Vettel showed his class once again yesterday. No matter what your thoughts on the incident and punishment, to act like that was totally unnecessary and made him look like a complete child.
Yeah his response was rather unfortunate.
I can sympathise with him to some degree, but to be fair he did re-enter the track unsafely and prevented Hamilton from taking the lead. Regardless of what amount of control he may or may not have had. It's always going to feel harsh when it's the 2 front runners battling for the win, but if they'd been down in 5th & 6th I don't think anybody would be complaining about the ruling that much.
I don't know why he makes so many major handling errors these days, especially when fighting for position. Is it just him or is the Ferrari a handful?
I thought the stewards' decision was entirely wrong. Vettel couldn't have recovered from the mistake any better than he did - in fact almost anything else he could have done would have been more dangerous. Cutting the corner didn't gain him any time, and arguably lost him time enough for Hamilton to try and shoot up the outside, so I reject any argument that he deserved the penalty for failing to lose a position. And as for Vettel's attitude after the race, I honestly don't blame him. Once he'd calmed down he was relatively professional.
Sport isn't entirely fair all the time, and as soon as you start trying to correct minor injustices on one side with major injustices on the other side, it stops being a sport. We were robbed of a potentially great ending to the race because the stewards interpreted and applied a rule in the harshest possible way. If the stewards are going to argue that they're applying the rules dispassionately then I can only conclude that they're idiots, because this was a textbook racing incident.
Yeah, it's always going to be one of those debatable ones.
I think the problem is he re-entered the circuit & swung back into Hamilton's driving line at a slower speed and therefore Hamilton had to slam on his brakes to avoid a crash, which meant he couldn't take the lead he was undoubtedly going to take after Vettel's mistake.
As far as I can tell, the rule was correctly administered, it's more a question of: Should those rules allow for more discretion by the stewards? Especially when there's a question over the amount of control a driver has. Currently, I don't think the rules differentiate between having or not having full control, when it comes to impeding another driver on re-entry.
The point of having stewards is to make an intelligent decision about when rules should be applied. It’s not always simply a case of whether a situation ticks certain boxes; the context and circumstances are important, otherwise we may as well let a machine make rulings. That’s why this is a stupid ruling - it’s enforcing the word of the rule rather than the intent.
The intent of the rule in question here is to prevent drivers from purposefully blocking cars after an incident and to enforce due care and attention when rejoining the track. Nobody in their right mind would apply that to a driver who has no way of preventing the car from rejoining the track. If Vettel had slammed on the brakes while on the grass, it’s likely he still would have gone on track and then spun as a result, making it much more dangerous. Vettel did nothing wrong on his re-entry, and Hamilton did nothing wrong in going for the gap and then backing off. The only party in the wrong here is the stewards.
I happen to agree with Vettel's interpretation of the incident, I really can't see what else he could have done other than burying his car into the barrier to slow it down further. There really isn't anywhere else to go on that corner given his entry angle and speed. The fact that he seemed to be steering towards the centre of the track but his car was traveling to the right as he came off the grass is surely sufficient evidence that he didn't have a choice.
As for his attitude after the race, I can understand why some might think he was being petulant, but if he'd have gone to those silly interviews as the drivers are just taking their helmets off, he'd have said something to bring the sport into disrepute like criticising the stewards. I don't think it's fair to criticise someone who is clearly quite emotional for avoiding a situation whereby the airing of those emotions would do him no favours. He was professional when talking with Hamilton immediately afterwards, so much so that Lewis got him to step on to the top step alongside him during the national anthems which I thought showed class from Lewis, who frankly has been there before and knows what it feels like.
There is a difference between being emotional and storming around doing silly things like moving the signs. His behaviour was over the top, there are emotions and then there is behaving professionally.
On the incident itself, as they point out on the Chequered Flag podcast, it is very similar to the Verstappan incident with Kimi last year and in both cases I think the law has been correctly implemented. You might not agree with the law but that's a different discussion. You have to be consistent and just because people wanted Vettel to win in order to make the Championship more interesting this year you can't start taking decisions based on that.
I don’t disagree with the rule. I do disagree with it being applied to this incident, and it has nothing to do with who the drivers are or its impact on the championship.
I'd argue Max had more options given the angle of attack and amount of stability when rejoining the track, but it's still marginal. I don't believe Max or Seb were careless or obtuse in those situations.
I had to go back and watch the Max / Kimi incident from last year's Japanese GP, and I really don't think there's much of a comparison to yesterday's incident.
Max was in control of his car. He chose to come back on to the track at the point he did. Seb didn't, as from the point where his rear started to slide to where he came back onto the track, there was no other route he could take except into a wall. He didn't look to have sufficient control to keep to the left of the track to allow Hamilton to pass on the right, and that's what it looked like he was trying to do so I don't see any ill will on Seb's part. The best he could do was not hit the wall, and not hit Lewis. Yes, Lewis had to take avoiding action, and I can understand why the stewards had to at least examine the incident on that basis, but for me it should have stopped there. It was a racing incident with no blame for either driver.
I disagree, I think he could have slowed the car and angled it more to the left, but I don't think it really matters if he was to blame for the movement of the car or not, he was to blame for putting the car off the track in the first place and thus putting Hamilton in danger and prevented him from overtaking. Thus he gained an advantage, whether he meant to or not, and should therefore be punished under the rules. If he doesn't go off there he doesn't end up in a situation where he is forcing Hamilton into the wall so he only has himself to blame really.
If Vettel had gone round the corner normally, I think the odds of Hamilton getting the overtake at that point are highly dubious. The fact that Hamilton saw an opportunity to overtake suggests to me that Vettel lost time rather than gained time.
