Kobayashi and Sutil spark complaints over driving standards after crashes
Kobayashi's weaving caused Nakajima to have a huge crash
Adrian Sutil and Kamui Kobayashi faced the wrath of their rivals after the Brazilian Grand Prix after two crashes which eliminated a total of four cars.
Jenson Button was among the drivers to voice his complaints about rookie Kobayashi’s driving. And Jarno Trulli was handed a fine after arguing with Sutil at the side of the track following their collision.
Kamui Kobayashi and Kazuki Nakajima
Button complained to his team that Kobayashi was “moving around in the braking zones” while he was trying to pass the Toyota driver during Sunday’s race.
Button eventually found a way past unscathed, but Kazuki Nakajima was not so lucky when he took on his compatriot. He clipped the back of the Toyota, lost his front wing and left the track at high speed, his Williams coming dangerously close to taking off:
The stewards decided not to punish Kobayashi. In fact, there’s no sign they even bothered to investigate the collision with Nakajima. This is surprising and quite worrying as Kobayashi’s driving seemed to be some way below the accepted norm.
Having already made the prescribed one move off his racing line to defend his position, Kobayashi then moved back towards the racing line, as is also usually allowed.
But his third move, swinging back to the left, which caused the contact with Nakajima, is not normally permitted. If the stewards are going to allow driver to weave in this fashion we are going to see more collisions like this and possible some very serious accidents. It was a similar accident to this that caused the last fatality in F1 – the death of marshal Graham Beveridge at Melbourne in 2001 following a collision between Ralf Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve.
Adrian Sutil and Jarno Trulli
Some were quick to blame Trulli for his collision with Sutil but the Italian obviously felt very strongly that the Force India driver was to blame. Afterwards he said:
I am not angry because of the result, I am angry because of the manoeuvre which was extremely, extremely dangerous. We know it is an easy flat out corner, and he should have given me enough space not to go on the kerbs. We were in sixth gear and we were lucky that no one got injured – but this was something really bad.
I thought if I could pull away, Sutil would stay there and I was coming with much more speed. He went on the inside so I went on the outside, and we went side-to-side to him. There is an onboard camera showing my front wheel next to his wheel, so if you looking at the back then I am not there.
He might say that he drove on the racing line. Yes, but I am still on the racing line in this case. So if you decide to stay on the inside, then stay on the inside. Don’t pull on the outside because I am there – and you can see him there. The problem was that he put me over the kerbs – and once I was on the kerbs I lost car control completely.
And the fact that I hit him on the back is that once I was on the kerbs that car got unstable. I lifted off and then I hit him on the back – even though at the time I was next to him.
You cannot do that. It is like a straight – you are flat, and he basically sent me onto the kerbs and grass when I was on the straight. I cannot accept any apology, I am sorry. It is clear to anyone in the paddock that you cannot do that.
Jarno Trulli
The stewards didn’t agree. They said:
The Stewards met with the two drivers and their team representatives, considered the video evidence and the telemetry data and concluded that this was a racing incident and no further action is required.
Sutil, inevitably, defended himself:
His manoeuvre was dangerous, I was flying over the gravel there and lost control. I didn’t see anything and just drove my corner and he crashed into my car so I don’t know what his problem is.
Adrian Sutil
From the replay it’s clear that if Sutil didn’t know Trulli was alongside him he wasn’t paying attention (remembering 2004 we may call this the ‘Schumacher defence’). The Force India clearly lost ground to the Ferrari ahead – presumably because Sutil has lifted the throttle – and the replay from outside the car shows Trulli fully alongside him.
At that point Sutil pushed Trulli off the track. The crazy thing is, drivers are allowed to do this, and Sutil hasn’t done anything against the rules. But if you push a rival off the track and they lose control and crash into you then, frankly, that’s called reaping what you sow.
It baffles me that drivers are allowed to push each other off the track but the stewards have quite consistently refused to punish people for it – whether it’s Michael Schumacher on Fernando Alonso (Silverstone, 2003) or Juan Pablo Montoya (Imola, 2004) or Lewis Hamilton on Timo Glock (Monza, 2008) or any others.
