2014 Belgian GP (Spa-Francorchamps) - August 24th

steelmaker83 said:They're defending him just because he went up against Fernando Alonso, and since everyone loves hating on Alonso, they'll take any excuse to play the victim....

I used to think they were defending him because Alonso's penalty was embarrassingly light....
Let's be real, Kevin Magnussen absolutely earned his penalty ☕
But honestly? Alonso had no business being anywhere near Magnussen either. He deserved a much heavier penalty—he should have been at least 20 or 30 seconds behind Magnussen. What happened there warranted at least a pit stop, if not a full 10-second stop-and-go...

I dig the "zero respect" attitude, but honestly, there's a line you just don't cross.

stormybadger8 said:I probably would have argued they were protecting him because of that embarrassingly light penalty handed to Fernando Alonso...
In all honesty, Kevin Magnussen definitely earned his penalty. ☕
But realistically, Fernando Alonso shouldn't have been anywhere near Kevin Magnussen. He deserved a much heavier punishment; he should have been at least 20-30 seconds behind him. What happened actually warranted a pit lane visit, if not a 10-second stop-and-go penalty.

He should have. Though, it feels a bit foolish to penalize drivers for their team's mistakes. For those kinds of errors, the teams should lose points instead of forcing drivers to sit through race penalties.

steelmaker83 said:...teams should honestly be docked points for mistakes like that, rather than just making the drivers sit through penalties during the race.

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I’d just go with fines. It feels stupid to penalize drivers when they actually earned those points.

And all that nonsense at Indianapolis Motor Speedway... keeping the mechanics stuck? Seriously, it's not like the world is going to end if the race starts 36 seconds late. Back in Australia, they could have messed around with the timing and still finished two laps down without anyone getting punished. But at Indianapolis? No way. Bernie and the FIA are being total idiots.

steelmaker83 said:Yeah, they should have. Though, punishing drivers for team blunders feels pretty stupid... if teams make mistakes like that, dock their points instead of making the driver sit out parts of the race.

That would only make sense if Formula 1 wasn't a team sport, but it is...
Look, you can't separate the driver from the crew when it comes to the car or pit stop speed (just look at the gap between Haas and Mercedes-Benz), so you can't separate them when the team screws up either.
It makes zero sense for a driver to take all the glory when everything goes perfectly—even if the crew did basically all the work—but on the flip side, they shouldn't be totally off the hook when the team messes up. 😉

But this nonsense with Fernando Alonso is just 🙂 because other drivers get slapped with way harsher penalties for much smaller team screw-ups...
At the end of the day, what's the point of a driver losing ground because the team ruins the car and they DNF? Or if a wheel nut isn't tightened properly in the pits and they barely lose anything? It's ridiculous.

It’s hard to really assign blame here, but I guess there are ways to look at it... personally, in cases like this one, the driver is just sitting in the car helpless while the mechanics should have had everything ready on time. It's kind of similar to what happened with Mercedes; you can't really blame the crew for getting into an argument with each other, but the team still ended up losing out on points.

TBF, you've been posting pictures after my last comment, so would it be possible to get one from right before the start? Specifically when they're filming the whole grid... that final moment before the feed switches to that side camera. I'm just really curious if I caught it correctly that the car was already running (I think in that shot I saw the mechanic who starts the engine walking away from the car).

What are you even on about?
Look at the photo. It’s crystal clear that the mechanics are all around the car—including behind it—right as it starts moving, when at least half the car is already gone...
And they get penalized if they don't clear out 15 seconds before the green light hits...

stormybadger8 said:because that honestly deserved at least a drive-through penalty, if not a full-blown 10-second stop-and-go...

5 seconds—just correcting the record here. 🙂

Christian Harris11 said:It’s hard to assign blame here, but certain situations still arise... In my view, with this one and similar cases, the driver is stuck in the car and essentially powerless; the mechanics should have had everything ready on time. It's the same deal with Mercedes—the mechanics aren't necessarily at fault for their internal bickering, but the team still walks away empty-handed without those points.
...

But who actually gets to decide where the fault lies and who deserves the penalty?
How can anyone make a fair call on that? For instance, how can we say with absolute certainty that the delay from the pit crew wasn't actually triggered by an error made by the driver himself?
😁

Nico Rosberg is totally to blame for that contact with Lewis Hamilton.

Kevin Magnussen is the one who actually caused that dangerous driving situation.

Terry Carter2 said:For instance, how can we actually be certain that the pit crew's delay wasn't just some direct fallout from a mistake made by the driver himself?
😁

Yeah, right, because clearly we're all seeing here that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Red Bull driver being subpar.

darkmarlin16 said:Nico Rosberg is totally to blame for that contact with Lewis Hamilton.

Kevin Magnussen is totally to blame for that reckless driving. Seriously, what was he even thinking?

Racing incident? Give me a break!

☕

It’s actually quite interesting—does anyone happen to know a bit more about this?

joesaward.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/a-pet-hate/#comments

Comments:

I honestly think I would have been a lot more content with how everything unfolded if it hadn't turned into such a political circus—you know, what I mean? Between the booing from all those American "Hammy" fans after the race and "Hammy" then using the media as a blunt weapon for his version of events, it just became too much.

Refusing to back off just to "make a statement" is basically just planning a crash in advance. That's the whole problem—he had the chance to give way, but decided against it.

Michael Schumacher vs. Nico Rosberg – Spa 2010

And now all those trolls are running around the internet crying about rules and regulations.



It's funny how these same trolls seemingly have total amnesia regarding what Schumacher was pulling back in the nineties.

cosmiccyclist8 said:you clearly have zero memory of what Schumacher was pulling back in the nineties

Oh yeah? Enlighten us—what exactly was he doing?

The only thing I can think of right now is him stacking up championships in absolute mid-tier cars

or—since we're talking about Spa—that win where he snatched victory from P16 in crazy weather

Come on, ruggedhawk20—back in the nineties, there’s no way he would’ve just handed over the spot to Nico Rosberg like that. He definitely wouldn't have ended up in the gravel like we saw with Rosberg...

cosmiccyclist8 said:Come on, ruggedhawk20. Back in the nineties, he never would've handed up a spot like that to Nico Rosberg. He definitely wouldn't have ended up in the grass. What exactly was anyone expecting from Rosberg?...

Give me a break. 🤣
I’ve gotta be honest, I’m just not a fan of Lewis Hamilton, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Nico Rosberg.
Man, this is just pure nonsense. 🤦

It wasn't even a matter of Rosberg having room on the track. He was so far away from the edge that you could have squeezed a third car in there and overtaken him on the outside without breaking a sweat. 😍
And if that’s a sure thing, then I guess it’s also a sure thing that he wouldn't have ended up in the grass. 🤣

Germany is a total setup. First they didn't call the safety car in Monaco, and now we have this latest mess where he's clearly at fault...

Let’s not forget Monaco and Canada. ☕