Grand Prix Rejects

I nominate the Sausage Kerbs for ruining Talent's race.

List of nominations so far

Sausage Kerbs
German Drivers
Gutierez
Ferrari
Chilton
Ericsson
Vettel
Hulkenberg
Magnussen
Stewards
Rosberg
Force India Stratigest
Booing
Bernie
Caterham
Race Control
The Italian Grand Prix
Fans at the Podium

The winner is...

Ferrari

German drivers - Vettel can't stop finishing behind his teammate, Hulkenberg just gets worse and worse over the year and Rosberg made two mistakes which cost him a win, although he deserves only an honorable mention because he struggled with the brakes. Sutil of course has just been slow and unproductive.

Ferrim wrote:Ferrari at Monza.

Pathetic.

Yet they still brought out the massive flag, which they apparently didn't do after an equally disastrous showing back in 2005. Ferrari also get a nomination from me as well as Gutierrez.

Also did you hear the booing fans when Rosberg collected his trophy?

Gutierrez for puncturing his own tyre
Ferrari are honourable mentions for having one car brake and another barely in the points, I wonder how long until another major reshuffle at Maranello

Gutierrez - that was just pathetic all round

Has to be Guttierez, that was hopeless - and on a day where everyone managed to race cleanly and fairly (with the exception of Magnusson's penalty) that error really stands out.

Also a nomination for Ericsson - miles off his under-threat teammate.

Chilton. I always have a soft spot for drivers that just bin it all on their own.

Ferrari at Monza.

Pathetic.

Sebastian Vettel - Outqualifies Ricky, Ricky loses loads of places at the start, yet 53 laps later, Ricky is 10 seconds up the road from him, in identical machinery. What are you doing mate?

Nico Hulkenberg - Spent the entire race having his face smashed in by Checo.

Esteban Gutierrez - That was just pathetic.

But ROTR has to go to

Ferrari - Alonso loses the last 100% finishing record in the field this season, Kimi is back scrapping over 9th and 10th, and to cap it all, Williams have taken 3rd in the WCC off them. On their home circuit, no less.

Ferrari. One car retires and the other barely finishes in the top 10.

Ferrari - that must have been their worst race in front of the home crowd in years.
Magnussen - there's a thin line between ballsy and reckless driving, and K-Mags crosses it once more. Despite my honest sympathy for him, he threw away a good result.

East Londoner wrote:Sebastian Vettel - Outqualifies Ricky, Ricky loses loads of places at the start, yet 53 laps later, Ricky is 10 seconds up the road from him, in identical machinery. What are you doing mate?

His tyres had gone off, I think.

Esteban Gutierrez - WHYYYYYYYYY.
Nico Hulkenberg - What Londoner said.
Nico Rosberg - Made two unforced errors. Why.
Max Chilton - Really, his only saving grace is that he brings the car home in one piece. Which he patently did not do today.
Stewards - So, what happened to letting racing incidents go?
Ferrari - Looked strong in all 3 practice session. Scored 2 points in the race. Alonso said this was gonna be a tough race for them. I didn't expect it to be this tough.

Let' see, a couple:

Ferrari:
Home race. One car retires, while Kimi is back to his non-Spa form. Just bad. This won't make wonders to Alonso relationship with the cars that Ferrari have produced...

Stewards:
Defends position, gets penalty. Again. Second time in two races that KMags get's a penalty for defending... Let drivers race, god damn it.

Esteban Gutierrez:
That move that cause him a puncture it's so stupid I don't even... Besides, he ran 19th all the race only ahead of Ericsson, who even without stopping was last. 'Nough said.

Nico Rosberg:
Well, two unforced erros that delivered the win to Hamilton isn't the best way to keep yourself above water... Especially when Toto Wolff was happy when Hamilton got the lead from you.

Chilton: that's two rejectful errors this season.
Gutierrez^2: What was he trying to achieve with that move?

Miguel98 wrote:Nico Rosberg:
Well, two unforced erros that delivered the win to Hamilton isn't the best way to keep yourself above water... Especially when Toto Wolff was happy when Hamilton got the lead from you.

