Rosberg admits error in Spain

The Spanish GP was certainly memorable for the opening crash and there’s been some debate between fans who prefer tin foil helmets and those that don’t when discussing Rosberg’s infamous engine setting. The onboard camera had revealed that Rosberg had failed to set the car correctly for the opening lap of the race, which in turn handed the advantage to Lewis coming out of turn 3 and the rest is well documented history. It seems that Rosberg has now been caught on record during the Monaco build up admitting that it was his error.

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“It was in the wrong position, and it was my job to put it in the right position – it’s pretty simple. There is not much more to say,” conceded Nico.

But that was as far as he was willing to go when pressed on whose fault it might’ve been. Instead it’s clear the Monaco resident is up for making this year a 4th win on the bounce.

“I’m not going to be thinking about Barcelona. I’ll take the same approach as always – flat out, and do what’s necessary to try to win this Grand Prix, which I’ve come here to do.”

It’s unlikely this admission will quell the suspicions of those who oft don said baking foil head gear (exclusively of a #Hamfosi nature), who believe Rosberg had purposely gained an advantage off the start line by keeping the car in that strat mode.

Lewis, whose only win in Monaco was back in 2008, is clearly still in his happy place confessing that the two had spoken since the incident.

“We arrived very cool and chilled. And we spoke. All you need to know is that the respect is still there. We’re going to keep racing, and everything is cool. We didn’t talk through the incident. We don’t need to. We know what happened. We were there. We experienced it. We know how we felt about it before. There are more emotional beings on the planet who will talk a lot about it but we don’t need to do that.”

 

41 responses to “Rosberg admits error in Spain

  1. Oh man how the hamfosis gonna like this.
    #blessed
    #3peat
    #WowYouChamp
    #OwMyGodYouCanNotBelieveThis

    • Yet media reported this week that Lewis accepted 70% of the blame for the crash that Lauda laid at his door. I’m guessing the article above is basically Rosberg saying that his 30% relates to having the switch in the wrong position.

      Not that this really matters, it was a nailed on racing incident.

  2. He doesn’t have to admit, we were there in the comfort of our armchairs, we saw him slipstream with the aid of a different strat mode, we watched him when of a sudden he felt wretched and his confidence and powertrain fizzled out like a slowly deflating balloon. Yes we saw his Sorrow, desire, fear, desperation, we were there, yes, we were there!

  3. Rosberg has confirmed what we already knew. He tried to pull a fast one (in more ways than one) on Hamilton, but it didn’t work out, and caused them both to exit the race.
    I hope this year the team don’t totally screw Hamilton again with their “strategy”, and gift the race to Rosberg, or the conspiracy theorists will be adamant that he is being denied another chamionship.

    • the way it worked out.
      Rosberg did not manage to add to his points advantage over Lulu but managed to keep it intact.
      Lulu managed to add another race to his chances of lost opportunities to reduce Rosberg’s points advantage

      • And your point is?
        Or are you saying it was a deliberate action by Rosberg to reduce Hamilton’s chances of overtaking, not only on the track, but also in overtaking him on points. Seems rather underhand to me, almost like cheating.

        • I don’t think there’s any dispute about the fact that Nico tried to block Lewis’ pass, is there? It’s a physical thing that happened, we all saw the cars on the track. Everyone blocks, it’s a legit racing manoeuvre.

          It all turned nasty because of the speed differential that I’m not sure either driver fully appreciated in the second or so it took for it all to go pear-shaped.

          If in fact they both did grok the speed difference then maybe LH expected NR to blink. Maybe NR has decided to never blink around LH again.

          Maybe NR saw it coming but figured he could blame it on LH for not backing out of the pass because he had time to react. Maybe LH saw it coming but figured he could blame it on NR for running him off the road.

          And so on…

          Once you start ascribing intentions the argument never ends.

          “You’re both in it, play on!” is a stock phrase when you’re an ump / ref in myriad competitive ball sports.

          Motorsport’s equivalent stock phrase is “racing incident, move on”.

