F1 Fanatic

Don’t know if somebody started this topic anywhere, but it was a massive indignity towards a great spirited fighting Sutil out to prove himself. It was shameless on Race Control’s part and I hope FI appeals against that. It must have been very distracting for him as it continued for a good number of laps till Hamilton passed him towards lap 50.

This has happened quite a few times for a variety of drivers, usually midfielders who were out of position. I don’t think there’s much FI can complain about since it’s unlikely it affected Sutil at all, given that he knew he was battling with the people around him for position.

@JamieFranklinF1: You are probably right with the tech glitches. But glitches or no glitches, anybody can understand the position of the drivers if they’re watching it on TV or following orders through their phones from a guy who is watching it on TV. At least a TV feed won’t be glitched out.
With all the tech geniuses around the paddock, no one could fix a glitch in a day.

@kingshark It’s nice in theory, but we would likely see far more incidents like Vettel and Karthikeyan’s incident at Malaysia last year happening. I can’t imagine ANY of the top teams supporting this idea either.

@slr

I’d rather sprinklers used during races.

That would cost and waste too much water though. Have any of us the slightest clue just how much water is needed to make a 6.0 km long, 20 meter wide circuit properly wet? A lot.

That would cost and waste too much water though. Have any of us the slightest clue just how much water is needed to make a 6.0 km long, 20 meter wide circuit properly wet? A lot.

I didn’t actually support Bernie’s idea of using sprinklers, I just said what I said to emphasise how much I would not want to see blue flags done away with.

I agree with @kingshark. I really don’t get the blue flag rule. @matthijs says they’re not racing for position, but they are. They’re all in the same race and sometimes we’re talking about a driver who isn’t normally a backmarker like Hamilton in Hockenheim last year. You should be able to try to unlap yourself if you can and therefore you should be able to fight with the front runners. If the front runners are so good, surely they can get round lapped backmarkers anyway? Why do they need the backmarkers to effectively pull over and get out of their way?

Also I think it’s unfair on the backmarkers when they are having their own race with other slower drivers because they can accidentally concede too much and have another backmarker overtake along with the faster car. And this does happen quite a lot.

It’s a race, every driver should have the right to drive as fast as they are able to, to the very end.

@jacklenox

Lapped cars are allowed to unlap themselves, that’s what Hamilton momentarily did in Hockenheim and he wasn’t penalized. The thing is that the reason they were lapped in the first place was because they were slower than the leaders so it’s usually not even remotely possible to them to try unlapping themselves (with exceptions of course but that’s very rare).

The blue flag rule is there to prevent the cars that are being lapped from meddling in the top battle which they aren’t part of and it usually doesn’t cost them awful lot of time to let the lapping cars pass if they do it smartly. If a Caterham had an effect on the race winner you can only imagine what kind of moan-fest would follow (like it did in Austin last year when Karthikeyan partly blocked Vettel which assisted Hamilton in his passing maneuver).