Right, this is where I start to sound all paranoid.

Gaëtan Vigneron (RTBF commentator) has a theory that those errors might actually not be actual errors. Perhaps that this was simply the "internal punishment" that Mercedes gave to Nico, that if Lewis closed in on him, Nico would have to let him through. So perhaps the second mistake was purposefully done to let Hamilton pass without a fight (hence why Wolff would look pleased) and the first one would simply give credibility to the second one.

True or not, I'm giving my personal ROTR to Esteban Gutiérrez Gutiérrez. Seriously?

Think it has to be Ferrari

Force India stragtiest. Robbed Hulkenberg of a possible good result.

Ferrari: DNF/9th (should have been 10th)

Well, I will just nominate Gutierrez first for that idiotic self-puncturing move and Ferrari, in second, for an appalling showing at home.

Chilton is my honorable mention for binning it on his own, which is rejectful plenty. He doesn't get my vote because he had much talent in admitting it was a driver error instead of coming up with lame excuses. Kudos for that, mate!

Hulkenberg's woes were due to a botched strategy; I'm not trying to change anyone's mind...no, wait, I am.

It has to be Gutierrez. He was terrible all race, was absolutely nowhere, and then whilst overtaking Grosjean had THE WHOLE straight to move his car into...and still collects the Lotus' FWEP. Good going, son. You'll go far.

Ferrim wrote:Ferrari at Monza.

Pathetic.

If anything summed up their race, it was the sight of seeing Alonso having to walk disconsolately back to the pits after the car let him down - they simply were not a factor for most of the race, and had Kvyat not had a brake failure, we could well have seen Kimi finish out of the points as well.

Pointrox wrote:Ferrari - that must have been their worst race in front of the home crowd in years.
Magnussen - there's a thin line between ballsy and reckless driving, and K-Mags crosses it once more. Despite my honest sympathy for him, he threw away a good result.

I think the problem with Magnussen is that the team are encouraging him to continue driving in that way - Ron Dennis reportedly instructed Magnussen not to change his driving style. I know that they want him to be combative on track, but surely they cannot afford to keep throwing away points by racking up penalties for driving standards...

And for what was a reasonably clean race, trust Gutierrez to manage to blot his copybook once more - there was no need for him to try to chop across so aggressively there when he seemed to have a fairly sizeable speed advantage and could have been better off taking the normal racing line into the corner. He's no longer just a bit of a tool, he's the entire tool set.

Miguel98 wrote:Nico Rosberg:
Well, two unforced erros that delivered the win to Hamilton isn't the best way to keep yourself above water... Especially when Toto Wolff was happy when Hamilton got the lead from you.

I don't think that Wolff was smiling at Hamilton taking the lead - I think that was probably more relief that Nico's mistake completely removed any chance of a clash between the two drivers after what happened in Spa. It was unusual for Nico to make mistakes like that - OK, in the latter case at least there was a little logic given that Hamilton was catching him very rapidly (about 0.4-0.5s a lap), but the first mistake was unusual given that he was well clear of Massa at the time.

Then again, there were signs that Nico was in a little trouble at the time - brake cooling was reportedly a slight issue, and we know that Nico was also being warned about heavy fuel consumption from very early on in the race. I wouldn't be surprised if he was trying to lift and coast a bit more to manage both his brakes and his fuel use, but ended up misjudging it and overshooting the chicane.

1)Scuderia Ferrari: Alonso's luck ended and Kimi was miles away. Awful car, awful home race... wost impossible

2)Max Chilton: Maybe TALENT thought that he can starring a remake of The Dukes of Hazzard

Dishonorable mentions to Kevin Magnussen(making oliver Grouillard proud), Esteban Gutiérrez(another close encounter with a Lotus) and Nico Rosberg(he choked for once, and that cost him the race)

The How Can He Do That? Award goes to Sebastian Vettel: He was ahead of Smiley all weekend... until Smiley OWNED him badly at the end

Ferrari is an obvious choice. Apart from Alonso in qualifying, both drivers were absolutely nowhere when it counted. Really embarrassing for Alonso to suffer his first race-ending technical failure in four and a half years at Monza of all places!

