F1 2021 – spoilers here

It sort of sums up F1…. great cars, talented drivers, great specacle (sometimes)….

but sort of pretty rotten at the centre.

Absolute farce!

I paid €90 to get in to Spa in 2016 & we were thinking of going again next year but today has guaranteed we’ll never go there again.

Anyone who paid to get into Spa today should be offered free entry for next year IMO. That said I understand why it was cancelled, just glad I dont have Sky Sports and wasted half my sunday watching it.

Agree with refunds, but that needs to come out of the FIA’s pocket.

So who got the bonus point for fastest lap?

I feel sorry for anyone at the race, fourteen kilometres behind a safety car is not a Grand Prix. Should’ve been run tomorrow.

So who got the bonus point for fastest lap?

No one.
Bizarrely Mazzapin has the FL, which will forever be recorded on his career stats, but he didn’t get a top ten finish so no point for him.

Should’ve been run tomorrow.

A lot of the marshalls wouldn’t have been able to make tomorrow at short notice, they’d be at their day jobs (it’s not a bank hol in Belgium tomorrow).

Bizarrely Mazzapin has the FL, which will forever be recorded on his career stats

LMAO. I still think the Indy debacle back in 2005(?) was worse because it was pretty much deliberate, but this is the second most FU thing I’ve seen. Just total amateur hour.

With hindsight, I think they should have just run three laps behind the safety car at the start (or just a few laps under a yellow flag, as Gary Anderson says) then stopped the race and announced that they would just award half points for the starting order if they couldn’t restart the race. That way, it would have been clear all along what was going to happen instead of pretending they were going to have a race.

I know a lot of people are saying they shouldn’t have awarded points because there was no race, but I think awarding half-points for starting order when it is impossible to race is reasonable. Some drivers nailed it (Russell and Verstappen, obviously), others didn’t (Norris and Perez). The ones who nailed it deserve something to show for that effort. Just be transparent about what’s really happening instead of pretending there was a race.

Hamilton says “There was no moment today when we would have been able to race”  [but] “Money talks, it was literally the two laps to start the race. The sport made a bad choice today”

Writing on Instagram, he said: “We should have called it quits, not risked drivers and most importantly refunded fans who are the heart of our sport.”

This reminds most of the Coronovirus races farce held last year. I can feel the dead hand of Sky on all of this. Remember when he said “Cash is King”

Remember when he said “Cash is King”

I genuinely have a lot of respect for Hamilton, but he has made hundreds of millions out of the sport so it’s a bit hypocritical for him to raise this. Motor racing runs on money, which comes from broadcasting rights, hosting fees from promoters, and sponsors. Six of the 10 teams have had financial problems in the last decade or so: Alpine, Alfa Romeo, Williams, and Aston Martin wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t found investors willing to pump a lot of money in; Haas is still struggling; McLaren had to restructure to survive. Apart from Alpine, those teams only have a viable future if there is a cost cap and enough prize money to supplement their sponsorship deals that they can be competitive. Yes, the fans should get refunds, but running three laps behind the pace car to meet a checkbox that the event took place is something that people need to just accept if it was necessary to keep the money flowing that the smaller teams depend on.

In the longer term, the FIA need to just have a clear set of rules about what happens if it’s too wet to drive. It was just laughable that nobody seemed to know what to do.

I thought they should have had a 1 lap running race. The fans would have seen the drivers getting wet, if not really competing.

I thought they should have had a 1 lap running race.

Just line up a bunch of old British cars, one for each team. Drive them through a puddle, which will make the electrical systems stop working. Then have the teams try to push-start them in the rain. Whoever completes one lap first wins. If they actually manage to get the engine to start, they get a bonus point. Will make the sport relevant to anyone who’s ever owned an old British car.

thols2
Free Member
Just line up a bunch of old British cars, one for each team. Drive them through a puddle, which will make the electrical systems stop working. Then have the teams try to push-start them in the rain. Whoever completes one lap first wins. If they actually manage to get the engine to start, they get a bonus point. Will make the sport relevant to anyone who’s ever owned an old British car.

Special dispensation allowed for Ferrari, Alpha and Torro Rosso to bring something Italian

It’s a shame to say as an F1 fan but I put F1 in the same basket with Boxing (Maybe Boxing not so bad), how can it be called a race after following the safety car for 3 laps. I am aware they have some unusual rules but a race where you can’t pass another vehicle surely that’s not a race.

I had to check the dictionary “a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, etc. to see which is the fastest in covering a set course”

It’s little different from Monaco, qualifying IS the race, so it feels right that Saturdays performance should be rewarded in some way.

It’s little different from Monaco, qualifying IS the race, so it feels right that Saturdays performance should be rewarded in some way.

Yep, Monaco’s the worst, but it’s not the only circuit where passing is so difficult that it basically just comes down to qualifying and pit-stop strategy. Remember when Ricciardo won Monaco with his hybrid system not working so he was 250 HP down, plus a gearbox malfunction, but it was still impossible to pass.

