Grand Prix 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

Who will be Champion

  • Verstappen

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hamilton

    Votes: 9 100.0%

  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .
Let's be honest, we all know how this will play out now that we're in the cold light of the following day.....

Mercedes - "We're going to take this all the way. If the FIA in Paris don't overturn the result our legal team will go to the court of arbitration for sport"

The FIA - "Well, would you look at that, rule 35.1.4 of the special, super secret section of the Concorde agreement states:

35.1.4 - "Any German team beginning with M who may or may not have lost a world championship due to the (allegedly) incompetent race director, and who agrees not to pursue their claim (for the good of the sport), may find themselves a Christmas bonus in used notes, stuffed into a plain brown envelope and left on the table when the FIA official delegate leaves the room for two minutes"

Mercedes - "For the good of the sport we agree to withdraw our appeal and look forward to working with the FIA to clarify future safety car rules"
 
For years I've been saying (here, mainly) that lapped cars should be sent through the pit lane (if the pit lane is open), it's simple.

Here are Geth's safety rules:
Yellow flags waved at same marshall post for more than 2 laps? Safety car.
Safety car on circuit with lapped cars? Lapped cars through pit lane once all cars are "backed up"
Safety car on track for more than 5 laps? Red flag.
 
However much I wanted Hamilton to be champion right now, what outcome would people want from the Mercedes’ protests? In any other race I’d be okay with overturning the result. However this is a championship decision and Red Bull have done nothing wrong here.

That said I’ve no doubt in my mind that Masi wouldn’t have done that in any other race.

The only fair thing, if they were determined to finish as a race, would have been red flag and standing restart.
I disagree. If you can get away with anything in a championship finale as long you win, then that sets a terrible standard for the sport. It's not okay to win the championship by cheating as long as you do it in the final race.

I want the result changed.
 
My suggestion is that people imagine that the positions of the two cars is reversed, then after intense thought decide whether or not their view of the decision has changed.
 
Here's a conspiracy theory for you:

Perez was short fuelled, with the express intention of bringing out the safety car near the end if Verstappen was 2nd to allow him to pit. As Latifi did it for them they didn't need to.
 
My suggestion is that people imagine that the positions of the two cars is reversed, then after intense thought decide whether or not their view of the decision has changed.
I sick of this. I've been reading it a number of times on Twitter.

No it wouldn't change one jot

Be it Hamilton, Verstappen or whoever. The race director's decision was wrong, against their own regulations and made purely for a Netflix finish.
 
My suggestion is that people imagine that the positions of the two cars is reversed, then after intense thought decide whether or not their view of the decision has changed.
I have the same point of view. The issue is the guy who dominated the race and did everything right got screwed over by a totally unprecedented and arbitrary decision from the stewards. Regardless of whether roles were reversed, the issue here is they should have either let all cars unlap and had less "racing" or they should have let no cars unlap. What unfolded was an engineered decision to give the race to the slower driver who did nothing to earn the victory.
 
Red Bull and Verstappen were very lucky on Sunday, that is not in doubt. But this one race in itself did not result in the championship going to one driver or another. The whole season has to be looked at, if you are talkimg about stewards' decisions and other times when luck played its part. Like Adrian Newey mentioned in the post-race interview, I still have an issue about Copse. After that I felt that unless Lewis won the WDC by 25 points or more then there would have been a miscarriage of justice. Over the course of the season, when things have arisen between Lewis and Max, where Max came off worse he generally lost a lot (25 points, British GP and elsewhere) and when Lewis came off worse he lost 7 points or thereabouts (Abu Dhabi and elsewhere). Hence as unfair as it seems, Max is the rightful WDC this year. I believe this view is also the view of the (majority of the) paddock, whatever you think about Sunday's race.
 
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Did you know, the Drivers steward in Brazil who decided that it's perfectly fine to run a driver wide and make no attempt to hit the apex of a corner was Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Who's he you ask? A Red Bull junior driver and former Red Bull and Toro Rosso driver.
I was thinking about this about Liuzxi's past association with Red Bull. He was billed as the big thing by Red Bull and got the usual Helmut disposal treatment once they realised Vettel was going to be better so I don't know why he did not have more balls to do something. He owes Red Bull nothing
 
I found it interesting reading comments from non F1 fans that tuned in for this one.
One described the situation as a team being 10-0 up and the referee declaring next goal wins.
Well that’s something we’ve come to live with with safety car situations which when you think about it like that is a bit ridiculous.

The difference here is he gave Max a penalty.
That wasn’t motor racing. It certainly wasn’t a fair motor racing.
The football analogy is true Lewis dominated the race right to the last lap until Masi decided to change the rules.

This is equivalent to the Wwe Montreal Screwjob if you want to check it out...this race should be remembered as the AbuDhabi Screwjob
 
Red Bull and Verstappen were very lucky on Sunday, that is not in doubt. But this one race in itself did not result in the championship going to one driver or another. The whole season has to be looked at, if you are talkimg about stewards' decisions and other times when luck played its part. Like Adrian Newey mentioned in the post-race interview, I still have an issue about Copse. After that I felt that unless Lewis won the WDC by 25 points or more then there would have been a miscarriage of justice. Over the course of the season, when things have arisen between Lewis and Max, where Max came off worse he generally lost a lot (25 points, British GP and elsewhere) and when Lewis came off worse he lost 7 points or thereabouts (Abu Dhabi and elsewhere). Hence as unfair as it seems, Max is the rightful WDC this year. I believe this view is also the view of the (majority of the) paddock, whatever you think about Sunday's race.
I think Masi has taken the shine off this championship so we need to see what happens with the appeal whether his joy will be shortlived or not
 
A quote from Masi about the 2020 Eifel GP.

”There’s a requirement in the sporting regulations to wave all the lapped cars past,” Masi said.

“From that point, it was position six onwards that were still running [on the lead lap], so between 10 or 11 cars had to unlap themselves.

“Therefore the Safety Car period was a bit longer than what we would have normally expected.”

 
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