Well, Nico seems to think he did and if he’s daft enough to admit that then he should be banned.

Plenty of people think Senna and Schumi were pricks.

Dunno about pricks but definitely entitled, immature and arrogant for sure.

The problem is Mercedes thought Hamilton was going to be fast enough that this stuff wouldn’t happen. The reality is there is nothing between them. I find it all hilarious. Plus it’s all good for the last great team (Williams) to move up the finishing order.

Lovely to see Williams up front.
The thing is Hamilton is the faster driver and today Rosberg had to make the move early because if not, he would lost him for the rest of the afternoon. If you can’t beat him, take him out or compromise him. The same happened in Monaco.
BUT Lewis needs to be smarter, he quick but not as intelligent as say, Mika, Senna, Alonso, Schum. I also get the feeling that due to Merc policy of sharing data, Rosberg analyses Hamilton data and adopts. Far easier for the slower driver to copy than for a faster driver to go even quicker.

Rosberg has had a few incidents this season and that could easily have been a penalty; Monaco qualy, gaining advantage off track at Canada, and now this. On balance this one was probably a racing incident to me personally. Not quite conclusive enough to award a penalty, was it even investigated anyway?

Thought the result of Magnussen’s penalty for blocking Alonso was a little bit harsh, dropping him completely out of the points.

Chew – Member

9/10 Nico would have lost his front wing in that kind of collision with no damage to Hamilton, leading Hamilton to cruise to an easy victory, whilst Nico lost time with a damaged front wing (like Alonso on the last lap)

Don’t agree, probably 50/50 on causing a puncture and the most likely wing damage is just losing an end plate. Really unlikely to cause a failure like Alonso had, I’ve only seen that a handful of times in years.
Maybe they should mandate a rounded edge on the f wing, seems to be a lot of this type of incident in the last few years and it’s hardly surprising with how intricate the wings have become.

Hamilton quicker?
Check their respective qualifying and finishing stats this year.
E.g qualifying Rosberg has 7 poles
Hamilton has 4

Maybe they should mandate a rounded edge on the f wing

There already is (cant find the regulation at the moment)

probably 50/50 on causing a puncture

How many rear wheel to front wing collisions over the past 5 years? (Lots)
How many have caused punctures over the past 5 years? (not many)

back2basics – Member
you guys really think nico could judge it so well to puncture Lewis and for himself to stay in the race

Yes, seeing as he was behind Lewis rather than alongside. End plate/rear tyre contact has a pretty consistent outcome.

It pretty consistently ends up with a broken wing and not much else, punctures aren’t the norm from that sort of contact

Don’t agree, probably 50/50 on causing a puncture and the most likely wing damage is just losing an end plate.

Exactly this.

Yes, seeing as he was behind Lewis rather than alongside. End plate/rear tyre contact has a pretty consistent outcome.

So you’re saying that Nico could place his car with mm precision at 150kph through Les Combes, while pulling 2-3g of lateral load, whilst anticipating where Lewis was going to be, within a blink of an eye, to deliberately cause a puncture?

If there is a 50/50 chance it’s worth a shot to stop the guy at front running away!

If there is a 50/50 chance it’s worth a shot to stop the guy at front running away!

Its not 50/50 though….

Wheres Stato when you need him….

Theres usually 2-3 front wing to rear wheel collisions every race.
From my memory theres only been 1-2 that have caused a puncture this year.

It’s common enough to warrant a rule change…

Rule change: Narrower front wing
Implications: The front wing has been reduced from 1,800mm to 1,650mm wide – the origin of the change was to reduce the number of punctures caused by an endplate catching the rear tyre of a competitor’s car.

http://www.formula1.com/news/features/2014/1/15408.html

Chew – Member
So you’re saying that Nico could place his car with mm precision at 150kph through Les Combes, while pulling 2-3g of lateral load, whilst anticipating where Lewis was going to be, within a blink of an eye, to deliberately cause a puncture?

660mm is a big enough target when you know the driver in front will take the racing line.

if it was the other way round people on here would be praising lewis for being a racer and a fighter, yet nico plays hard ball, and suddenly he can puncture rear tyres at will
yawn….

I’m not trying to say he unleashed a master plan, more that he took a ‘punt’ knowing Lewis would probably come off worse.

Chew – Member

How many rear wheel to front wing collisions over the past 5 years? (Lots)
How many have caused punctures over the past 5 years? (not many)

maybe 50/50 was a bit of an exageration but anyway plenty of punctures caused this way – off the top of my head:

Lewis/Nico today
Kimi/magnussen Korea this year
Alonso/Kimi Korea 2012 which put him out
Vettel/Lewis Britain 2009 or 2010 (biggest cheer Ive ever heard at a race 😆 )
Lewis/Vettel Japan 2012 or 13
Grosjean/Perez Spain 2012
Kimi/Perez Monaco 2013
Grosjean/Diresta can’t remember which race
Vettel/some back marker being lapped (Karthikeyen?)
Maldonado /Kobayashi India 2011 or 12

probably tonnes more if you google as well

660mm is a big enough target when you know the driver in front will take the racing line

Drivers cant see exactly where their front wings are once they are strapped in the car. So knowing where the end place would be whilst everything else was going on.

The FIA have all of the data and have taken no action (didnt even investigate it) and they have seen it as a racing accident.

Lewis/Nico today
Kimi/magnussen Korea this year

So 2 this year?
How many front wing/rear tyre collisions this year?

7 races to go, 200 points available, Mercedes imploding, Ricciardo only 64 points behind Rosberg and 33/1 for the title……might be worth a fiver.

I think Rosberg intentionally hit him, whether the intention was to try for a penalty against Ham, just spin him out our what I’m not sure. I don’t think he could have intended to cause a puncture, but from the sky coverage post race he seemed to make 2 distinct moves resulting in the contact.

