as he did. McLaren will be at a disadvantage now as the *car and engine are totalled*


I'm sure McLaren said the Chassis and power unit were ok and not destroyed........what does it take to destroy a chassis?! I understand the rolling will have helped with energy dissipation.....but what a mess the car was!


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## John74

For those that have watched FP1 from Russia what do you think of the RedBull aeroscreen ?

Me I think it's health and safety nanny state gone to far. 

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk


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## Bero

John74 said:


> For those that have watched FP1 from Russia what do you think of the RedBull aeroscreen ?
> 
> Me I think it's health and safety nanny state gone to far.
> 
> Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk


I've not seen it on the car, but seen the concepts.

I think it's a great idea. It does not temper the racing, it does not slow the cars down, it makes zero difference to anything other than the subjective aspect of looks and potentially hugely improve safety.

With such a system, Jules Bianchi might still be alive, as may Justin Wilson, and we would not have lost Massa for 1/2 a season with a fractured skull.

My only concern is if the system makes the car more dangerous in certain circumstances, e.g. in a roll over...or a fire....or roll over with a fire.

Have you watched the film '1'? Great film on F1 safety over the years.


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## tmitch45

So no one on TV will man up and say whos at fault for the hamilton and rosberg crash so what do you guys think?

For me, Hamilton had more speed due to Rosberg being in the wrong engine mode and chose to pass. The next corner is a right hander so the usual line for Rosberg would be to stay left. He clearly moves over to the right which caused Hamilton to hit the grass, loosing control and ultimately taking out Rosberg. The post race interviews tell a lot with Hamilton being up beat and positive verses Rosberg who was very defensive.


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## Kerr

The bottom line is you just can't trust those two guys to race together. Circumstances in previous races have kept them apart, but loads of people anticipated a big incident today. They weren't let down. 

The two guy detest each other and that clouds their judgement too much. 

The press all appear to be blaiming Hamilton, but I'm not sure about that at all. Being defensive is one thing, swinging across the track like Rosberg is another. Hamilton didn't want to back out though.


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## tmitch45

I'd say the opposite I really do think Rosberg is at fault here. Its also worked out quite nice for him hasn't it??? Hamilton gets another DNF and drops to 3rd in the championship.

I'd say Rosberg played a blinder he had nothing to loose at all compared to Hamilton.


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## jr250

Think the title of this thread sums up the two of them this afternoon.


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## turbosnoop

Hamilton couldn't really back out of it. This gives a good analysis.




Especially at about 5 min 20 sec
Tossberg, I mean Rossberg , was in a safety car engine setting, hamilton was much faster when Nico's red light started flashing. At this point Rossberg was trying to switch his engine modes. When he'd done that he saw hamilton was about to sail past , and on the inside too, nicely lined up for the right hander ahead. Rossbergs "defensive" dirty driving would have been okay if it wasn't for the large difference in speed between him and hamilton. To me it shouldn't be allowed to push another car off at high speeds on a straight section of track especially when the car in front had ****ed it up. Nice too see max win, huge talent!. Although I do think Ricciardo wasn't on as good a strategy, conspiracy? Marko was enjoying his airtime. Kyvat must be incredibly frustrated


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## chefy

I think both drivers had a part in this incident, but for me it's 60% Hami to 40% Rosberg - but I wouldn't blame it all / 100% on one or the other - but I think it could be "pistols at dawn" between these two  ! pity, cos they used to be really good friends.

Good to see the Red Bull & Ferrari fighting it out once again - but the Mercs probably still would've been ahead if the accident didn't happen !
I quite enjoyed it, and what a day for Verstapen :thumb: first day in his new office - well done him to hold off Raikkonen like he did.


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## tmitch45

turbosnoop said:


> Hamilton couldn't really back out of it. This gives a good analysis.
> F1 2016 Spanish GP ||| Skysports analysis Hamilton/Rosberg crash - YouTube
> Especially at about 5 min 20 sec
> Tossberg, I mean Rossberg , was in a safety car engine setting, hamilton was much faster when Nico's red light started flashing. At this point Rossberg was trying to switch his engine modes. When he'd done that he saw hamilton was about to sail past , and on the inside too, nicely lined up for the right hander ahead. Rossbergs "defensive" dirty driving would have been okay if he'd done it sooner but he did it when it was far too late. To me it shouldn't be allowed to push another car off at high speeds on a straight section of track especially when the car in front had ****ed it up. Nice too see max win, huge talent!. Although I do think Ricciardo wasn't on as good a strategy, conspiracy? Marko was enjoying his airtime. Kyvat must be incredibly frustrated


Totally agree on all points! Great to see a new winner of the GP and actually quite nice to see the top 4 actually battling each other. Shame the split redbull strategy left Riccardo on the back foot. And yes I do believe Rosberg was way too aggressive so was quite please to see his antics caused him to loose out as well.


