***** The Official Abu Dhabi GP Thread 2015 *****

[NM62]

deadslow said:

funkyrobot said:

MitchT said:

funkyrobot said:

What the hell just happened with iplayer? The race was about ten laps from the end and it flicked to the podium questions?

Well done BBC. Ffs!

You haven't missed anything.

So I've noticed.

I was switching between the race and Andy Murray, and every time I switched back to F1 it was like taking a mogadon trip.

I have heard better things said about Andy Murray's game

[thegreenhell]

monamimate said:

Seems not everyone agrees that Mercedes deliberately sabotaged LH's race... he may just have been beaten fair and square:

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/f1/reports/2015-...

Apart from a few crazy people on internet forums, I don't know anyone he thinks he was 'deliberately sabotaged'.

[Scuffers]

thegreenhell said:

monamimate said:

Seems not everyone agrees that Mercedes deliberately sabotaged LH's race... he may just have been beaten fair and square:

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/f1/reports/2015-...

Apart from a few crazy people on internet forums, I don't know anyone he thinks he was 'deliberately sabotaged'.

exactly, however, that article is somewhat missing the point.

need to look at the position just before Nico's last stop, not 5 laps after.

[monamimate]

thegreenhell said:

monamimate said:

Seems not everyone agrees that Mercedes deliberately sabotaged LH's race... he may just have been beaten fair and square:

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/f1/reports/2015-...

Apart from a few crazy people on internet forums, I don't know anyone he thinks he was 'deliberately sabotaged'.

Really?
Here's a selection of quotes from this very forum:

"a win that was organized by the team via a sequence of engine map adjustments"

"He probably would've won even if Mercedes hadn't knobbled Hamilton"

"gifting Rosberg his wins keeps him happy and it keeps the team happy"

"Mercedes then neutered Hamilton"

"intentionally stuff up the strategy of your drivers"

"Mercedes pretty blatantly protected Rosberg for this race"


Quite a few crazy people on this forum, then.

[johnxjsc1985]

monamimate said:

Really?
Here's a selection of quotes from this very forum:

"a win that was organized by the team via a sequence of engine map adjustments"

"He probably would've won even if Mercedes hadn't knobbled Hamilton"

"gifting Rosberg his wins keeps him happy and it keeps the team happy"

"Mercedes then neutered Hamilton"

"intentionally stuff up the strategy of your drivers"

"Mercedes pretty blatantly protected Rosberg for this race"


Quite a few crazy people on this forum, then.

not sure if you have ever done anything competitive but once you win something early its difficult to maintain the previous focus because the previous focus was about winning and that objective had been done.
Was it Chelsea last year that won the league very early and struggled in the remaining games.
Hsmilton was not 100% focused to win because he did not have to he is the World Champion and Rosberg won races with his biggest rival not 100%.
He will have his chance again next year as he did this season and last season and when the pressure really mounts he will crumble again.

[thegreenhell]

monamimate said:

Quite a few crazy people on this forum, then.

[monamimate]

johnxjsc1985 said:

monamimate said:

Really?
Here's a selection of quotes from this very forum:

"a win that was organized by the team via a sequence of engine map adjustments"

"He probably would've won even if Mercedes hadn't knobbled Hamilton"

"gifting Rosberg his wins keeps him happy and it keeps the team happy"

"Mercedes then neutered Hamilton"

"intentionally stuff up the strategy of your drivers"

"Mercedes pretty blatantly protected Rosberg for this race"


Quite a few crazy people on this forum, then.

not sure if you have ever done anything competitive but once you win something early its difficult to maintain the previous focus because the previous focus was about winning and that objective had been done.
Was it Chelsea last year that won the league very early and struggled in the remaining games.
Hsmilton was not 100% focused to win because he did not have to he is the World Champion and Rosberg won races with his biggest rival not 100%.
He will have his chance again next year as he did this season and last season and when the pressure really mounts he will crumble again.

Thanks, but not sure how your point is relevant.

The discussion here was whether or not LH was deliberately disadvantaged by the team to let Rosberg win, which many seem to want to believe here.

I tend to agree that either Hamilton loosened up or Rosberg upped his game once relieved of pressure, but I don't buy all the conspiracy theories that the team hindered him.

[KarlMac]

I don't there is any conspiracy, what Mercedes have done is what I believe to be the main issue with F1 at the moment - they chose the scenario that presented the least amount of risk. Whether this advantages Ham or Ros is completely immaterial to merc

I think F1 would be greatly improved if the teams were encouraged to take more risks and not just play the numbers. To pinch the football analogy above its like a grim allardyce team grinding out 1-0 wins at the moment, where we actually want Redknapp 5-5s every week, even if this is objectively 'worse'

[Scuffers]

monamimate said:

Thanks, but not sure how your point is relevant.

The discussion here was whether or not LH was deliberately disadvantaged by the team to let Rosberg win, which many seem to want to believe here.

I tend to agree that either Hamilton loosened up or Rosberg upped his game once relieved of pressure, but I don't buy all the conspiracy theories that the team hindered him.

Agreed,

My issue with all of this is not that Merc 'fix' the outcome, but by their policy of trying to be 100% fair, they actually cause these issues to come up.

