Welcome
Augustine, you've certainly come to the right place if you want to learn. Not by me I might add, F1 has been my first love since 1993 but my technical knowledge and history is nowhere near these guys.
I honestly don't know, he seemed in such a flap and was being so harassed it's possible he didn't know. He should know that he pitted given but I couldn't say with some certainty. Others will have a view.
What did you make of Sunday? I've found the views of non followers really fascinating.
Hi Hamberg, thanks for the warm welcome.
Firstly, let me say that I wanted Lewis Hamilton to win. I've got nothing against Max Verstappen, I think he's a brilliant driver but I'm more familiar with Lewis and I wanted him to win.
Sunday brought to light an issue that I've struggled to understand in F1. I could have driven faultlessly all weekend, lapped everyone in the field and earned myself a 2 minute lead going into the penultimate lap. Then some other driver on the other side of the track crashes and, through no fault of mine, suddenly the safety car comes out and my 2 minute lead is wiped out! How is that fair? F1 deals in milliseconds, surely they could arrange it for every car to restart however many seconds they were behind the car in front when the race stopped.
Focusing solely on Sunday, I believe Lewis was robbed. As I understand it, Mercedes didn't pit for new tyres when the safety car came out because, to their mind, Verstappen was either going to have to drive through a number of lapped cars to even begin to challenge Hamilton if there was a final lap, or all the lapped cars were going to be allowed through and the race would run out of laps and finish under the safety car. By introducing a new element, in only allowing the 5 lapped cars between the two leaders to unlap, the Race Director essentially destroyed Mercedes' correct strategy and set up an artificial one lap sprint, where one car, with new fresh tyres, now had a significant advantage over the other.
Many people are saying that Lewis was unlucky and that Red Bull gambled and got it right but with the rules as they were written in mind, Mercedes couldn't pit for fear of losing track position if the race finished behind the safety car. Introducing that new element, of only allowing the 5 cars to unlap, benefited only Red Bull. Surely if anyone had earned the right to benefit from a new interpretation of the rules, it should have been the driver who was leading the race by 10 seconds when it was halted.
Which brings me back to my original question. If Masi didn't know that Max had pitted and was now on new soft rubber, then, grudgingly, you would have to accept that in his eagerness to finish the season on a climax, he made a mistake and it wasn't intentional. However, if he did know that Max had pitted and was now driving a far superior car, then he must also have known that that last lap shoot out was only going to have one ending, and that would be unacceptable. For me, it all comes down to what Masi knew, and when.
d up.
