At the time I was “100% Vettel’s fault” as well, and I still think that, but I think in modern F1 where track position is king, the adage that “You can’t win the race in the first corner, but you can lose it” doesn’t carry as much impact. Yes, Vettel was aggressive, and yes, even in the best of circumstances his move would have required Verstappen to yield considerably. I remember from the Senna documentary, paraphrased, “He’d put you in a position where you’d either have to yield or have an accident.” That’s just how it is at the front of the pack, and as a spectator I’ll gripe and complain about moves like this, but there are only a handful of drivers on the grid who won’t yield in those scenarios and they’re the ones who either have championships or who are vying for them. Bottas, Webber, Rosberg, Massa, etc – all #2 drivers who would yield in that situation. Hamilton, Verstappen, Vettel, Alonso, they’ll have the accident.
Senna would put other drivers where they’d have to yield or have an accident because they went off-track, though. He didn’t put other drivers in a position where they’d have to yield or hit another car or wall. Well, except at Suzuka.
And I think in this move Verstappen would have had room had Kimi not been there, which Vettel didn’t know. It was aggressive, but not get-to-know-the-wall aggressive. Hence, I reluctantly have to call it a racing incident.
It took me a while before I realized that your sig line wasn’t part of the post. This can only end in tears pretty much sums up that first turn.
That was a box of Suck. Didn’t even pay attention to it after the first lap.
As an exhibition of controlled driving it was superb, but the real shame was that Hamilton is a supremely brilliant driver in changeable conditions and the Merc was much better suited to the track conditions during the race. Judging by his relative pace to Ricciardo and the fact that he got a great start anyway plus multiple safety cars we could have seen some great, close racing which is a rarity for Singapore.
I am really puzzeled, that public opinion seems to mark Vettel as the main offender in this case. Sure, he lost the most due to this incident. But his aggressive move to the left only disabled Verstappen to move out of the way of Räikkönen before he would hit him.
Firstly, to me it looked like Räikkönen could have gone about one meter more to his left. And secondly, Räikkönen is in fact steering towards Verstappen just before the first impact between himself and Verstappen. Watching his onboard frame by frame (On the Formula1 channel on Youtube using “.” and “,”, preferably with 1050p50 resolution) , he actually starts moving slightly to the right, once his front tire has gone past Verstappens front tire (watch the distance to the track limit line on the left and also his steering wheel). As he is considerably faster than Verstappen at that moment, this implies that his rear tire will hit Verstappens front tire, unless Verstappen can steer away (which he can’t because Vettel is approaching from the other side). Judging from Räikkönen’s onboard video, he should have be able to see Vettel’s position and direction.
The first impact was, in fact, Räikkönen driving his rear tire into Verstappen front tire. The crash with Vettel’s car was only secondary to that.
To me it is mostly Räikkönen, who is to blame, as he drove into Verstappen. On the other hand, I agree with the FIA decision to rate this as a normal racing incident and refrain from punishing anyone of the drivers.
One point to bear in mind is that - according to the Channel 4 commentators - in this race the pole-sitter starts on the ‘wrong’ side of the track and therefore needs to move across at some point (but IMHO not as quickly as Vettel did) and SHOULD LOOK.
Everyone had cold, wet tyres and brakes and Vettel decides to cut straight across Verstappen knowing that evasive action would be needed.
Raikkonen and Verstappen stay pretty much straight and level until collision but on a wet track under full acceleration you only need a slight wobble to cause disaster between tightly packed cars and evasive actions is a good way to provoke that.
Only one car, Vettel, made an aggressive move which was borderline legal and under cold and wet conditions was edging towards recklessness.
Personally I’m not so sure that Vettel was totally unaware of Raikkonen’s position and I would not put it past him to be so aggressive because of the risk of loosing two positions.
