Brought to you by TJ13 contributor @F1TheaJ
Rate the Race Round 18- COTA USA – Mean Reader score: 5.60
This year’s race scored lower than 2015 (8.87) and 2014 (6.75). Well, unlike 2015, this year’s race didn’t have the added attraction of Hurricane Patricia to keep us on our toes and wondering if the race was actually going to go ahead or not.
With drama pretty much from start to finish last year, (two safety cars and two virtual safety cars) and a driver’s championship claimed by Hamilton (the only British driver to have successfully defended the championship title) what did 2016 have to offer that last year’s didn’t? Sadly, not a great deal (apart from the better weather).
It is a poor reflection of the race itself that the main sources of action came from mistakes relating to the pit stops. Verstappen pitted, much to Red Bull’s surprise, as he mistakenly thought they’d called him in a lap after Ricciardo: they hadn’t and they weren’t ready for him.
Verstappen rejoined the race only to hear something clunking in his car and stopped on the most inconvenient part of the track launching not only a virtual safety car but also theories as to how he had scuppered his team mate’s chances of winning by giving close rivals a free pit stop. He retired from the race shortly afterwards. The conspiracy theories were quashed by Verstappen informing us that he retired where he did because he was waiting for the team to tell him to stop.
Raikonnen’s team were ready for him in the pits but were in such a rush to get him on his way they forgot to detach the wheel gun (allegedly, as no wheel gun attached to the wheel was actually visible.) Raikonnen made it partway up the incline to turn 1, stopped, had a conversation with his crew and then let the car roll backwards into the pit lane under gravity, having turned the engine off. He also retired. Ferrari were fined 5,000 euro for an unsafe release of Raikonnen’s car.
There was some excellent racing in the last ten or so laps, though and it all centered on our Driver of The Weekend.
Driver of the Weekend: Fernando Alonso – 56.62% of reader vote
There was a scrap for P5 between Sainz, Massa and Alonso which started to develop around lap 45. Massa had a bit of a lock up and narrowly missed the rear end of Sainz which had given Alonso a chance to close in. Massa and Alonso were both on medium tyres while Sainz was on softs. A few laps later Massa had stopped trying to overtake Sainz and concentrated on defending against Alonso.
By Lap 52 Alonso and Massa were wheel to wheel and by turn 15 Alonso had made contact. Both cars were off track (Massa more so than Alonso, who had taken the inside) and both drivers blamed each other. Massa came off worse, loosing P6 and picking up a left front puncture.
However, the stewards ruled that neither of them was wholly or predominantly to blame. One down, one to go and Alonso would have P5 in the bag. By this time, Sainz’s tyres were almost threadbare but he was heroic in defending for a couple of laps before eventually being overtaken on the last lap, by an equally heroic and determined Alonso.
So who would have thought it that a McLaren a Williams and a Toro Rosso would have provided the best racing of the day? Comments, below, please…..
What a ridiculous headline. Alonso got 9 (!) times the votes of Verstappen, so clearly Verstappen fans never treatened Alonso’s DOTW win. In fact, Sainz, Hamilton and Ricciardo all got more votes than Max and thus were bigger threats.
But I guess that Verstappen is the new Hamilton, whose name also gets shoved into headlines for no other reason that that his name draws clicks (aka click bait).
I suspect the headline was a response more to the F1.com DoTD poll which Verstappen won. Verstappen didn’t out qualify Riccardo, was never less a half a second within Rosberg or Hamilton in qualifying and his race ended on lap 28 with him in I believe 4th.For that performance he gets voted DoTD before the race has even ended? And Verstappen’s fans, especially the ones from the Netherlands, do resemble #44’s fans in that most have jumped on his bandwagon and know little or nothing about the sport.
TJ13 – for the astute F1 fan 😉
I wish this was twitter. There would have been a nice gif, in response, here 😎
I think if you copy/paste a gif URL here, it animates
https://media.tenor.co/images/4f07205274c840852ab98df7ffdb5a04/raw
> I suspect the headline was a response more to the F1.com DoTD poll which Verstappen won.
