Off-topic here, but how can Jean Todt get a job in the FIA after being with ferrari for so many years? surely that will make him ridiculously biased towards ferrari?

That's the only criterion on the application form.

I'll make no bones about it, I've always been keen to see Lewis win, because he's a British driver driving for a British team - plain and simple. (And let those here who fly the British flag next to their name and yet still seem to insist on being fashionably controversial at Britain's expense, say what they will).

Until recently, my enthusiasm has been mainly due to a mixture of patriotism and the realisation that we currently seem to have the machinery and the talent to actually win something.

But now (I'm almost ashamed to say), I want him to win for all the wrong reasons.

Quote from SilverArrows77 :

He [Hamilton] showed his greatest weakness again during the last race, a lack of maturity and foresight once the race is underway.

At no point was there ANY need to attempt the bold passes he did during the first laps of race and it was his own lack of "self control" that placed him in the situations that lead to badly flatspotted tyres, contact causing the spin, and the following drive through penalty. If the lad truly wants this championship then this end of the season is where he needs to show he has the abilty to learn from mistakes and not place himself in such situations, considering he was in the same position last season and let the title slip.

Yeah. It certainly looked like his poor start off the line prompted him to take a risk at T1.

Quote from SilverArrows77 :

it surely seems hamilton is keen to throw away another championship. He showed his greatest weakness again during the last race, a lack of maturity and foresight once the race is underway.

to be fair look at his age. kimi used to be a bit reckless when he was that age and there's plenty of other similar age driver sdoing things that don't always come off. similarly there are plenty of other sportsmen in all sports at world class level making rash decisions, you see them every week in football. these days it seems amazing that we almost expect an F1 driver to retire at 30 yet when i first got into f1 it seemed all the champions won their title in their late 20's or in their 30's

Quote :

Off-topic here, but how can Jean Todt get a job in the FIA after being with ferrari for so many years? surely that will make him ridiculously biased towards ferrari?

Bernie wasn't neutral when he started, he went to the FIA from Brabham. Jean Todt is the ideal candidate to replace Bernie because, as a representative of a majority shareholder - it doesnt introduce any new biases that are not already there. Current Status Quo maintained .

ok I said I wouldn't post, but someone mailed me this. I shall add no opinion, but I thought some of you might want to see it

http://www.formula1.com/

Good find, some great footage there. My interpretations:

a) Hamilton made an error, but nothing worth punishment.

b) Massa didnt want to give up his position to Hamilton, but the collision wasn't deliberate, although certainly worthy of punishment.

c) Massa's own fault for turning into Bourdais and not the other way around.

You didn't really see anything new. The only new videos were the two onboard of Massa in the 2nd and 3rd accident I think.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Gizz, please: Capitalisation, punctuation, spelling? I appreciate that some people just can't spell but when you produce words like "tristian" I begin to suspect that you're not even trying.

ok ok, maybe the tristian thing was a bit bad, i actualy don't know where that come from myself ill correct that now, as for the rest, you are right im not trying, i gave up years ago m8

Quote from dungbeetle :

Yeah. It certainly looked like his poor start off the line prompted him to take a risk at T1.

No question there, he stuffed the start and lost his head, and it's been said a million times on here already, THAT is what will loose LH the WDC..

if anyone can win it, its LH..
but also,
if anyone can loose the WDC it's LH.

Quote from Intrepid :

ok I said I wouldn't post, but someone mailed me this. I shall add no opinion, but I thought some of you might want to see it

[/quote]

First time i have seen that footage and now im even more shocked..

why on earth massa said LH forced him wide when he outbraked himself and had understeer, i will never know, lewis was no where near the guy, and he only ended up in that possition because of himself...

i feel sick after watching that now, F1 wont be around mutch longer if this is going to be the norm from now on

Quote from Becky Rose :

Bernie wasn't neutral when he started, he went to the FIA from Brabham. Jean Todt is the ideal candidate to replace Bernie because, as a representative of a majority shareholder - it doesnt introduce any new biases that are not already there. Current Status Quo maintained .

What are you on about Bernie has little to nothing to do with the FIA. He in a way owns F1, like where the races are the runing of the business side if you will. FIA governs the racing, such as rules, safety and control of the racing itself.

