AdrianSutil wrote:Monaco 2008: It wasn't Raikkonen's fault he lost it at the chicane, although the one car everyone was cheering on as the underdog got it, so some people blame Kimi for being a tool, which he wasn't. Shame for Sutil. Although many people seem to forget he scored a point before that race.
It was bad luck for both drivers that Kimi made an understandable mistake in those conditions - we'd seen Coulthard crash after going slightly off line in qualifying and the bumps threw the back of his car out of line (and we've seen a few crashes at that corner since then), and that was on a dry track. It didn't stop Gascoyne complaining quite bitterly, though - understandable in a sense given how valuable points would have been to the team back in 2008, when they were effectively propping up the grid, but a bit harsh nevertheless.
That said, what is also somewhat forgotten about that race is that, even if Sutil had finished ahead of Kimi, he wouldn't have been allowed to keep his position. The FIA did later announce that Sutil was already under investigation when Raikkonen ran into him because Sutil was suspected of passing other cars under yellow flags. They later announced that he'd passed Rubens, Piquet Jr and Nakajima on lap 13 at the hairpin when a yellow flag zone in operation due to the accident between Alonso and Heidfeld - that was part of the reason why he was unusually far up the field to begin with.
Had he finished the race, therefore, he would have automatically been penalised for that move - the stewards made it clear that he'd have received a 25 second time penalty, which would almost certainly have dropped him right out of the points. As it was, because he failed to finish the race, all the stewards could do in the end was reprimand him for his conduct and warn him that a repeat offence would have resulted in stricter disciplinary action.