Sport F1 flintstone finale

Something of a farce. Expect repercussions amongst the officials before the season starts again.
 
It’s a ridiculous decision (at the time by Massi I mean).

No problem with not wanting to end the season under a safety car - completely agree.

The rules state however that if cars unlap themselves then all cars must. You can’t allow some to and some not, that’s literally unfair on everyone!

They should have said to Red Bull we can either unlap all cars, but maybe not have enough time to do a lap, or we can have one final lap without any unlapped cars. You absolutely cannot say ‘just unlap enough of them so Max is behind Lewis’. That’s not sport!
 
HampshireYellow said:
It’s a ridiculous decision (at the time by Massi I mean).

No problem with not wanting to end the season under a safety car - completely agree.

The rules state however that if cars unlap themselves then all cars must. You can’t allow some to and some not, that’s literally unfair on everyone!

They should have said to Red Bull we can either unlap all cars, but maybe not have enough time to do a lap, or we can have one final lap without any unlapped cars. You absolutely cannot say ‘just unlap enough of them so Max is behind Lewis’. That’s not sport!
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Likewise if cars do unlap themselves, then the Regulations state that the Safety Car doesn't finish until the end of the following lap which means the race should have finished under Safety Car anyway. So Masi has ignored the Regulations in 2 ways, he should have just red flagged it immediately and had a short dash at the end with both drivers being able to change tyre if they were so desperate to not to finish under the Safety Car rather than the farce Masi has engineered.
 
Manorlounger said:
Ridiculous decision by the race director. You can't apply the rules in such a fashion, why let only the cars in between Lewis and Verstappen unlap themselves? Why not all the cars? Almost as if they knew it would hand the advantage to Verstappen. Fair play to Lewis though, no tantrums and no openly harsh words. It will all end in tears at some point, legal challenge not excluded.
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Those rules should have been in place before the season started.
 
Marked Ox said:
The Regulations were in place before the season started and well understood by the teams. The FIA Race Director Michael Masi ignored those Regulations and made his own up.
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That’s what I meant it’s like the FA making a rule up an hour before kick off to change a rule which would benefit one team over another. Just hope if legal action does take place a fair and just outcome prevails.
If the race had been left as it was with the cars between Hamilton and Verstappen and just one lap and the safety car finished and Verstappen had push past and took Hamilton to win then ok, but I do feel Hamilton has been cheated out of winning the title.
 
Marked Ox said:
Likewise if cars do unlap themselves, then the Regulations state that the Safety Car doesn't finish until the end of the following lap which means the race should have finished under Safety Car anyway. So Masi has ignored the Regulations in 2 ways, he should have just red flagged it immediately and had a short dash at the end with both drivers being able to change tyre if they were so desperate to not to finish under the Safety Car rather than the farce Masi has engineered.
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Yes, if they wanted to make it a race then red flag it and give everyone a one lap race to the end, standing start. Pure drama but not picking and choosing rules to suit one competitor.
 
There can't be a fair and just outcome now. I think it's most likely that the decision will stand but Masi will be gone. Not only will a new racing director be needed, but they also need to review the whole stewards process. Far too many decisions this season have been subjective and even open to negotiation. The sport needs to regain credibility and needs an overhaul from top to bottom.
 
F1 is still in a bit of transition from Bernie's one man show to Liberty Media's open house policy. Five years ago, all of today's shenanigans would have taken place behind closed doors and Bernie's word was law.

The new policy is to broadcast radio conversations almost live and thrust the decision making into the spotlight in the name of openess. It may be that the new bosses have taken this step without thinking through the consequences.
 
bazzer9461 said:
That’s what I meant it’s like the FA making a rule up an hour before kick off to change a rule which would benefit one team over another. Just hope if legal action does take place a fair and just outcome prevails.
If the race had been left as it was with the cars between Hamilton and Verstappen and just one lap and the safety car finished and Verstappen had push past and took Hamilton to win then ok, but I do feel Hamilton has been cheated out of winning the title.
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It was more like, using the FA / football analogy, if a team was 3-0 up in a cup final in time added on & the referee announces'the next goal wins ' after awarding a penalty to.the losing side
 
It really is a farce. Here in Holland the Dutch are having a great party. I agree that something has gone wrong but changing the result would end up with the Dutch declaring war on Boris.
Oh, maybe that would get rid of BJ.
 
Sarge said:
It was more like, using the FA / football analogy, if a team was 3-0 up in a cup final in time added on & the referee announces'the next goal wins ' after awarding a penalty to.the losing side
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You've described how it looked to me, Sarge.