It’s not hard to see how allowing this sort of thing could end with someone getting hurt. Alonso was taken out of the race by Sutil’s out-of-control car in a manner not too different to Nick Heidfeld’s violent smash into Takuma Sato in Austria seven years ago.
Again,this sort of driving needs banning before someone gets hurt.
The clarity of the rules
It’s worth pointing out that the ‘rules’ referred to above, about how many times a driver can change their line, and whether they can push a rival off the track, are not written down – these are inferences drawn from past incidents.
The unclear rules on driving standards became a subject of debate last year after controversial decisions (or non-decisions) at Spa, Monza and Fuji. They were explored in greater depth in this article: Four of F1’s ‘unwritten rules’.
Following the controversies of 2008 we were promised the stewards would issue more reasoned decisions and share video evidence. None of this has happened. And the rules regarding acceptable driving are every bit as opaque as they were 12 months ago.
It seems to be the case that if a collision doesn’t involve one of the front runners the stewards don’t really care. And while we’re on the subject, how on earth did they fail to give Heikki Kovalainen his penalty before the race had finished?
Read more: Four of F1’s ‘unwritten rules’
2009 Brazilian Grand Prix
- Webber wins in style as Button races to title (Brazilian Grand Prix race report)
- Button and Brawn celebrate (Pictures)
- Brazilian Grand Prix in pictures
- Jenson Button is F1 world champion
- Brawn win 2009 F1 constructors’ title
- Brazilian Grand Prix stats & facts
- Brazilian Grand Prix fastest laps analysis
- Brazilian Grand Prix – rate the race
- Championship standings after Brazil
- Brazilian Grand Prix result
FLIG said on 20th October 2009, 11:01
I don’t get this. How can people say Kobayashi should be punished? He and Button were the only ones giving us a bit of action! That’s why F1 is becoming the most boring of sports; because everyone around it is a sissy! What the hell does that mean, he was moving around in braking zones? If your car is better than mine, than what the hell sould I do, just move once to the right, once to the left and let you go by? As with many many sports, there’s the risk of a mortal accident. People die, people die at work every day, a lot of them. These guys are paid a hell of a lot of money to give us a show. If that means that they risk their lives 2 hours every week, than that’s how it should be. I’m not saying that I watch it expecting someone to die, but I watch it expecting to see stuff like Kobayashi’s. First day, and he said to the soon-to-be WDC “You’ll not get by me that easy, I’m not Grosjean”.
sato113 said on 20th October 2009, 11:26
true. Kobayashi had me on the edge of my seat!
Mahir C said on 20th October 2009, 13:14
Yes, you change your line once that is it. That has been rule all along, there wont be any overtaking if the lead driver swerves all across the track.
Trulli showed over and over how to defend without being naughty.
Kobayshi providing excitement does not have anything to do with it. He could still provide excitement, remember Nakajimas pass on him just after Button got past. He came back straight at Nakajima and retook the place round the outside.
gwenouille said on 20th October 2009, 11:10
Well… looking at 1min 18secs you can see how he comes back on track. Doesn’t look like a smooth ride over the grass. I am not sure he really could do otherwise…
Regarding the “dangerous move”-debate: I am not sure Kobayashi did much wrong really… Look at the old battles (senna/prost/mansell, Schumacher/hill/hakkinen): they are full of such brave attacking/defending and that is what got us glued to our seats.
But OK it was dirty: Nak was so much quicker.
Sutil: nothing wrong to me…
If we discourage that on-track fighting, we’ll have dull, penalties-full races where overtaking is only allowed on lapped opponents with the green light of the race director… And we will be the first to moan.
Mark Hitchcock said on 20th October 2009, 14:11
The thing is, there’s hard, clean fighting and there’s dangerous, cynical attempts to keep your rival behind at all costs.
It may be exciting but it’s not proper racing.
There’s a skill to defensive driving. Knowing when to move off-line to defend a corner, knowing when to stick to the racing line and force the chasing driver into making a frustrated mistake.