I am not saying that Lewis would have won, however, I would have liked to see him in a position to try.

take engine modes, if they had the fuel to burn, they should be let loose to run whatever mode they want, same goes for tyre strategy.

[ajprice]

Scuffers said:

monamimate said:

Thanks, but not sure how your point is relevant.

The discussion here was whether or not LH was deliberately disadvantaged by the team to let Rosberg win, which many seem to want to believe here.

I tend to agree that either Hamilton loosened up or Rosberg upped his game once relieved of pressure, but I don't buy all the conspiracy theories that the team hindered him.

Agreed,

My issue with all of this is not that Merc 'fix' the outcome, but by their policy of trying to be 100% fair, they actually cause these issues to come up.

I am not saying that Lewis would have won, however, I would have liked to see him in a position to try.

take engine modes, if they had the fuel to burn, they should be let loose to run whatever mode they want, same goes for tyre strategy.

Yeah. It was the last race, the titles were won. It should have been gloves off, race, do what you want with engine modes and 'hammer time', but finish the race and bring the cars back in one piece.

As it was, it all seemed very managed.

[Scuffers]

the extension to this is the policy that the lead car get's first call on stopps.

don't have an issue with this per say, only that with Merc it seems to mean the leader will *always* pit first no matter what.

My interpretation would have been this, if the lead car is NOT stopping on a given lap, then his team mate should be able to.

[rubystone]

Didn't Mercedes claim that Hamilton was given the option of switching to options but didn't make the call? He seems to be suggesting that their dithering meant that he couldn't close the gap on the new set of primes they bolted on. I'd have thrown the dice on options if I were him.

What irked me more was his engineer's comments around engine modes and the threat made about his disobeying the commands. Has anyone seen a Mercedes statement on that yet? Perhaps this had nothing to do with performance?

[Mr_Thyroid]

ajprice said:

Yeah. It was the last race, the titles were won. It should have been gloves off, race, do what you want with engine modes and 'hammer time', but finish the race and bring the cars back in one piece.

As it was, it all seemed very managed.

It was completely mis-managed - Hamilton's strategy was a dogs dinner (he said as much in is interview with Lee McKenzie). He only had a slim chance of winning but he had 3 options that I think would've given him a better chance.

1. Do what he did but use the super softs at the end.
2. Come in 3-4 laps earlier and put on the primes (those last 3-4 laps before his stop were the most damaging where he lost 1.5s or more per lap).
3. Stay out until the end - if he had decided to do this before Rosberg came in and drive steady until the end.

I don't believe there's any favouritism just wooly thinking and indecision.

[Leithen]

They do seem to be stuck somewhere two ends of a spectrum.

Do what you're bloody well told.

and

Up to you oh 3-Time WC Messiah.

It's a bit strange that the communication is so dysfunctional and appears to be aired so publicly.

[andyps]

Leithen said:

They do seem to be stuck somewhere two ends of a spectrum.

Do what you're bloody well told.

and

Up to you oh 3-Time WC Messiah.

It's a bit strange that the communication is so dysfunctional and appears to be aired so publicly.

I don't think they get any choice about it being aired publicly, FOM choose the snippets of radio to broadcast and do so very carefully to generate the maximum amount of discussion. They were very selective with Alonso's comments in Japan too. I suspect there are discussions about engine maps etc. going on all the time, just we don't hear many of them.

[Mr_Thyroid]

The engine setting is a red herring. It's a potential reliability issue for the team so if they both have potential to use maximum setting why not mandate that they both use half for the sake of finishing the race. Hopefully next year another team will be closer so Merc do not have the luxury of cruising to an easy 1-2.

[RYH64E]

Mr_Thyroid said:

I don't believe there's any favouritism just wooly thinking and indecision.

As evidenced by their completely disastrous 1-2 I suppose? I don't suppose for a minute that Mercedes cares who wins or who comes second provided they're both Mercedes cars.

[MG CHRIS]

So after the race and with endless crap about rosberg and Hamilton again only 14 pages is that the lowest page count for a long time of an f1 race. I can remember a few races end of 2013 when vettel clinched the title early were pretty low india being the one that springs to mind but still that was more than this thread.

[anonymous-user]

What is needed is another team to give enough competitive pressure to Mercedes that they have to abandon the policy of having one strategy team running both cars. Each driver should have their own dedicated team who's sole purpose is to beat the other guy, without that you don't have a fight at the ultimate limit of what is available.

Right now Mercedes are simply cruising around in a low risk formation, they may just find when the fight reappears from the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren (and it will) they find they are unable to counter it as they are so out of practice of having to fight for the results and be creative.

This lack of risk taking is as much the drivers fault as the teams, they both showed they were incapable last year of being adult about it, so the team stamped on them, which is a shame as it's resulted in the borefest we have seen the last few races. The aero this year has been very much a step backwards also, the introduction of the new nose regs has destroyed the ability to follow a similar spec car, 2014 wasn't half as bad in this respect.

[ZX10R NIN]

I have to say that when LH leading I didn't see Lewis complaining that Mercedes strategy meant Rosberg couldn't beat him, infact the one time it did favour Rosberg was when Lewis & his side of the garage decided to pit at Monaco & we all remember how well Lewis reacted to that don't we.

Edited by ZX10R NIN on Monday 30th November 21:53