I rarely watch motorsports, but my son persuaded me to let him stay up to watch this exciting season closer. It was pretty exciting, and then it just collapsed into a set of randomly applied rules. I have a general principle that you shouldn't put down to corruption what can be readily explained by incompetence. This is one of those cases where I'm not sure. It seems like a lot of small decisions added up to favour a change in F1 champion. Whether that was random luck, subtle bias, calculated corruption or naive stupidity is anyone's guess. I imagine it will be dragged out in court for a while, but there is definitely someone here who isn't going to bother watching any motorsports again for a while.
 
We all love a referee who tries to let a game flow rather than blow the whistle for every niggly foul, and I think that is what the guy was trying to do ('its a car race.,.').

That would have been fine if the two cars were evenly matched for the showdown lap, but with Hamilton mortally wounded it was not right.

Finishing under the safety car was probably the correct decision, restarting with the lapped cars where they were in order to finish under racing conditions he would probably have got away with, but not this...

Begs two questions: 1) if his decision is deemed incorrect by the court/appeal court/appeal appeal court then how can you decide who has actually won without it just being another arbitrary decision? and (2) surely the constant chirruping of the team directors in the guy's ear has to be stopped
 
Have to say Lewis Hamilton acted very professional in defeat. Don’t follow F1 sport but a Brit going for a record kept an eye out for the result.
 
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Malc said:
It really is a farce. Here in Holland the Dutch are having a great party. I agree that something has gone wrong but changing the result would end up with the Dutch declaring war on Boris.
Oh, maybe that would get rid of BJ.
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They do know that the guy's an a*hole even if he is Dutch?
 
Well that was the most outrageously ridiculous way to finish any race, let alone deciding a drivers championship.
To be fair to Hamilton, he took it like a man but I would have been tearing down the walls if that was me.
Someone would have got a slap.

Nothing but admiration for Verstappen and his efforts this season but this stinks so bad.
 
Any sport is now dominated by betting markets and decisions such as this can have a significant bearing in the result. Masi needs to have a watertight defence if Merc pursue this further as he could be at risk if a court decides he has acted improperly. At the moment all the FIA seem to have said is that the written rules did not apply because there is another special rule allowing the race director to do what he wants. So why even have rules if the chief can make them up as they go along? It comes down to minute detail which the lawyers will now be going through, its a bit like the average points per game fiasco that Wycombe benefited so greatly from giving them a distinct clear advantage by the way it was calculated except this time in F1 there seems to be some written guidance to back up Merc's claims providing the race director override is not valid.

The whole season stinks though. Even Max's infringement of overtaking by a couple of centimetres for a couple of seconds under the safety car should have been penalised bearing in mind that Lewis was completely DQ'ed for a 0.1mm rear wing infringement which was equally as minor but attacked so severely to put him behind every single car. The risk is Merc now throw their toys out the pram and decide not to bother and Lewis decides to retire because there is no point him taking the risk if it is set up against him anyway. That would be a huge loss to F1 and a massive own goal. They could have diplomatically given maximum points to both drivers for Abu Dhabi but award the race to Lewis. Joint world champions. Both sides happy. No drama and no very costly waste of money court case.
 
I have a foot in both camps. As a part of Red Balls pit team my brother-in-law is hopefully still drinking champagne on a massive yacht like he was last night!!! But I also had a bet on Hamilton to become World Champion after Mexico when it became clear that Mercedes would need another engine change to get them back in contention. It wasn't a huge bet but would have been enough to put a couple of extra presents under the tree next week!

The decision to race wasn't an equal one. Verstappen had a huge advantage and would probably have cruised past the other 3 or 4 cars in front of him had no one overtaken under the safety car. Max would have then won the title within the rules and rightly receive the credit he deserves. But the decision was made to only have the front two fight it out was not only massively unfair on the guy with old worn out tyres, but also to everyone else raving behind them. Who's to say that Yuki Tsunoda wouldn't have gone past Sainz on a one off lap to get his first podium finish? Lando Norris could have taken an extra few places and moved up from 6th to 5th in the final standings? Leclerc could have moved up from 7th? A complete mess could have seen Mick Schumacher finish in the top 10 and get Haas their only point of the season?

The decision to race was afforded to only two drivers and on very unequal terms. You can't run sport that way and I'm amazed that there hasn't been wider condemnation from other teams yet.

Verstappen will remain champion, I have no doubt of that. He did nothing wrong and it is good for the sport to have a new Champion. Hamilton will come out of this stronger. He has been dignified in the way he has taken this so far and will go into next season with a point to prove.

But Masi can't remain and any new appointment will have to be very carefully selected. All sports need integrity, and Formula One is very badly damaged even without these shenanigans. Not only do we have teams spending hundreds of millions to fly around the world to then race cars and contributing to the whole carbon crisis etc. But we also have a sport where drivers are more likely to come from rich parents than from grass roots motor sports. The whole sport needs a shake up, and it has to happen now before it's too late.
 
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