  4. Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward,
    All in the valley of Death
        Rode the 22.
    “Forward, the silver arrows!
    “Charge for the corner!” he said:
    Into the valley of Death
        Rode the 22.

    “Forward, the silver arrows!”
    Was there a man dismay’d?
    Not tho’ the drivers knew
        Someone had blunder’d:
    Theirs not to make reply,
    Theirs not to reason why,
    Theirs but to do and die:
    Into the valley of Death
        Rode the 22.

    Grass to right of them,
    Wings to left of them,
    Rosberg in front of them
        Volley’d and thunder’d;
    Storm’d at with tyre and smoke,
    Boldly they drove and well,
    Into the jaws of Death,
    Into the mouth of Hell
        Drove the 22.

    Flash’d as his battery became bare,
    Flash’d as they turn’d in air,
    Slipstreaming the drivers there,
    Charging a Hamy, while
        All the world wonder’d:
    Plunged in the battery-smoke
    Right thro’ the line they broke;
    British and German
    Reel’d into the gravel traps lair
        Shatter’d and sunder’d.
    Then they rode back(well rosberg did), but not
        Not the 22.

    Grass to right of them,
    Wings to left of them,
    Carnage behind them
        Volley’d and thunder’d;
    Storm’d at with Vettle and Ric,
    While car and hero fell,
    They that had fought so well
    Came thro’ the jaws of Death
    Back from the mouth of Hell,
    All that was left of them,
        Left of 22 minus the chosen two.

    When can their glory fade?
    O the wild charge they made!
        All the world wondered.
    Honour the charge they made,
    Honour the silver Brigade,
         The Noble 22

  5. regardless, sticking your nose in someone’s else way and demanding the space is quite ridiculous.
    27.7, any driver defending his position on a straight, and before any braking area, may use the “full wide” of the track during his first move, provided no “significant” portion of the car attempting to pass is alongside his.
    As to the “bloody switch” “suddenly I lacked power, the switch for engine mode was not in the correct position, so we need to investigate why that was so” Nico said. Rosberg also said he even attempted to correct the situation mid-corner but nothing happened.
    The situation now looks like Mercedes has told Rosberg that regardless the team’s car preparation given to him, it is his responsibility to check that all settings are as they should be, which means he was responsible for correcting the wrong position the switch was set at by the team.
    As regards to the actual race start, the race start selector position will override all other maps of all other selectors positions (start mode, all systems max) and than when you are away you switch off sart mode that then reverts the mapping to the selected under laying drive mode, in the race, of which was the position the switch in question was in.

    • 27.7, any driver defending his position on a straight, and before any braking area, may use the “full wide” of the track during his first move, provided no “significant” portion of the car attempting to pass is alongside his.

      The moment Hamilton stuck his front wing alongside Rosberg’s rear tyre, which he was very much entitled to do, Rosberg had to give him at least a car’s width on the straight, which he failed to do (i.e. pushed a car off the track on the straight). The only thing that played to Rosberg in way of mitigating factor was the damn lightning speed at which the whole incident occurred, and that the two drivers started their moves (both offensive and defensive) at roughly the same time. It is indeed reasonable to argue that neither driver could reasonably predict, when they started their moves, where the other driver would end up afterwards. Of course Rosberg’s fussing with the knobs couldn’t have helped his situational awareness, but while traffic police may hold this against you in a similar incident in F1 these things don’t seem to carry weight.

      Discarding the politics and as far as racing rules go, Hamilton cannot be blamed in any way, shape or form for the accident (i.e. he lost control of the car on the grass). The only question sitting on the stewards’ desk that day was whether to penalize Rosberg for pushing a car off-track… For a very similar incident see Magnussen’s penalty in Spa 2014 for pushing Alonso off the track on the Kemmel straight.

      • “For a very similar incident see Magnussen’s penalty in Spa 2014 for pushing Alonso off the track on the Kemmel straight.”….