Another thing that some are confusing is, The 'stewards' and 'race control' are seperate parts of the FIA, 'race control' has no say about penalties etc but do 'enforce' or 'apply' them when told by the stewards decision.

Looking at the footage, Massa-Bourdais, you can see that Massa actually passed him already which we couldn't see before but it is still Massas fault but should not even have been looked at for penalising anyone.

Having looked at the formula1.com footage I can draw my own conclusions from this

Incident One - T1. Looks like a screwup from Hamilton that didn't really affect anyone else significantly. D_T's verdict : no penalty.
Incident Two - Massa hitting Hamilton. If it looks bad from the TV cameras it looks like an intentional wreck from the onboard on Massa. D_T's verdict : Massa stop and go penalty
Incident Three - Massa hitting Bourdais. Massa simply ignored Bourdais - he left him with nowhere to do. Cars on both sides of the pit line must avoid hitting eachother. D_T's verdict : Racing incident but it's not 50-50. More Massa's fault.

As for new FIA people, I suggest ... Eddie Jordan for President!

Having seen the footage, I agree with D_Ts judgement. I simply cannot see how the stewards reached the conclusions they did. Absolute farce.

Also, after seeing this footage, let's look at:

Incident #1: Hamilton outbreaked himself, and locked his tires up. See him turning the wheel at nearly 90 degrees right, towards the apex. He obviously didn't make it, because he was sliding. He also didn't make contact with any other cars, and everyone that might have been directly affected by Hamilton locking up, cleared the turn without incident. Hamilton was at fault, no doubt, but it's not worthy of a punishment.

Incident #2: Massa went wide, Hamilton took the place, and had racing line at the apex. At this point, Massa came off the grass and hit him. I would say that a stop and go penalty should have been the order here, as it forced Hamilton to sit and wait until everyone passed, before he could continue the race. The penalty incurred was not proportional.

Incident #3: Watch the side view, looking at Massa's helmet from the left hand side of the car. He didn't even appear to look for Bourdais's car at turn-in, yet he absolutely must have known he was there. Bourdais' front right wheel was in fact clear over the white line of the rumble strip, I expect because he was trying to avoid a collision, while Massa just turned in on him. Drive through penalty for Massa, or 25 seconds due to it being a post-race decision.

Farcical isn't a strong enough word.

A quote that nobody picked up on:

Quote from Kimi Raikkonen :

I got a pretty good start and got into the first place but then braking into the first corner I was trying to turn in and there was first one McLaren and then a second and I think they both hit me and I had nowhere to go.

You would hope that a drive would know if a car has hit you, let alone two cars. The evidence available on the very same website shows that there was absolutely no contact made.

I'm wondering if there's any potential for unsafe re-entry claims following the first lap. A few people (including both Ferraris and both McLarens) rejoined the track from being entirely off it (4 wheels outside the boundary white line demarking the outside of the track) and Hamilton rejoined again at the next left hander into traffic. Opinions?

They all managed to keep racing speeds on return, despite their excursions, and I don't think they directly returned into the path of anyone else. I don't think anyone deserved penalties.

could you imagine the outcome if these stewards officiated at the BTC ? the race would never finish as the drivers would be serving penalties evey lap

After seeing the footage my veredict is:

Bring gravel traps back!

Quote from de Souza :

After seeing the footage my veredict is:

Bring gravel traps back!

The race of half of the field would be over in T1 O_O.

Tbh, Hamilton's screwup in T1 didn't affect THAT many people. Many drivers admitted having locked up and slipping aswell. You clearly see them all go straight even Kubica but he managed to catch it in time and stay on track.

Massa, from the onboard it looks VERY intentional. He pushes the throttle to the max and goes into the corner at a crazy speed and hits Hamilton out of the way... Although Hamilton didn't leave THAT much space he didn't have to. Like most of you said about the incident between Hamilton and Raikonen at Spa.

Massa and Bourdais, it seems very possible from that angle that Massa simply didn't see Bourdais although not very likely. I really fail to see how it was Bourdais' fault. It's either Massa's fault for not paying attention to whats around his car or a simple racing incident (which I think would of been the better decision.)

