2014 British Grand Prix Sunday in Tweets

2014 British Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

Silverstone was turned pink on Sunday in memory of Jenson Button’s late father John as thousands of fans turned up in special T-shirts to commemorate him and raise money for the Henry Surtees Foundation.

When the chequered flag fell Lewis Hamilton gave the crowd a home victory to savour. But on winning the British Grand Prix for a second time he was unimpressed to be presented with a tacky sponsor’s trophy instead of the distinctive and traditional RAC trophy.

Here’s a selection of Sunday’s best Tweets at the British Grand Prix.

Build-up

There were pink shirts all around to remember John Button, who passed away in January.

Race

The race was red-flagged for an hour as Kimi Raikkonen’s first-lap shunt left the marshals and track stewards scrambling to repair barriers.

Fernando Alonso overshot his starting position in the other Ferrari, eventually receiving a five second penalty.

After the chequered flag

Felipe Massa’s 200th Grand Prix was a big disappointment.

F1 Fanatic on Twitter

F1 Fanatic has three Twitter accounts you can follow:

  • F1 Fanatic: F1 Tweets straight from the editor including links to all new articles
  • F1 Fanatic Live: Live F1 session coverage including team radio
  • F1 Fanatic Update: Just links to new articles on F1 Fanatic – nothing else

2014 British Grand Prix

Browse all 2014 British Grand Prix articles

34 comments on “2014 British Grand Prix Sunday in Tweets”

  1. I have to say, I was with Hamilton in being hugely disappointed about the lack of the proper trophy on the podium, glad he actually got his hands on it though! Also nice to see him speaking his mind about the trophy he was given.

    Ok, it may not be fair to slag off something that was designed by a fan in a competition, but it could have been put together better…

    Meanwhile, @keithcollantine is that a tweet comparing F1 & football? Are you feeling alright? ;)

    1. I don’t think there was much wrong with the trophy designs (we’ve seen worse), but I think it was awful to make the winning trophy in the shape of a bank logo, and on this of all races. Silverstone had made such a big deal about it being their 50th race, with classic F1 car parades, encouraging fancy dress, etc. But rather than award one of the most iconic trophies in motorsport (as has always been tradition) they gave that Santander trophy to the winner. They could’ve just given those corporate logos to the 2nd and 3rd place (as they normally do) and nobody would’ve thought anything of it. But when everyone (especially Lewis) was expecting the beautiful gold trophy, of course everyone is going to notice.

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        7th July 2014, 10:47

        @jackysteeg – It was a big PR disaster for Santander with Lewis standing there asking where the real trophy was.

    2. Daniel (@collettdumbletonhall)
      7th July 2014, 12:17

      So the trophy they are given on the podium isn’t usually the proper one? I don’t quite understand why they do that? When do they give them the proper one?

      1. Good question, when and where did Lewis get the proper Gold Trophy?

  2. Santander was a bit cheeky to Maurice. They had their logo plastered all over the podium. They didn’t have to design the trophy’s as well and they were crap. Even if it was a competition. They picked a bad choice because the trophies were exactly the same as their logo and therefore looked like cheap ornaments from one of their offices.

    1. That’s why they chose them. “Design a trophy… that looks like all our other sponsor trophies please”. Sad waste.

    2. Santander has been making crap trophies since…well since they started sponsoring trophies. They are all absolute garbage.

  3. Santander made €4.37 billion profit last year. They could have easily spent more than 25p on the trophies. Fobbing it off as a competition winning design is no excuse for the ridiculous cheapness of the finished product.

    OK, the proper trophy is ridiculously ornate, but that’s the point! It’s meant to be overly fancy! That’s how we Brits do trophies :-)

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      7th July 2014, 9:51

      @raceprouk – Imagine it in any other sport though?

      We’ve won the world cu…. wait… what is that!? A Santander logo on a stick!?

      How about instead of collecting your trophy from the royal box at Monaco, you could get it from the local Santander branch?

  4. I wonder what the Santander competition assignment was. ‘Make a trophy. Usage undisclosed. Might be televised. Entries must be sent by mail to Santander UK. No prize money.’

    1. “Design a trophy. Design must be in the shape of Santander logo.”

  5. Great to see Lewis making a big deal about the real British Grand Prix trophy. It is appalling that Silverstone stooped them selves to Santandars cheap trophy. Glad to see it backfired on them when Lewis pointed out how crap it was. After the gorgeous hand crafted trophy in Austria who are proud of their local heritage for Silverstone to sell out like this was deeply disappointing.

  6. I also find it amazing to hear and see so many people praising Massa for his avoiding action in the Kimi crash. From what i saw he didnt avoid Kimi at all in fact lost control of his car and crashed straight into him. Much like hes done through his whole career….

    1. Massa would have hit Kimi head-on if he’d kept going the way he was; what he managed to do was turn the car around 90 degrees so that the rear end glanced off of Kimi’s instead of spearing it. That simple turn prevented what would likely have been a horrendous crash.

    2. I agree with Ben Baileys 2nd sentence.
      Didn’t Massa hit Kimi sideways ?, kinda the widest way to get a car through a gap ?

      Also @willbuxton & @eddstrawF1 , Kimi’s re-entry to track looked Ok to me, kept it to the right, everyone immediately around him saw him coming , it was that drain gully that threw him into a tank-slapper,

      1. Buxton also tweeted that if Kimi had bothered to do the track walk he would have known about that ditch. He has a point.