Personally I can’t stand Hamilton, comes across as an arrogant spoilt brat, nico on the other hand seems a nice enough guy, fair play to him today racing incident. Lewis was never going to let him pass so a little unintentional contact got the job done.

Chew – Member

So 2 this year?
How many front wing/rear tyre collisions this year?

As I said already those were just the ones which sprang to mind. Didn’t Kimi also get punctured by somebody’s front wing during a safety car at monaco? Thinking about it did the same not happen to bianchi today from a caterham putting him out of the race?

LMT – nice guys rams bloke off road, that makes it ok?

Hasn’t Rosberg admitted he did it on purpose to ‘prove a point’?

If so, the only point he proves is that Lewis’s assertion that they remain friends is bollocks

Rosberg was clearly quicker and Lewis thought he would get away with chopping across Rosberg’s nose, as he has done so a few times this year.

Well today it didn’t work out. Brilliant

He was way ahead of him.

I’m pretty surprised to hear Rosberg say he did it on purpose. We all know in those knocks most of the time the car behind looses part of its nose with no damage to the car in front so odds on Rosberg would loose out. To do it on purpose would be stupid to say the least.

Brundle was looking at a tyre after the race and basically said that the only place to hit that would 90% guarantee a puncture was the first 30 or 40mm of the sidewall nearest to the tread. Normally contact with the rest of the sidewall/tread/rim won’t result in a puncture. I suppose if you stuff enough endplate into a sidewall you’re going to get a puncture.

I like Hamilton and admit he can act like a baby at times but thought he handled himself well today. What little respect I had for Rosberg has gone out of the window after reading the BBC link and his post race interviews.

Also tickled me when Rosberg said it was only the uneducated British fans booing him lol.

I admit I fall into that category.

Not mine. Also the racing line is wrong, it’s the racing line when defending the previous corner.

I’m pretty surprised to hear Rosberg say he did it on purpose

Me too. I’ve never heard of a driver admitting blame in such circumstances. They are racing hard and such incidents will occur. There have been occasions this year where I thought Lewis closed the door very hard and was lucky not to cause a collision. As a long time fan of F1 (my first hero was Jim Clark) I’m also appalled by Eddie Jordan’s comments suggesting that the “show” comes first and the “sport” comes second. The race stars when the lights go out and when you have two hard racers with identical equipment there will sometimes be tears. The stewards had it right.

The suggestion from Wolff is that what Nico was saying was that he chose not to yield to Hamilton, rather than he deliberately crashed into him. Given that the consensus is that in this situation it was up to Nico to yield, it is perhaps a fine line between Nico deliberately hitting Lewis and Nico seeing if Lewis would blink first and yield, but given 1) Nico’s championship lead, and 2), his apparent opinion that he needed to prove to Lewis that he’s no pushover on the track, I think it more likely that Nico was playing chicken hoping Lewis, with a greater need to not crash, would blink first.

I agree, I think Rosberg is saying that he didn’t make a mistake, he just wasn’t sure (and didn’t care) what the outcome of the move would be.

If Hamilton did this to Rosberg it would be seen as a brilliant attacking drive, as Kona said previously Hamilton has done this sort of thing on numerous occasion’s and the driver in front lets him past. Rosberg was obviously faster and it’s a race let them get on with it. The big difference is Hamilton uses the media to feel sorry for him.

I presume that any one claiming that Rosberg’s intention was to puncture Hamilton’s tyre is wearing a tin foil hat.
If Rosberg hit Hamilton on purpose, which he appears to admit, there is no way he could know the outcome of such a collision. To suggest that Nico knew that he would give his “team mate” a puncture is ridiculous.

@thegreatape – indeed worth a punt, especially with double points at the last race….

how much trouble will the management and merc be in if they suddenly started to get threatened by Red bulls and the 1.5 second advantage they currently have gets erroded in the next few races – suddenly their policy of “letting drivers race” would look spectacularly amateur and naive in the field of F1 racing.

actually forgetting all this nico and lewis rubbish,
wouldnt the best end to the title be in abu dhabi,
nico and lewis tied on points on pole/second,
third on the grid is riccardo and could win the title also if the other 2 dont finish.

all 3 into the first corner ….

Why would you deliberately get your front wing clipped by the car in front when there are 40+ laps still to race? You’re just as likely to need a new nose cone as the guy in front is to need a new rear tyre, and there is no guarantee that puncturing Lewis would cause the damage to the car which led to retirement. New tyre – about 3 seconds in the pits vs new nose cone – longer.

In terms of the ‘I did it to prove a point’, I take that to mean that Rosberg wanted to show aggression and ‘not back down’ in the opening exchanges of the race. The move itself was a misjudgement made more likely by this approach, but not the desired outcome.

This is quite a good analysis:

[video]http://vimeo.com/104256018[/video]

martinhutch – Member

Why would you deliberately get your front wing clipped by the car in front when there are 40+ laps still to race? You’re just as likely to need a new nose cone as the guy in front is to need a new rear tyre, and there is no guarantee that puncturing Lewis would cause the damage to the car which led to retirement. New tyre – about 3 seconds in the pits vs new nose cone – longer.

Nowhere near as likely, Nico was probably thinking “I’ll lose an endplate at worst and still be faster than the rest of the field”. As for not knowing about the damage caused by the tyre, having a puncture at any point is bad because you have to crawl back round to the pits, damage or not it’s likely to be a ruined race or at least a much lower position. The actual time in the pits makes just about no difference compared to the minute+ he lost getting back round the track.

Again to reiterate *I’m not saying he did it on purpose*, just that he knew what could happen and wasn’t too worried if it did. Quite rightly in a way, but not usually the done thing against your team mate on lap 2!