Quote from tinvek :

could you imagine the outcome if these stewards officiated at the BTC ? the race would never finish as the drivers would be serving penalties evey lap

hahahaha now that is a scarry thought

Here is some high quality video on the official F1 site:

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/10/8530.html

Not sure any of these camera angles change my opinions:

1) LH T1 move was misjudged but not worthy of penalty.
2) FM spinning LH was worth a penalty, based purely on FM's onboard view.
3) SB did not deserve a penalty, although it's interesting they didn't have forward facing onboard footage from either car for this one. Hard to make a decisive judgment based on the footage I've seen.

If you look closely you can notice that there was a contact between kimi and heikki. The ferrari kind of moved sudenly which didn't look normal. LH braked so late that he totally ruined his tyres. That doesn't happen often does it? He just braked later than KR no matter what. Does he deserve a drive through for that? Don't know. It was a very dangerous hotshot kamikaze move and other cars had to avoid him by leaving the track. Stuff like that happens but IMO this was a bit more than the usual mistakes at T1.

FM and LH incident. Massa went wide and Lewis could take the inside line in to the first turn but LH didn't leave any space for FM in the second corner and he was outside. If FM didn't go through the grass he'd hit LH much earlier. In fact you could say LH would hit FM much earlier because FM still was alongside and he was at the edge of the track so only way to avoid contact was to stop but nobody does that when they are racing do they? I'd say a racing incident when nobody wants to give up.

Massa - Bourdais. That penalty is a BS. It was Felipe's fault. Well, mostly. But he was the one who spun and by the footage of onboard camera he might have thought he'd overtake Bourdais by the apex. I'd say a drivers mistake. I wouldn't penalise Massa for that but giving a penalty for Bourdais?

Quote from dungbeetle :

But now (I'm almost ashamed to say), I want him to win for all the wrong reasons.

Here, Here!

Quote from tinvek :

could you imagine the outcome if these stewards officiated at the BTC ? the race would never finish as the drivers would be serving penalties evey lap

lol, in a weird macabre way I would like to see that.

Quote from marsaz :

FM and LH incident. Massa went wide and Lewis could take the inside line in to the first turn but LH didn't leave any space for FM in the second corner and he was outside. If FM didn't go through the grass he'd hit LH much earlier. In fact you could say LH would hit FM much earlier because FM still was alongside and he was at the edge of the track so only way to avoid contact was to stop but nobody does that when they are racing do they? I'd say a racing incident when nobody wants to give up.

I have not watched the on board camera's as I am at work, but from what it looked like on the normal tv cameras was that FM ran wide, LH went up the inside on the normal line. He then was far enough in front to take the normal racing line through the next corner and managed to clip the apex before massa spun him out. Now this may be wrong and i reserve judgement until I see the onboards but from the tv cameras it looked like a brash move (im still holding onto a little hope that massa wasn't delibrately trying to take Hamilton out.)

Quote from marsaz :

If you look closely you can notice that there was a contact between kimi and heikki. The ferrari kind of moved sudenly which didn't look normal. LH braked so late that he totally ruined his tyres. That doesn't happen often does it? He just braked later than KR no matter what. Does he deserve a drive through for that? Don't know. It was a very dangerous hotshot kamikaze move and other cars had to avoid him by leaving the track. Stuff like that happens but IMO this was a bit more than the usual mistakes at T1.

FM and LH incident. Massa went wide and Lewis could take the inside line in to the first turn but LH didn't leave any space for FM in the second corner and he was outside. If FM didn't go through the grass he'd hit LH much earlier. In fact you could say LH would hit FM much earlier because FM still was alongside and he was at the edge of the track so only way to avoid contact was to stop but nobody does that when they are racing do they? I'd say a racing incident when nobody wants to give up.

Massa - Bourdais. That penalty is a BS. It was Felipe's fault. Well, mostly. But he was the one who spun and by the footage of onboard camera he might have thought he'd overtake Bourdais by the apex. I'd say a drivers mistake. I wouldn't penalise Massa for that but giving a penalty for Bourdais?

Im thinking the same