According to the FIA, Haas radio’d about Alonso’s mirror twice and they said they were “looking into it” but nothing came of it. Haas submitted their protest late but the FIA said it was admissible because it “wasn’t possible to submit in the time limit”, whatever that means.
More than anything, I think Haas’ protest shines a light on these inconsistencies. Because Alonso’s mirror fell off and there was no call, George had endplate damage too and no call was made, Perez was able to circulate for two laps with no call about his floppy endplate, Mick had floor damage from debris that no one could see so how could anyone say whether it was dangerous or not, Yuki went out with a duct-taped wing in Baku, Hamilton won Silverstone the one time on 3 wheels where he did a whole lap with the car shedding debris, and Haas got dinged 3 times for damage now this year. There is no hard drawn line as to what constitutes a penalty or not. Cars carry damage all the time, so what’s to say what is acceptable and what isn’t? It’s motorsport; it’s inherently dangerous so who is to say what is more or less dangerous when it comes to damage? I’m sure some kind of regulation clarification will come of this. Or I hope so.
I say let them race with some damage. We upgraded the helmets after the Barrichello spring incident, we put the halo on, we changed impact structure regulations, we changed nose regulations, all in the pursuit of safer cockpits, and now as soon as a car has a little tweaked bodywork they are black-flagged.
We should just slap the aeroscreen on and be done with it. Or canopy cockpit like a fighter jet.
First, that if you are both going 200 mph the object would not hit you at 200 mph, as it and the car are going the same speed until it departs. Maybe a 50 mph delta worst case?
Second, more than likely the air stream above the car is going to push that light of an object out of the path of the driver making it a non-issue.
And… aren’t the helmets supposed to be rated to some sort of impact level? I’d be much more concerned about a wayward spring assembly at 50 mph than a carbon fiber endplate or mirror at a 200 mph delta.
Honestly, if this is such a “safety” issue, maybe the FIA should instead revisit the Indycar style halo instead.
The difference in speed is going to be over 100mph in most cases, something as light as carbon fiber will slow down extremely quickly in the air. And you saw what carbon did to Norris’ wheel winglet thingy.
I do think they should be able to race with damage. The safety is there to protect drivers from debris, so some debris is alright. I enjoyed watching Hamilton limp home on 3 wheels, I enjoyed perez having a little performance drop and having to work around it.
At the very least, the FIA have to be consistent
Alonso’s penalty is complete BS. Not only was his car cleared to race by an FIA pit official after the incident, the protest from HAAS was submitted 24 minutes after the protest submission deadline. It should never have been entertained.
So Max is now tied with Schumacher for wins in a season. But Schumacher did that in a season with 18 races. Schumacher won 72.2% of races that season. If Max wins the rest, he’ll beat that percentage. Which would be incredible. But he has to win the rest.
I’ve been looking at the t1 incident with Russell, and I’m not gonna lie it doesn’t look like it’s all his fault. Sainz continues to turn to the left even after the turn. At the point of contact, there’s 1.5 car widths to the outside of sainz, despite sainz being the outside car. George carried too much speed into the corner, so he may have hit him anyway, but sainz definitely came across him.
On the other hand, maybe the only way George could get that close was by locking his brakes, and maybe he wouldn’t have even made the corner. I guess he got that close because he carried too much speed into the corner?
IDK
Yeah I saw that, he’s trying to get the switchback on max but it’s a stupid move on lap 1 T1 - as if nobody would be coming up the inside. George did outbrake himself, but I’d say it’s more 50/50 than wholly George’s fault.
The FIA said: “Red Bull Racing was found to be in breach, however, the Cost Cap Administration recognised that Red Bull Racing has acted cooperatively throughout the review process and has sought to provide additional information and evidence when requested in a timely manner, that this is the first year of the full application of the Financial Regulations and that there is no accusation or evidence that RBR has sought at any time to act in bad faith, dishonestly or in fraudulent manner, nor has it wilfully concealed any information from the Cost Cap Administration.”
Sounds like they counted their beans wrong. A 1.89 million pound over-spend is hardly worth anything in terms of advantage I would imagine… In the grand scheme of things, that’s small. But of course the comments sections are full of people demanding Red Bull be banned from the sport.
I’ve read and heard in a few place that their overspend was equivalent to about 50% of the development budget for a season. I’d call that pretty significant.
I never expected the FIA to deduct points or remove them from 2021 results, F1 is too “precious” for that. I did expect them to decrease their future cost cap by double the overspend along with the decrease in aero.
This penalty just means the rich teams can overspend, because a fine means nothing to them, they spent that money before anyway.