    3. Massa was behind a Caterham when the accident began, so it was only as the Caterham moved that Massa could see Kimi, at this stage Kimi was just about to rejoin from hitting the barrier so Felipe did a good job of spinning the car to avoid a much bigger impact.

    4. If you look closely Massas rear wheels lock right before impact. My guess is he hit the brakes hard and swerved right to avoid Kimi, the BBW kicked in too hard and locked the rear wheels sending him sideways.

      1. Or when massa braked he had collected debris on his rear tires which caused lack of grip on the rear of the car.

    5. When massa was coming to the scene of the accident he was behind caterham which blocked his vision. The tv camera makes it look like he could see better but the driver sits a lot lower in the car than the camera. Then he sees the caterham in front of him slowing down and maybe he also sees the puff of dust further away on the right. With no idea if there is a wreck on the road it is better to follow the car in front of you than to try to take different only to find out why the car in front did not choose that side of the road. And hit the thing he was avoiding…

      It is also incredibly difficult to predict where the car will go when it hits the wall at that kind of angle and is coming back to the track with the driver having no control. Only thing massa could have done is to slow down more but even then he might have risked somebody driving into the back of him. Split second decisions are easy to make afterwards but in the heat of the moment it is difficult to get everything right.

    6. petebaldwin (@)
      7th July 2014, 9:57

      Because Massa turned the car so that he hit Kimi sideways on, it sent him into a spin rather having a sudden stop. If he’d not braked and hit Kimi square on, it would have been a massive accident. As it was, that part of the whole incident was fairly minor.

    7. His avoiding action definitely prevented a more serious accident. What i’m not sure about is whether he could have avoided it entirely if he hadn’t hit the brakes. If he’d swerved without braking he would have been going faster but wouldn’t have spun so maybe could have missed the Ferrari. I guess the natural reaction was to hit the brakes at the same time, and maybe that was the correct action but was just something i was thinking about after the event.

  7. Whatever the design, a trophy must be a unique thing. A precious piece of metal that shows that you won something that’s difficult to win.

    What if Wimbledon, US Open, Roland Garros and the Australian Open “sold” the rights of their one of a kind trophies to a company that starts making standard, always the same, crappy metal logos?

    A trophy must stand out. And even more if it has tradition behind it. Every Grand Prix should have their unique trophy!

    “A competition won by a student”? so? at least make it of good quality, it wobbled when they grabbed it…

    1. Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
      7th July 2014, 8:34

      I really can’t imagine what the guidelines were for the Santander trophy contest.

      1 – Generic
      2 – Promotional to the max
      3 – Budget conscious

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      7th July 2014, 9:59

      @fer-no65 – Spot on. No other sport in the world is so happy to sell out their history for small monetary gains in the same way F1 are. Those trophies were horrible but I have to say, I’m delighted how much it has backfired on Santander!

    3. Am I the only one that think the Santander logo looks a bit like a pile of dung with odor making it’s way up..?

  8. Gutierrez dives down the inside of Maldonado, howling “I remember Bahrain, you git.”

    @keithcollantine I was thinking exactly that when the incident happened… While other teams are feeling out how to change out powertrains as quickly as possible, during 2014, the Lotus boys are getting well drilled in rebuilding their car… I wonder if the mechanics get paid by the hour? :P

  9. petebaldwin (@)
    7th July 2014, 9:24

    “Asphalt run-off plays its part in that Kimi shunt. He wouldn’t have been rejoining at that speed if there was something else out there”

    Great point.

    1. @petebaldwin

      I remember Grosjean going off track a while ago and hitting a kerb when rejoining, which launched the car into the air. I thought since then they had tried to remove kerbs or ditches at points where cars would be rejoining the track (fair enough to put them in to stop corner cutting). I guess they haven’t done it everywhere, maybe this incident will make them revisit these areas.

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        7th July 2014, 10:44

        I think they need to issue penalties for going off the track and re-entering at full speed. What Raikkonen did was dangerous and it ruined Massa’s race as well as his own. In my opinion, he has caused an avoidable accident!

        If you go off the track (I don’t mean just going a bit wide, I mean “off” off like Raikkonen did), you should slow down and re-enter the track safely – not keep you foot down and jump over a drain to get back onto the track.

        1. @petebaldwin That might be true in some cases, but Raikkonen was rejoining in the middle of a straight where cars were probably doing 130-150mph, so arguable rejoining at low speed onto the racing line would have been dangerous. Hopefully cars would be able to see him but there’s always a chance someone could have been unsighted (as Massa was). So i think they need to make allowances for some corners, particularly when they have tarmac run-off which seems to be allowing you to run and rejoin at full speed (but then hiding a ditch, bump or kerb as your rejoin which is worst of both worlds).

          1. petebaldwin (@)
            7th July 2014, 12:10

            @keithedin – true but I’m sure it’s in the rules that you can only re-enter the track when it is safe to do so.

  10. Jonathan Crowther
    7th July 2014, 15:24

    I couldn’t believe the rubbish “plastic logo” that was given to Lewis when he won. Winning any grand prix is an event and should be celebrated with a trophy worthwhile for the driver to hold up, look at what the other tracks offer the winners. Sorry to say but this years Silverstone trophy looked cheap and is an embarrassment even if it was designed by a competition winner – It could at the very least have been made of glass.

Comments are closed.