Dishonorable mention to Gutiérrez. Bring on Giedo van der Garde!

Although Chilton's mishap and the stewards are good contenders (Vettel being thoroughly beaten is now to be expected, even with all those lovely championships), I'm going to have to nominate Ferrari.

What on earth are they playing at?

Ferrari. That was inexcusable.

Salamander wrote:Stewards - So, what happened to letting racing incidents go?

Remember Spa, how this Rosberg fella demonstrated that you get collisions by letting "racing incidents" (aka. shutting the door as you please) go...?

Anyway....Gutiérrez takes the cake here.

giraurd wrote:

Salamander wrote:Stewards - So, what happened to letting racing incidents go?

Remember Spa, how this Rosberg fella demonstrated that you get collisions by letting "racing incidents" (aka. shutting the door as you please) go...?

You can't have it both ways. Either you allow racing incidents go and get the odd collision, or you penalise everything. I thought we wanted the former...?

EDIT: Better idea for ROTR: The booing. Absolutely nonsensical in this instance. Rosberg threw away the race - and you boo him anyway? Way to make yourselves look like anything other than a bunch of morons.

I'll have the penalty for the one idiot who couldn't drive T1 with a car next to him, and have some great side-by-side battles for the rest of the race (Perez/Button as the most notable example), thank you very much.

Racing incident is a nebulous term and prone to being defined by which drivers are involved and who came off worse rather then what actually occurred.

giraurd wrote:I'll have the penalty for the one idiot who couldn't drive T1 with a car next to him, and have some great side-by-side battles for the rest of the race (Perez/Button as the most notable example), thank you very much.

Really? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but that particular driver battle also involved an 'idiot who couldn't drive [a chicane] with a car next to him'.

Salamander wrote:

giraurd wrote:I'll have the penalty for the one idiot who couldn't drive T1 with a car next to him, and have some great side-by-side battles for the rest of the race (Perez/Button as the most notable example), thank you very much.

Really? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but that particular driver battle also involved an 'idiot who couldn't drive [a chicane] with a car next to him'.

Indeed - and to FIA's pre-Spa interpretation, Checo would have been penalized for "passing off the track", whereas now he was allowed to keep going and make the rightful pass, because Button pushed him off in the first place.

giraurd wrote:

Salamander wrote:

giraurd wrote:I'll have the penalty for the one idiot who couldn't drive T1 with a car next to him, and have some great side-by-side battles for the rest of the race (Perez/Button as the most notable example), thank you very much.

Really? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but that particular driver battle also involved an 'idiot who couldn't drive [a chicane] with a car next to him'.

Indeed - and to FIA's pre-Spa interpretation, Checo would have been penalized for "passing off the track", whereas now he was allowed to keep going and make the rightful pass, because Button pushed him off in the first place.

I didn't realise there was an actual change in how the FIA was interpreting incidents after Spa - can you tell me more about that?

I can't see why vettel is getting nominations. I hardly call being faster than Ricky in EVERY SESSION of the weekend and only losing because his tyres were 9 laps older and went off as being "throuoghly beaten". Still he has flaws with tyre management while Ricky is a master of it

Anyway Chilton gets it for me for a mistake all of his making

Freeze-O-Kimi wrote:I can't see why vettel is getting nominations. I hardly call being faster than Ricky in EVERY SESSION of the weekend and only losing because his tyres were 9 laps older and went off as being "throuoghly beaten". Still he has flaws with tyre management while Ricky is a master of it

Yeah, if you're gonna blame a driver for a strategy call going against them, you should be nominating Hulkenberg instead, whose strategy was much worse, and never ever even looked like getting him into the points.

Ferrari easily takes this one I think. Home race and Kimi is 9th and Alonso is out. To make matters worse, they didn´t really look like they would be anywhere near the top with Alonso only being just ahead of Räikkönen before having to retire the race.