        Don’t think you have to go that far back, just go back to Sochi this year. Was it Sainz (might not have been him) who got a penalty for pushing Palmer (or was it Kmag?) off the track coming out of T2

        • Not quite. The Sochi incident occurred on corner exit out of a slow chicane, whereas the Barcelona incident occurred on a straight (not braking zone nor corner turn-in). The rules are looking differently in the two cases…

          • Lulu has operated with “elbows-out” since this team mate partnership began, Rosberg’s stance has toughened, and Lulu have assumed Rosberg would be compliant.
            As to 27.7 as regards/applied to the Spain accident, The defending and the accident happened on a straight and not in a braking area, the FIA contrary to what is being said had not considered that “any significant portion” of the car attempting to pass as being alongside of the car defending.
            As to the “switch/wrong engine mode” this headline (Rosberg admits error in Spain) of which is being carried over from other sites is as misleading as what the totonator and Ant originally said, the implications of which meant that Nico simply made a technical mistake in selecting that engine setting/mode himself before the race start, something that Nico denies and said “the switch for engine mode was not in the correct position so we need to investigate why that was so”. what he is now admitting too is, that it was his responsibility to check and put right the car settings he was given by the team.

      • –The only thing that played to Rosberg in way of mitigating factor was the damn lightning speed at which the whole incident occurred, and that the two drivers started their moves (both offensive and defensive) at roughly the same time. It is indeed reasonable to argue that neither driver could reasonably predict, when they started their moves, where the other driver would end up afterwards.

        I think to be honest you have hit the nail on the head here. At the point Hamilton decided to start his manoeuvre, Rosberg wasn’t closing the gap, and at the point Rosberg decided to close the gap, Hamilton wasn’t yet alongside. So when you look at the video, you see Rosberg closing a gap on somebody who is alongside and Hamilton driving into a gap that wasn’t going to there. But at the point they decided to make those moves, they were both reasonable (if aggressive) decisions. Hence “racing incident”.

        • Which is exactly why article 27.7 doesn’t apply in this case. It’s a pure racing incident.

  6. “It was in the wrong position, and it was my job to put it in the right position – it’s pretty simple. There is not much more to say.” conceded Nico.

    That sounds to me like he is admitting it was his fault the car was in the wrong engine mode, not that he caused the crash. We need rather more than that single line tquoted out of context to believe Rosberg admitted he was at fault.

    • At first I too thought that Rosberg somehow admitted mistake for the full incident, but after reading the article it was clear that Rosberg admitted making a mistake by putting his car in the wrong engine mode. This is indeed what the article states…

      • Rosberg was and is not admitting mistake for the incident, and neither for him having selected or put that switch in the wrong engine mode, he is admitting it was his responsibility to check and put right the switch position given him by the team.

  7. Pretty much a none story. He’s not saying anything that we didn’t already know and saw from the Anthony Davidson analysis.

    The fact that he blatantly lied and pass it on to the team by stating, “i don’t know what happened, the team needs to investigate that”…..

    He then went on to say, that he wasn’t distracted when he was making the change, because all he had to do to override the malfunction, was to press the ‘overtake’ button, which he said he did. But like before, the Ant analysis showed this also be a lie. So coming out now and saying, ‘oh it was my mistake’, is not really needed.

  8. Can you explain me the reason for keep talking about the ‘hamfosi’ and ‘tin foils’ in your article?
    That really left a sense of immaturity in your writing when I read it.
    Not to mention the very fine line between this article and the rules that were recently posted on behaviour.

    On the plus side, congrats on the new format of the site, very nice!

    • One of the definitions of humour surely is a degree of immaturity? Plenty of sites that just do news. What rules are being broken exactly? Am I trolling anyone in particular?

          • Well the s at the end of the word suggest plural, but you have to understand, judge, that some are easily offended, even by things that aren’t meant for them in particular. ( see, I can be passive aggressive too 😉)

          • Thank god then. Looking for an other f1 site to utter my humour would be painful.

          • Haha… “thought police” 🙂

            It’s all just a bit too serious sometimes, isn’t it? “But, but, but… he/she/it meant this by saying this n’ this n’ this n’…”

            😀

          • You have it there, RR. Ascribing intentions to someone else’s actions is where it all goes wrong.

            “I and my people always act with the impeccable intentions. Everyone else and their friends are morally bankrupt ne’er-do-wells”

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