F1 Yorkshire's non-retirement World Championship

[mnmracer]

Well, like I said, the times indicate Vettel would have succesfully jumped him, so I wouldn't say 'definitely cost him'. If anything, it almost turned out wrong for Vettel, as he was hoping to have another lap to jump Hamilton, and now he would have had just one lap.

To help future cases, I'd say IF it had cost Hamilton, rather than an inevitable that happened to coincide, it's just a case of wrong place, wrong time. McLaren could not have known a safety car was about to come out.

 

[sushifiesta]

At the time, and this was certainly my opinion, I'm pretty sure the majority, including the pundits, were saying that Hamilton lost the place because of the timing of the safety car and the relative places of Hamilton and Vettel on track at the time. It wasn't anyone's fault, just pure bad luck on Hamilton's part and a bit of fortune for Vettel.

It depends where you draw the line, safety cars can dramatically alter races but it's very difficult to say how exactly. I personally think it's pretty clear cut that there was a 6pts swing between Hamilton and Vettel purely as a result of the safety car coming out when it did, but to analyse this for every driver for every safety car in every race is a tough task.

t's a massive can of worms, like all of this. What if driver A is on a marginal one stop strategy, 15s ahead of driver B on a two stop strategy with 15 laps to go. A safety car comes out, wiping out the gap between the two of them and allowing driver B, on much newer tyres, to pass driver A. Would driver A or B have finished ahead were it not for the safety car? Who knows. Have fun thinking about Vettel at Abu Dhabi, for example!

 

[no-FIAt-please]

I'd just keep it to reliability issues and being taken out by someone else. Forget safety cars...