(dis)honorable mentions:
Esteban Gutierrez: What on earth was he thinking when passing Grosjean, did he really believe that Grosjean would just vanish completely right after he passed him or what? Also, I think he might have had another accitend at the start since he made a pitstop after few laps and was even behind Eriksson for a while after that.
Nico Hulkenberg: Not a good race from Hulkenberg, though I would blame team more than the driver on this case. I mean what use it is to try one stop race and start with hard if you going to pit before half of the guys on soft tyres had done so?

Salamander wrote:I didn't realise there was an actual change in how the FIA was interpreting incidents after Spa - can you tell me more about that?

I suppose Magnussen would never have been even investigated prior to Spa and Rosberg's "proving a point by not yielding" move...or at least everybody got away with that (almost) every time before Spa.

Remember how Checo complained about Button's move on the radio, too? That would suggest that there must have been words said about shutting the door in the drivers' conference...

1. Max Chilton
Nothing stands out as particularly reject-worthy today, so being the only person to DNF through driver error earns you the award.

2. Ferrari
Poor performance in front of the home crowd.

HM's:
Rosberg - Threw away points to Hamilton with two identical mistakes
Gutierrez - Clumsy error with Grosjean

Bernie Ecclestone for putting the future of the Italian GP into doubt.

Drivers:
GutSquared: seriously?
Chilton: this ain't Dakar, Max
Hülk: gets beaten comfortably by Checo in Q2, and then does a weird strategy, while Sergio marches home in the points... what happened?

Teams:
Ferrari: to rub salt in the wound, Williams scored 27 points taking away the 3rd place from you, while you did only 2. In front of your home crowd. Wow.

Freeze-O-Kimi wrote:I can't see why vettel is getting nominations. I hardly call being faster than Ricky in EVERY SESSION of the weekend and only losing because his tyres were 9 laps older and went off as being "throuoghly beaten". Still he has flaws with tyre management while Ricky is a master of it

Kravitz just explained that they pitted him so early because he was stuck in heavy traffic, make of that what you will...

I'd like to add a ROTR nomination to the booing - Rosberg made a silly mistake in the last race and even apologised. He really does not deserve it - it's in extremely poor taste and casts the sport in a very bad light.

My nominations:

Max Chilton: More noticeable given his impressive finishing record, but an embarrassing mistake nonetheless.

Scuderia Ferrari: The first time a Ferrari hasn't been on the podium at Monza since 2008 and overall their worst home result since 1995 where both cars retired. Alonso had a mechanical retirement for the first time since his engine went up in smoke at Sepang in 2010. Not encouraging statistics and really not a great race, or a great season for that matter, for the sport's most successful team.

Esteban Gutiérrez Gutiérrez: Very poor move on Grosjean.

Booing: Come on, Belgium was pretty bad but this is just pathetic!

Caterham F1 Team: Not for their performance, but for the fact that Ericsson's seat looks secure for the rest of the season and Kamui (who outqualified and outraced the Marussias this weekend while Marcus brought up the rear the whole time) was replaced at Spa and looks to be replaced again at Singapore and possibly for the remainder of the season.

SgtPepper wrote:

Freeze-O-Kimi wrote:I can't see why vettel is getting nominations. I hardly call being faster than Ricky in EVERY SESSION of the weekend and only losing because his tyres were 9 laps older and went off as being "throuoghly beaten". Still he has flaws with tyre management while Ricky is a master of it

Kravitz just explained that they pitted him so early because he was stuck in heavy traffic, make of that what you will...

I'd like to add a ROTR nomination to the booing - Rosberg made a silly mistake in the last race and even apologised. He really does not deserve it - it's in extremely poor taste and casts the sport in a very bad light.

Magnussen in a Mercedes powered car? Hardly call that heavy traffic.

The best example of Ricky's admittedly superior tyre management is Britain where he managed to make a 35 lap stint work while Seb had to stop twice. Final gap? 8 seconds. As I said apart from the last 6 laps not once was Ricky ahead of Seb all weekend and it'll be really interesting to see what Seb's chassis can do for Singapore as it was a little masked here