No penalty over crash that put three drivers out

2015 British Grand Prix

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The stewards have cleared all five drivers who were involved in the first-lap collision at the British Grand Prix.

Lotus drivers Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado retired in the incident along with McLaren’s Jenson Button. The other McLaren of Fernando Alonso and Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull were also involved.

Having interviewed the drivers the stewards ruled that “no driver was wholly or predominately to blame”.

Grosjean blamed Ricciardo for the accident, saying the Red Bull driver braked too late for the first corner. However Alonso believed the two Lotus drivers had been too uncompromising.

“It was a big mess as we arrived at turn three,” he said. “The two Lotus drivers were far too aggressive, and they touched each other.”

“In avoiding them, I had a half-spin, and touched Jenson. There were a lot of retirements, and little common sense on display.”

2015 British Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    32 comments on “No penalty over crash that put three drivers out”

    1. No penalty over crash that put three drivers out.
      No penalty over Massa’s unsafe release.
      No penalty over track limits.

      Keep them coming.

      1. Andy (@andybantam)
        5th July 2015, 17:23

        Nice one, Nigel…

      2. No penalty over crash that put three drivers out.

        Racing incident.

        No penalty over Massa’s unsafe release.

        An unsafe release is defined as ‘releasing into the path of another car’; that did not happen, they ran side-by-side, which they were able to because the Silverstone pitlane is wide enough to do so.

        No penalty over track limits.

        All those deleted times in qualifying don’t count?

    2. It’s really amaizing how the tv director had a lot of time to show replays, but chose to broadcast onboard shots from Lewis, Nico, Felipe and Bottas instead of an incident that took 3 guys out and 1 damanged

      On one hand, they think we’re too blind so we need to see the Williamses nail the start 4 times but on the other hand, they decide we’re too good to watch the trigger of the Safety car just once, and from a very bad angle.

      To balance it out, at least he kept the top 4 on the screen for 20 laps or so. And that’s great.

      1. I agree with you on this one. It was the worst directed transmission I’ve ever seen. I was hoping for some onboard replays of the first crash, nothing came up interesting. Yellow sectors all around, the director was more interested in showing us the FIA homologation number on the back of Lewis’ steering wheel.
        Very poor. And then people complain that F1 is an expensive show to watch, either live or on TV.

      2. @fer-no65 It’s highly likely that they didn’t have any onboard cameras from any of the cars involved transmitting at the time.

        I have read before that due to bandwidth limitations, they only have a selection of onboard cameras active to choose from at any one time. As such, they tend to acitivate the drivers at the front or any significant drivers further back. Chances are, they just didn’t have the footage available from any of the drivers involved in the accident.

        1. @willwood a slow mo of the same onboard shot showing the crash would’ve done it. Or a repeat of it.

        2. @willwood @xusso @fer-no65 understandable then, if they only had a few cameras on, but why choose that pathetic side camera that was seen on Jenson’s car? The track action only fills about a quarter of the screen.

          Then there is the fact that this is a sport which costs hundreds of millions to run and broadcast, surely they can afford to keep all of the cameras going, or at least more than they do. It’s not as if we are at a time where technology is limited.

          Plus they missed loads of yellows everywhere, Kimi spinning for example. This was a disgrace.

          1. The stupid thing is, they do record from all the cameras; why the footage is limited to just the stewards I can’t explain

          2. And let’s not forget a British (I assume) director at the British GP; with a British team and a British driver fighting at the front, where else would they focus? ;)

        3. remember that we also didnt have Alonso crash in Austria from his onboard view..

      3. I completely agree, the footage and choice of broadcasting was really poor. Will Wood has said they have limited cameras to use but on the BBC DC was constantly saying he was watching someone spin off on other cameras. Why didn’t we see any of this?

        1. with the exception of the monaco race all races have the TV pictures produced by bernies company , nothing to do with the broadcasters, they have to use what they are given

    3. It looked to me more like Ericson hit one of the Lotus that caused it all to kick off. However the TV coverage of the incident wasn’t great.

      I felt like today’s TV coverage wasn’t the greatest either but it was a good race.

      1. @valkrider

        I agree, it doesn’t seem like either Grosjean had a point in accusing Ricciardo or Alonso describing the events faithfully that both Lotus drivers were too aggressive.

        From what I can see from the onboard shot of Verstappen, it was actually Grosjean who the main culprit was as it was he who seemed to brake so late that he had to apply excessive steering lock on entry to avoid slamming into Ericsson and while being loose got a hit on his right-front from Ricciardo, which thus sent him into Maldonado.

        But the point is, Ricciardo was perfectly entitled to his line as it was Grosjean who lost control of his vehicle by that point in time.

        1. Grosjean braked late because Ricciardo braked late. Ricciardo also accused Grosjean and said it was because of the “first lap nutcase”.

          1. Ricciardo’s been far from level-headed lately, hasn’t he? His situation is obviously not helping his mood.

            1. He’s too aggressive, a la Monaco. Hamilton and Vettel are quite aggressive too sometimes, or Alonso, but Hamilton calmed down a lot and Vettel and Alonso are some of the least crash prone guys out there today.

          2. And your source for Ricciardo’s quote is…?

            1. Daniel never said that. A poster said that he said that as a joke but the less brain capable actually took it as fact.

    4. How Ricciardo did not receive a penalty for this is beyond me…

      Apparantly you can get away with anything if your last name is Ricciardo… Just as long as you smile afterwards and bring the FIA/FOM/RBR lot’s of PR money.

      1. He accused Grosjean actually. He said he didn’t see it but it was because of “the first lap nutcase”.

        1. Unbelievable. He’s acquiring all the bad aspects of Webber it seems.

          Along with the poor getaways it seems.

        2. Garbage. Source please.

      2. Guess you missed the qualifying where ‘Mr supposedly can get away with anything’ got his best time deleted.

        Struggling to decipher if you’re a bitter Vettel or JEV fan considering half the posts you make are always slating Ricciardo.

        1. If you exceed the track limits, your time gets deleted. Pretty plain and simple. Without going off, would he be still as quick? We don’t know. But after the start and except for the retirement, where Ricciardo was all race long, I don’t know.

      3. By the way. This is the real Baron, I wish to disassociate myself with this other, fake Baron’s remarks.

        There can only be one!

    5. Well, it sounds like poor race coverage is making it hard to get a great handle on the cause.

    6. Keep calm everyone. Any footage for this incident is being saved to add to the end-of-season review DVD extras :P

    7. @KeithCollantine pls correct me if I am wrong .

      It seems like there is no onboard cameras on Alonso’s car. In the last 2 races a camera shot from his car would have revealed the true picture of the ifirst lap ncidents.

    8. I also got a feeling that FOM is kind of treating McLaren Honda like a true back marker car . while in reality they are struggling to keep pace with Manor, McLaren being McLaren with2 world champions deserve a little more respect.

      No wonder Eric Boullier is saying that it is affecting their brand image. Why would anybody invest in sponsoring a team if it is hardly shown on TV ? Alonso’s Samurai theories will not always sell with the sponsurs. They will wait till McHonda is competitive once again. No point in investing in a struggling team. By this time the damage will be too heavy for McLaren.

      1. Struggling to keep pace with Manor? McLaren is at least 2 seconds per lap quicker…

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