Yeah, but it’s absolutely silly to make the comparison, as the F1 poll is:
– Not DOTW, but DOTD (so your comment about qualifying is unfair criticism of the outcome of that poll, as it doesn’t cover that).
– Held during the race, rather than after, which strongly rewards early race performance. If you’d stop the race before the bad pit stop, Max definitely was doing quite well and his ‘I’m not here to get 4th’ was great PR from him. On the other hand, the fights that pushed Alonso and Sainz to the top hadn’t happened yet, as they were very late in the race. Most people would logically have voted before that. So if you actually think things through a bit, the outcome is far less due to ‘blind fans’ than you guys are claiming.
“For that performance he gets voted DoTD before the race has even ended?”
You can no longer vote after the race has ended, so this statement is very silly. You are blaming the voters for voting when they can and not when they cannot….
Anyway, what I see here is that (very fair) dislike of the voting method gets misdirected at the wrong target. It’s perfectly logical that you get far different outcomes if people vote during the race than after and it’s silly to blame ‘the fans’ for voting with the knowledge that they have, rather than demand that they know what will happen after they vote.
Of course, TJ13 is free to make these very lowbrow kneejerk statements, but it reflects badly on them, is all I’m saying.
I’m not even going to bother responding to that, I might as well talk to a brick wall.. I will just say that of all the people that post stuff about F1 on Twitter – the only ones who have blocked me are Hamilton or Verstappen fans. No one else. Though I suspect me #VerstappenVridag crash series on twitter hasn’t helped 😝😝
Typo – its VerstappenVrijdag on twitter
What does that have to do with me? You are just engaging in ad hominem attacks.
Nobody but dutchies bother to vote in that official F1 poll. I personally don’t like that kind of popularity contest votes. Just like Eurovision, which has become a place for proxy warfare by Ukraine and Russia. So, at the F1 poll, 20% of all worldwide votes come from Holland every time. Which means that all other countries don’t give a shit about that poll and rightly so.
The Netherlands has an broadband internetpenetration of around 94% of all households, 85% of the complete dutch population own a smartphone, penetration between the age of 12 till 39 is a blistering 96% and from the age 40 till 59 it’s around 87,5%.
So yes, they make use of them, and offcourse chauvinism will act up, especially when a sport is concerned that is about passion and emotion. Human beings are easily triggerd into emotion, look closely at the next picture from COTA’s broadcast, and it doesn’t stand on its own, the amount of ‘product placement’ and creating atmosphere by FIA broadcasts is huge and in my opinion the real cause of the issue here, people are prone to that stuff, not just the Dutch.
https://myalbum.com/album/VtSKGbI1Ed1U
Reading the dutch forum’s nearly all commentators are equally bafled that Verstappen won DoTD, the consencus is that he was not deserving. In a way this the TJ13 pole confirms this, with the high internetpenetration they could have easily put Verstappen on pole here to, like we’ve seen before, like someone stated before, they have a strong straight forward opinion, if Verstappen messes up, they will judge you with critisism. Maybe even more so then in other countries.
wrong picture link…
https://myalbum.com/photo/t7sEEg0r0BDy/1k0.jpg
@Cav If Aapje is a brick wall, then you are a concrete wall … he puts your point of view in a different perspective and it makes perfect sense what he is saying. Furthermore, if the ignorant #33 and #44 fans have so much influence why is it that Alonso ends up with 57% of the votes?
May I be a stone wall? Stone cladding has an attractive finish. But beyond that, it’s very resilient and durable, and only requires basic maintenance. It’d be my preference that if I were to be called a wall, that it be a stone wall. Thanks in advance.
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General note:
I cannot believe that Verstappen son of Verstappen is flipping the bird in the above picture. I, for one, am disgusted. This display of disrespect clearly shows what an immature and entitled person Max is; sadly we’ve come to expect no more of the young Dutchman.
You certainly may … should that please you. Appreciate your educated response … unequivocally, you provided new insights.
As far as the MV picture posted here, I have to agree with you … disgusting. Even more appalling that TJ13 is publishing it.
I thought I was rederected to the website of The Sun.
nice photoshop, lowering our standards are we??