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## Jam*

Agree with Chefy,

Also the above clip is for the British audience and they have the same being aired in Germany for their audience, 

At the end of the day it's Mercedes name brand and its their team, the drivers are employees of Mercedes. This is a simple case of the driver being under some allusion that he is bigger than the team. 

In a team if one fails the team fails, IMHO Hamilton was to aggressive 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## adlem

Also agree with Chefy,

Racing incident and with the way those two get on was bound to happen. The speed differential made it look a lot worse. Rosberg was right to defend in one fluid movement, and at the moment he started the move Lewis wasn't alongside. With the speed difference he soon was.

Lewis was miffed at loosing out at the start, overdrove the car and tried to shove it down the inside as soon as he could. He refuses to give an inch and didn't back out of it where others might, he kept his foot in as he moved onto the grass.

People are quick to forget the times Lewis has been overly aggressive on Rosberg and forced him off track. But Rosberg has backed out of it. Other drivers have pulled similar/much worse moves too...


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## turbosnoop

I'm not going to keep going on about this, I don't do arguing on the internet.
But I don't really see how Hamiltons overtake was really much different to Nico's on the start straight.
Going off the video here again




0.37s Rossberg had slip streamed hamilton, there's a gap to the side of hamilton, hamilton pretty much let Nico take it, nico was faster, none of this blocking like little boys on gran turismo, plus they are teammates at the end of the day, and fighting with each other slows them both down. Good racing from both drivers.
1 minute 12s. Nico had ****ed it up. Hamilton was faster. There was a gap to the side of Nico. Hamilton goes for it, nicos car was to slow to defend, he basically became a road block. 
Nico probably just thought he'd ruin Hamiltons race, and go on to score points himself, then go to the hotel, lay his towel out on the sun lounger and go to bed.....


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## Kerr

Rosberg's move across was aggressive, but you could read that he was heading across to block. He was always heading on the diagonal on the exit of the corner. There was no adjustment of his steering wheel. Hamilton could see that too, but he was determined to get into that gap. 

Two guys so desperate not to lose out to the other that it's do or die by the third corner. 

It wasn't worth the risk for any of the drivers on lap 1. 

I wouldn't blame Hamilton fully like many of the experts have, but he could have backed out. Likewise Rosberg was very aggressive in his actions.


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## Nanoman

Anyone in Hamilton's position would have gone for that gap. The instant he saw the regeneration light on he knew Rosberg had a problem, he was coming at him fast and there was a huge gap. The only other option Hamilton had was to brake and risk being rear-ended, not go for the gap, and risk losing another place. 

I'm saying 70% Rosberg's fault and he was far less gracious in his interview than Hamilton was.

The other story of the day though, Verstappen in his first race for redbull. Wow. It's not a question of 'if' but 'when' he becomes world champion now. I heard someone saying it was nothing to shout about as he was born into an F1 family. I say **** off, that's one hell of an achievement regardless of what doors you family name and dad's money has opened for you.


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## Ashtray

See I am of the opinion that redbull picked him as the no 1 driver split strategy knowing Ferrari would respond to cover, therefore gifting the win to max but I am surprised that kimi didn't get super aggressive with him though...I think that would have been a maximum of 5th had the Mercs not crashed out


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## tmitch45

Nanoman said:


> I'm saying 70% Rosberg's fault and he was far less gracious in his interview than Hamilton was.


Agreed. Rosberg knew what he was doing which was to either block Hamilton or push him onto the grass. As Hamilton said he was much faster at that point therefore chose to overtake and chose to do so where the largest gap was. The only aggressive move was Rosberg blocking/squeezing Hamilton. As mentioned the next corner is a right hander so the racing line is on the left. Rosberg moved off the racing line on purpose in the only aggressive move in my opinion.


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## chefy

Having seen the clip in slower motion, I still think Hamilton was perhaps just a little bot more to blame than Rosberg - But even although they are being "allowed" to race (as they should be !) they should still be very aware of each other, and at such an early point in the race - like the 4th turn of the 1st lap ! they both should have just thought just a wee bit more - but "that's racing" as the saying goes !!

If Mercedes had a "B" team - like Red Bull - I wonder who'd have got demoted ? a la Kyvat ??
The big boss from Merc wasn't best chuffed - threw his head phones across the garage and broke them !


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## Bero

Regardless of blame, it's shaping up to be a great season. Over the last couple years Hamilton has pushed Rosberg to the extent of 'lift off, or be pushed onto the grass' a couple of times and Rosberg has always relented. He never showed the aggression to get that couple % more to win a championship.

This year Rosberg is ON IT, aggressive (in a good way). This incident will stick with Hamilton....he might not just assume Rosberg will yield to him.


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## alfajim

Couldn't agree more ^^


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