Koby was racing relatively hard and clean most of the time, and when he got overtaken and immediately re-took the place, that was a great piece of driving. But moving around in the braking zone is just dangerous, it’s desperate and it isn’t skillfull. It makes it next to impossible for the chasing driver to pull of a clean overtake and it obviously leads to accidents.
Koby is clearly talented and looks like a good racer, but like Trulli he needs to learn that if he can’t make a clean move he should wait until later.
Instead of swerving across Nak’s nose he could have squeezed him to the edge of the track, let him try an overtake and hope that he outbraked himself on cold tyres. Then Koby could have potentially got a run out of the next corner and attempt to get back in front.
I don’t think Koby’s move was cynical, but it wasn’t good racing either.
Mark Hitchcock said on 20th October 2009, 15:45
Got the drivers a bit mixed up in the last bit :P Point still stands though.
Maksutov said on 20th October 2009, 16:35
I agree Mark
Maciek said on 20th October 2009, 19:36
I maintain that I, for one, did not see Kobayashi ‘moving around in the breaking zone’ in front of Button – certainly not noticeably so, and not more so than any defending of position requires.
Tim said on 20th October 2009, 11:12
Trulli is experienced enough to know that he’d put himself in a risky position on the outside of a fast corner. Sutil should have checked his mirrors for cars closing from behind, given that he was being held up by Raikkonen, and should have given Trulli more room. A racing incident caused by one driver taking a big risk, another driver not taking enough care – about 50/50 in my book.
GeeMac said on 20th October 2009, 11:14
I’m not entirely sure if Kobayashi was “weaving around in the breaking zones” as Jenson said, it looked fair enough to me, but I am quite surprised that he (Kobayashi) didn’t get a slap on the wrists for the Nakajima incident.
Kobayashi quite clearly broke the “unwritten rule” by making his third move to the left, thus sending Nakajima into a big accident.
Did anyone else notice how close Nakajima was to not being collected by the tyre wall at Descida do Lago? Would he have ploughed into a group of marshalls had he missed it or is there another wall behind the one he hit?
Maciek said on 20th October 2009, 11:32
I’ll agree that Kobayashi, after extiting the pits towards the racing line, then makes two quick, consecutive moves to the left in front of Nakajima, but it still seems 50/50 on responsibility to me. Without wanting to pick on Nakajima, he isn’t very used to attempting passing maneuvres, is he?
Maciek said on 20th October 2009, 11:19
Keith – quite surprised at your description of Kobayashi vs Nakajima; I do not see the third move over that you describe Kobayashi as making. He comes out of the pits, goes onto the racing line, then moves over once to block Nakajima. If anyone sees a third move by Kobayashi, I would like to know exactly where.
As for Trulli vs Sutil, from the available footage, I see absolutely nothing wrong with Sutil, indeed I see him moving over as soon as Trulli’s nose comes into his side-view.
But most important, I would very much like for someone to provide video evidence of Kobayashi driving dangerously in front of Button. What I saw during the race was nothing else than a driver holding onto his position – perhaps a forgotten talent in F1, but certainly up to any standards of racing that I care to watch.
James said on 20th October 2009, 11:34
Koboyashi was in his first race in F1, so I think it’s fair the stewards cut him a bit of slack. I’m sure Algusuari may have done something similar in Hungary to another driver, only less was at stake then.
Trulli however was completely in the wrong, and I couldnt believe how unsportman he was. Sutil had the racing line, was already taking (or preparing) to take evasive action because of the crippled Ferrari in front. Trulli went for a gap which wasnt even there. Even when he tried to pull alongside Sutil there was little space. Trulli should have backed off a little and then overtaken Sutil after the restart where his experience of safety car restarts would have come to his advantage. What I find more annoying is Trulli’s response to Sutil. Out on the track, who looked the better guy when the cameras were on them? Sutil. He looked calmer and went to deal with the situation as an adult.
