Can anyone explain the penalties for contact at the Loews Hairpin? In both cases, it looked to me like the trailing car got a nose inside, but the car being passed tried to close the door too late and caused the contact. Yet the passing car got the penalty both times. One of them was Hamilton, don’t recall who got the other penalty.
I could understand if they’d gone into the corner too fast, couldn’t hold the inside line, and drifted out into the other car, but it didn’t look that way to me. Is it just that no one ever passes there, so when it goes wrong it must be the aggressor’s fault?
Where, exactly, would Alonso have passed him in the next 7(?) laps though? It seemed that even before the Red Flag, Vettel was putting a decent gap on Alonso through the DRS zone (that wouldn’t have existed for the first few laps of the sprint anyway) and into the Nouvelle Chicane. And I haven’t heard anybody mentioning the fact that Jensen was right on Alonso’s tail with even NEWER tires, so it wasn’t like Alonso could just take any line he wanted for fear of having to look up Button’s gearbox. I’d have put Vettel’s chances at >50/50 even without the tire change. He held off a faster car for the win just 7 days earlier.
It’s a dumb rule, and I’d expect it to be changed though.
I know it’s a street race, so full NASCAR-like SAFER barriers may not be an option, but can’t they get something better than a metal guardrail out there? I really don’t think crashes like that should be knocking people out in 2011.
I was thinking Alonso’s pressure would not allow Vettel to preserve his tires enough to withstand a well planned pass and/or the slim possibility of an unforced error. As you stated, Button had the best tires of the three at that point, making the finish extremely dramatic, until the red flag. The tire change ended any chance of Alonso or Button overtaking.
If the information given by the Red Bull team is correct, Vettel’s tyres were not so far gone that they would have been a problem for the remainder of the race. So, without the red flag, Vettel would have needed to drive 7 laps perfectly to win; a year ago, his chances would have been not greater than 50% to do so, but the championship has obviously given him a stability that he didn’t possess before – see Barcelona.
But if Alonso wasn’t joking in an interview, he had been ready to risk rather an accident in a late attempt to pass him than to just wait it out – so we might have seen Button in first place or even Webber if Vettel and Alonso had collided; though I think, Vettel would have done the reasonable thing and rather taken the points for a second or third place than risk it all in a Hamilton situation.
Btw, the team and Vettel have confirmed that their first pit stop had not just been slow, they had also fitted the wrong tyres on Kinky Kylie: he had wanted the super soft to go after Button but instead got the far slower option.
Otoh, that meant he didn’t have to stop again and when the safety car gave him the opportunity to pass Button who had opted to change tyres, Vettel ignored the advice of the team to do a pit stop too and kept the set he already got.
So, Red Bull made a serious mistake and they still managed to win the race. That won’t happen too often.
I’m not sure that I approve of the overuse of the safety car at the start of the race. Sorry, but 9 laps of procession is too long. If you can’t call the SC in quickly, don’t (re)start the race.
With that out of the way, is there anything that didn’t happen to Jensen Button?
A failed gamble on switching from full wet to intermediate tyres, speeding behind the safety car, hitting his teammate, running a Ferrari off the racetrack, six trips through the pit lane in total - all that, and he still managed to drive from 21st to 1st.
Vettel made a mistake, true, but it was Button’s additional speed that forced Vettel to pick the pace up a bit, and that led to the error. It just remains to be seen what the stewards think about his knocking Alonso out of the way.
Speaking of the stewards, they’re going to be busy. I lost count of the number of incidents to be investigated after the race.
Since Button won, they will do nothing. Nutless as the UN. Although to be fair, I don’t really see anything that Jensen did to deserve a penalty. Racing incidents.
But, I gotta say again, that DRS is shit! Might as well just blue flagged Vettel. Unlevel playing field, to make a bad mixed metaphore for auto racing. Button never would have caught Seb without DRS, or if Seb could open his wing also. I don’t care for it.
But he did catch him without it, DRS had nothing to do with Button passing him.
Remember, Button was catching Vettel hand over fist, this was when his DRS wasn’t activated (because he was more than 1 sec behind Seb.) It was the pressure of Button’s race pace that forced the error.
I was really hoping for a Schuhmacher podium finish, and he was soooo close! Anyone care to speculate as to what happenned towards the end, he really seemed to lose his excellent pacing.
And Kobayashi! Had my fingers crossed for him to get 2nd place. Still, he ended up in a great position.
Mind you the safety car being out every few laps did get a bit old, and was ultimately the only reason Vettel did not win by a mile.
Not sure that is the case. On a couple of occasions the safety car helped Vettel as he could essentially get a “free” pit. And when he was running normally he wasn’t pulling away from the pack by a huge amount, perhaps by as much as expected from a front runner in the rain.
Towards the end of the race he was losing ground and that would probably have been the case regardless of the safety cars.
BTW I was confused by that. The commentators kept saying how you weren’t allowed to pit when the safety car was out, yet that’s exactly what Vettel was doing.
I don’t think you can pit when you are behind the safety car, but if you can do it before it picks you up. you are OK.
So a lot depends on when the car is deployed. I think it was just a bit of good fortune for Seb on these occasions, I’m sure it’ll even up over the year.
The rule used to be that the pit lane closed when the safety car was deployed; drivers couldn’t pit under the safety car until race control gave the message that the pit lane had been re-opened. Usually the pit lane would remain closed until the safety car had completed a lap or two. However, the problem with this rule is that if a driver was just about to run out of fuel when the safety car was deployed, he would have no choice but to pit before the pit lane was opened, meaning he had to take a penalty just to remain in the race. This rule was dropped after the 2008 season.
IIRC, the rule now is that you can pit whenever you want, but to prevent drivers who wish to pit but who haven’t yet lined up behind the safety car from racing each other back to the pit lane at full speed, as soon as the the safety car is deployed, drivers are given a target lap time which they must not beat.
I think that the rule you’re thinking of is the one that says you can’t serve a drive-through penalty during a safety car period. Penalties have to be served during a racing lap.
And of course another scenario would be, Seb in the lead, Button 20 seconds behind.
SC comes out just in front of Seb and Button has a chance to dive into the pits, do his stop, rejoin and catch Seb up.
Upshot is, Button would be right behind Seb and a stop to the good. That could easily have happened and it is very much the luck of the draw.
I only just managed to watch the race last night (forgot the next few are on Fox, not Speed…) and was at first disappointed by all the SC action in the opening half. But I was blown away by the driving in the second half… well, last third, really. Button’s drive was just amazing. He probably couldn’t have pulled it all off like that without the later SC restarts, certainly not for a win. Maybe a come-from-behind podium finish. But remember when Hamilton was trailing Seb and pushing hard to catch him in Spain? The McLaren couldn’t quite close the gap, but Jenson managed it in Canada. I think we’ll see some more tight races coming up as McLaren improves their machines.
Without the DRS, I doubt Button would have ever been able to get around Schu and Alonso in enough time to set out after Seb.
For me, the spirit of F1 is destroyed by gimmicks like DRS, KERS and being handicapped with having to use 2 different tire compounds (that seem to be intentionally shitty!).
Lay down the formula, let the engineers build a car. Best car wins. Might be boring and processional, but thats how I likes it!
And when it gets too expensive for any but the top two or three teams to “race”, with the conclusion known well in advance, will you still like the “boring and processional” nature of it?
F1 is now more or less a spec series. It will become even more so in the future. the days of Tyrrell, Brabham, and Lotus shocking the world by bringing out something innovative, radical, or absurd are long gone.