But taking the bare facts as we see them I can easily understand why it was noted as a racing incident but certainly it could be argued either way (but it still bewilders me as to why there was no black flag for Vettel deliberately ramming Hamilton in Azerbaijahn)
Vettel’s move was very aggressive, true. But I stand by my point, Vettel didn’t hit anyone. Both, Verstappen and Vettel were moving towards the left side of the track when Räikkönen was still clearly behind both of them. Just when he went past Verstappen he decided to steer to the right (when there was ample track to his left) and subsequently into Verstappen.
I agree with you on the (lack of) steward’s decision on Vettel in Baku. A black flag should have been the minimum for him. In fact, I think he should have been banned for a few races.
Surprised we haven’t had any discussion of the now-official McLaren/Honda divorce. I can’t help thinking McLaren has made a huge mistake. Honda’s engine was terrible in Year 1 because McLaren was unrealistic about packaging goals. In Year 2, despite still being hamstrung by McLaren’s size requirements, Honda made a drastic leap and finished sixth in the points. This year, McLaren let Honda go to a more sensible layout, and they started from scratch. Has the engine been awful? Of course. But under the current regulations, they can do almost no testing and development in-season. Still, given last year’s improvement, I expect them to improve massively for 2018 (though there are bound to be teething problems with the team switch) just as they did in 2016.
Conversely, Renault was behind when the new regulations came in for 2015, and they seem to have made very little progress since. At best, they’ve maintained the development gap to Mercedes, and they’ve lost ground to Ferrari. So I don’t think it’s likely that they will field an engine that can win races next year.
ETA: Raikkonen steered slightly to the right while passing Verstappen. Vettel steered massively to the left, and he had half the track next to him rather than just a few feet. My initial impression when I saw the accident was that Raikkonen was mostly to blame, but the more replays I saw the more I had to say that Vettel was to blame.
I think it is all about who acted when, and what was his track position at that time.
- Vettel started moving to the left right from the start of the race and continued to do so all the way until he was hit by Räikkönen’s car. He was in front all the time. There was still enough room for two cars to his left. We will never know, what would have happened if Räikkönen had left enough space for Verstappen (a matter of a few centimeters!). But I don’t believe he would have driven straight into Verstappen.
- Verstappen started moving to the right just after the start. After a few meters he changed direction and was moving slightly to the left, probably in reaction to Vettel’s move. When he realized that he was sandwiched, he tried to back out of the situation. I believe this would have been successful if Räikkönen would have kept going straight instead of turning into Verstappen when right next to him.
Both, Verstappen and Vettel only acted when they had clear track position. Räikkönen however, changed direction when next to Verstappen. He was faster at that time, but he was not clearly in front of Verstappen nor was he on the “normal racing line”.
About the Renault-Honda-McLaren-Situation: l think at present, the Renault engine would be a slight improvement compared to Honda. It is often said, that the McLaren-chassis is better than the Honda-engine makes it look. And on the other hand, the RedBull-chassis is also said to be very good. The do fight for podiums and can win here and there but they still are far away from Mercedes or Ferrari when it comes to winning the championship. I think McLaren would have ended up in a similar position as RedBull if they currently had Renault engines. If any manufacturer, Renault or Honda, will make any deciding progress towards next season can only be guesswork as an outsider.
I’m going to make a bold prediction, before Malaysia.
Vettel’s done. Lewis will probably run the table, more or less, and take the title.
Now, if Kimi or Max take out Lewis at the start tomorrow…
It’s certainly possible!
You really need to watch today’s race. 
Now that was a fun race to watch.
That actually was a pretty good race. I thought for sure the Force India guys were going to take each other out again.
Sucks for Kimi though.
There was certainly no lack of contact between cars during this race, but not any significant damage to take anyone out. Pretty amazing. Then one little incident after the race takes the rear suspension off of a car.
Pretty much always does and always has.
How did Vettel’s car end up with both rear wheels on the same side and Stroll’s car drives away like nothing happened?
Has Verstappen finished on the podium in the U.S., and if he does it this year will they be allowed to give him champagne?
He has not. He rather amazingly finished 4th in 2015, and didn’t finish last year with a gearbox failure. I imagine they won’t be able to give him champagne. Hamilton was 22 when he won in 2007, so that was a close one.