I dont see anything wrong with drivers pushing each other to the edge of the circuit. It’s part of the show and it’s that sort of incident which earns drivers their high salaries/danger money. Also, if it was banned, how boring would races be? Drivers look tense enough when trying to overtake as it is. Furtermore, people complain that races are already processional, imagine what they would be if the daring moves were banned? It was safe enough back in the 80s and 90s and sure as hell is now (if not safer given the improvements on the cars, trackside assistance and track improvements).
Basically, my real complaint is with Trulli and how much of an ass he was! Good to see passion, but not to the extent that it becomes inconsiderate on an innocent person.
SoLiD said on 20th October 2009, 11:34
I believe Sutil’s accident was a racing accident, it was hard for him to have spot Trulli there.
Koboyashi should have been givin a drive trough for sure!
I didn’t agree with Button’s comments on what I saw, but what he did to Nakajima, way out of line!
About passing, as far as I know, when a car’s front tyres are past the others rear tyres he’s not allowed to cross anymore and just take the racing line.. that’s how I remembered it :)
newdecade said on 20th October 2009, 11:47
If anything larger mirrors need to be made mandatory, there is no way that anyone can possibly keep a good awareness around them from those tiny things. From Sutil’s in-car you cant see the toyota at all until it appears fully on the grass, by which time its too late. Enforcing larger mirrors = no excuses for not seeing whats behind you.
Andreas said on 20th October 2009, 11:54
Since they let webbers maneuver pass it will be very difficult to punish Koboyashi for the maneuver later on. Just because he is a rookie shouldn’t make any difference.
Danny said on 20th October 2009, 12:07
Is Trulli Mad!
Kobayashi was driving eratically but Trulli, the cheek!
Sutil had the racing line – Trulli should have lifted.
What a joke. Maybe he should have watched the replays – i think its a bit different at 130 miles per hour.
IDR said on 20th October 2009, 12:29
The second video (Trully & Sutil accident) has a “second recorded voice” simulating a conversation between Trully, Sutil and Alonso.
As is in Spanish, you have posted a video against your own “F1 Fanatic-Comment Policy” :-) :-) :-)
matt said on 20th October 2009, 12:55
I’m amazed that Alonso didn’t see Sutil coming across the grass.
Chalky said on 20th October 2009, 14:41
I am. Sutil wasn’t exactly on an expected part of the track, so there’s no reason for Alonso to look at him.
Peter said on 20th October 2009, 12:55
What a joke.
Every race people comment how boring it was and the moment we get an exciting race with actual racing everyone wants to put drivers heads on the chopping block.
Patrickl said on 20th October 2009, 14:23
Joke indeed. Joke that you didn’t read the article but only the headline.
Keith’s article is about how drivers shouldn’t be allowed to defend dangerously. In fact that would make overtaking MORE POSSIBLE.
sumedh said on 20th October 2009, 12:59
Trulli had no business saying stuff to Sutil. Sutil just drove on the racing line and left enough room for Trulli to back off and stay behind him. Similar to what Hamilton did to Glock at Monza, the motto being: leave a driver no option but to back off and stay behind. Which I think, is fair.
Kobayashi and Nakajima is a different matter. Kobayashi pushed him a bit too much. But I think, Nakajima being a not so good driver fell into Kobayashi’s trap. If it was Jenson or Alonso or Hamilton, they would have just backed off a bit and gone back to the racing line and overtake Koabyashi by staying on the racing line.
Keith, I am amazed at your ability to turn every issue, whether on-track or off-track, into a rant against the FIA. You always blame them for their lack of consistency in the application of rules. But in this case, they ARE consistent. Pushing your rival off track has never been punished. And rightly so. If a driver does everything by the book, he will never be able to overtake, the cars are so closely matched in speed now. Some things are fortunately not banned yet, pushing off the track is absolutely okay in my opinion. Its a risk every driver should take in his capacity. Because, when you push, there is a good chance the car loses control and spirals back into you. Tit for Tat!!
Kutigz said on 20th October 2009, 13:07
Agreed, Sutil’s defence doesn’t hold any water, but Trulli’s behaviour was very unprofessional of a grandprix driver.