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The 2020 F1 Season

Toto has already stated Lewis was on full lock, and data would back this up. So his only option would be to back off. Why would he back off if there was enough room for Lando to pass?

To me, this was a racing incident. It’s too easy to over analyse something that happened in a fraction of a second. As Brundle said at the time of the incident, Albon needs to have patience. He would have passed Lewis with ease and grabbed a lot of points for his team (barring the subsequent car failure) so why risk it all?

This is full lock?

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There’s quite an impact that opens Hamilton’s steering for a moment, but he’s definitely at it near full lock.

The video is still on YouTube, but for some reason when I share it here, it shows as unavailable due to F1 rules. Is Bernie still in charge? ;)
 
IIRC Merc have said it was full-lock and Lewis’s hands are certainly slightly further than straight up/down on the ‘wheel’, which I think is as far as it goes.
 
Anyway, onto Alonso....
Yeah, time to move on.

Maybe he’ll luck out this time and he’ll jump into a front running car or it’ll be another season of pain for everyone. Should make good footage for Netflix’s Drive To Survive documentary either way.

In all the talk about Alb & Ham forgot to mention a massive thumbs up to Nando Norris getting 3rd place. That was a mega final to finish 3/10s inside the 5 second penalty time.

Really hope he can step up now with Sainz leaving, McLaren should be getting right behind him as they may have a future star on their hands.
 
In all the talk about Alb & Ham forgot to mention a massive thumbs up to Nando Norris getting 3rd place. That was a mega final to finish 3/10s inside the 5 second penalty time.

Really hope he can step up now with Sainz leaving, McLaren should be getting right behind him as they may have a future star on their hands.

More impressive was his performance in the latter stages of the race. Last year he qualified well (ahead of his team mate) but was outraced by SAI fairly consistently; not that unsurprising as it was his first year.

He had a few slower laps last weekend and PER got past and SAI was having a serious look at getting by. He then got his race back on track and pulled a gap on SAI and overtook PER robustly and his last lap was the race fastest lap beating HAM who was on it to do the same. It was an amazing performance and he will have a big boost for the rest of the year.
 
The thing with Norris and other young guns is they need to find consistency and the ability to turn a bad race into some sort of result. The difference between Bottas and Hamilton so far has been consistency... on his day Bottas is great, but when he has an off day he's way behind Hamilton. Hamilton, Vettel, Schumacher, Alonso, Prost, Senna and so on all have one thing in common... they never give up and inevitably grab some points where others wouldn't. They can also find a way to drive round a car's issues... many can't do that. I hope Norris and Russell are the real deal, but we need to see them in a good car for a season to find out if they can take that ca's extra pace and make it count...in much the same way Ricciardo stepped up in 2014.
 
The thing with Norris and other young guns is they need to find consistency and the ability to turn a bad race into some sort of result. The difference between Bottas and Hamilton so far has been consistency... on his day Bottas is great, but when he has an off day he's way behind Hamilton. Hamilton, Vettel, Schumacher, Alonso, Prost, Senna and so on all have one thing in common... they never give up and inevitably grab some points where others wouldn't. They can also find a way to drive round a car's issues... many can't do that. I hope Norris and Russell are the real deal, but we need to see them in a good car for a season to find out if they can take that ca's extra pace and make it count...in much the same way Ricciardo stepped up in 2014.

Agreed, that was to some degree the point I was trying to make in the previous post. I think NOR has stepped up a level. It remains to be seen if he can firstly maintain and secondly extend that to "snatching points" where the car is not up to it.
 
No wonder I don't watch anymore. You might as well run the whole thing with a pangolin steering and a guy in the pits fiddling with the throttle/buttons via X-Box controller; pointless activity with that level of remote direction.

CHE

Yet you wouldn't get round the first two corners even with all the help in the world.... stick to football, it's easier to understand and you get to partake in tribal violence when the mood takes you :D
 
Somebody earlier mentioned maximum steering lock. What teams will do is have one steering rack for all circuits bar Monaco, and then one for Monaco, as getting round Loews requires a greater wheel lock than any other corner. Force India showed quite a few years ago that you can overtake into Loews if others are on the limit for lock and you have greater lock available.

I haven't watched the on car feed from Lewis when he collided with Albon, but I would be surprised if he was at max lock unless he had massive understeer. His line was okay on entry and into the corner considering that there was another driver outside him (GPS data).
 
@IanW do you think that Mercedes and Hamilton should appeal the Stewards penalty decision? (I thought it was more a racing incident and the penalty was harsh, especially considering that Hamilton avoided a collision with Albon on the 1st lap by backing out to avoid).
 
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@IanW do you think that Mercedes and Hamilton should appeal the Stewards penalty decision? (I thought it was more a racing incident and the penalty was harsh, especially considering the Hamilton avoided a collision with Albon on the 1st lap by backing out to avoid).

I think it's worth a try but it'll depend on who they're appealing to. If there are ex-drivers on the panel then he stands a good chance; if not then it's not such an obvious mistake that a panel of stewards would override another panel of their fellows.

About adjusting around any problems, the Lotus mechanics said that, with Jim Clark driving, if they made a change they only had about 2 - 3 laps to measure the time difference. Anything beyond that and he'd have adjusted to cope with it and be doing the same time as before the change.
 
@IanW do you think that Mercedes and Hamilton should appeal the Stewards penalty decision? (I thought it was more a racing incident and the penalty was harsh, especially considering that Hamilton avoided a collision with Albon on the 1st lap by backing out to avoid).

Watching it live there was no surprise as that was a very likely scenario. At the time I thought that Lewis had braked a little and was therefore on a slightly different line and would have had quite a bit of understeer, and Albon was taking a reasonable risk going out there. Looking at the GPS data persuaded me that it was a racing incident.

As to appealing, he would need to be lucky, as changing the race result after the event is bad for the sport. So if I were them I would let it go as there will be times in the future when the judgement goes in their favour.
 


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