“a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, etc. to see which is the fastest in covering a set course”

That’s a good definition of a Time Trial. Racing is a bit more complex

Special dispensation allowed for Ferrari, Alpha and Torro Rosso to bring something Italian

In that rain, you’d have carried the Alfa home as a pile of iron oxide.

Bernt Maylander for driver of the day😁
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.essentiallysports.com/f1-news-bernd-maylander-reacts-to-f1-fans-demanding-belgian-gp-driver-of-the-day-for-the-safety-car/amp/

Bernt Maylander for driver of the day

I was seriously curious if he had the set the fastest lap.

I really hope the points from this farce don’t end up deciding the championship. Only the fia l layers would call that a race

I really hope the points from this farce don’t end up deciding the championship. 

Effectively points for qualifying. Same as the sprint race… (which I dont like) And poor Checo has lost out on both occasions

I wouldn’t worry about this one race making the difference when you look at the picture so far:

– Verstappen tyre debacle
– Verstappen-Hamilton Silverstone debacle (including engine death)
– Bottas-half the field (inc Verstappen) debacle
– Spa debacle

and i’m sure there is more to come

Yep, Verstappen gained 5 points over Hamilton. If he wins the title by that margin, it would be hard to say he didn’t deserve it given the tyre failure and the Bottas crash which were completely out of Verstappen’s control.

Also forgot Hamilton’s brake debacle in Baku

Yep, Verstappen gained 5 points over Hamilton. If he wins the title by that margin, it would be hard to say he didn’t deserve it given the tyre failure and the Bottas crash which were completely out of Verstappen’s control.

But previous incidents – crashes, tyres, reliability are all part of F1. No one should have had points for yesterdays cancelled race. There was no race.

Yeah,  but F1 has always been like this. This is just one more race that’ll end up in “Top Ten  GPs spoiled by the weather” or some such nonsense on YouTube.

At the very least, they tried to have a race, and the weather decided that wasn’t going to happen. No one was killed or injured and they didn’t end up with a pile of millions of dollars worth of scrap at the out run of Eau Rouge.

They didn’t try to have a race – they did the bare minimum to lodge enough laps for points to be given and contracts to be honoured.

They should just add it to the rules that, in the event of the race being cancelled, half points will be awarded based on qualifying.

They didn’t try to have a race

If that was the case, we wouldn’t have had the constant delays based on weather reports that were saying things like “it’ll rain for another 30 mins that we’ll have a dry spell” I err towards the idea that the stewards did their best to stage a race. The rain had other plans. No one died trying to provide entertainment. There’s another race this weekend.

I err towards the idea that the stewards did their best to stage a race.

I’m with you on that – even the parade around behind the safety car was an attempt to see if 20 F1 cars would clear enough water to race, but after a few laps it was apparent that the rain was too heavy. Masi did all he could to deliver something.

The farce is then that the rules say points are awarded for the event (I won’t call it a race). Williams are probably the only winners as George’s points could mean LOTS more money for them based on WDC positions.

I think the only other thing they could have tried was circulating under Virtual Safety Car for a few laps to see if that cleared the water, but the point that that might have been useful was earlier in the afternoon when the weather wasn’t quite as bad.

There’s another race this weekend.

ah sh¡t, here we go again… #F1 pic.twitter.com/c1PDPjQDAA

— superm4xx (@superm4xx) August 31, 2021

circulating under Virtual Safety Car for a few laps to see if that cleared the water

This. If nothing clears water better than 20 f1 cars circulating at speed why not send them out a set distance apart running to a set VSC delta. This way the drivers get a feel for the track at higher speeds than behind the safety car and a decent amount of water is continuously being dispersed to see if racing can commence. If anyone is daft enough and exceeds the delta they get pulled in to the pits and put to the rear.
This process could be started in anticipation of a weather window so the cars are ready to go when it appears rather than needing 15 minutes to gather the drivers and get the cars started by which point the weather window could have been and gone.
Clutching at straws but anything would have been better than 2 laps behind the safety car.

The VSC thing is what Gary Anderson is suggesting too…

https://the-race.com/formula-1/five-rules-f1-should-consider-changing/

I can forgive the first time they tried to start the race, they needed to do that. But the second ‘start’ when it was raining even heavier was because they were running out of time and just to log that a race had happened.

Clutching at straws but anything would have been better than 2 laps behind the safety car.

I think you’ll struggle to find anyone from Sky to the FIA to the teams to the fans who thinks that was a solution to the issue on Sunday. The regs. just aren’t set out for “It rains forever, and you can’t start” so they did the best with what they had. Had they done anything outside the current regulations, we’d be no doubt listening to Messrs. Horner and Mateschitz telling anyone who’d listen how the stewards had chosen to do something that was aimed at inflicting as much damage as possible at Red Bull specifically and that everyone is horrid and mean to them all the time.

I’d rather have a 2 lap parade than that any day of the week.

But previous incidents – crashes, tyres, reliability are all part of F1. No one should have had points for yesterdays cancelled race. There was no race.

this. There was no race yesterday. They was a contact compliance parade

Aston being penalised for change of wing but redbull surely did at least that to get Perez back in the race.