Grand Prix Rejects

A few different angles to choose from today? Sheer (albeit almost expected) incompetence? A usually strong contender grinding away for no meaningful result? More potshots at the organisers and their rules? As per usual, 10 points to the first choice, 6 points to the second.

1. Turn 1 - Like Curva do Sol all those years ago
2. Booing fans - Back to this shite

10 points: Massa the mobile roadblock, and his whingeing got Vettel a slightly unfair penalty.
6 points: Massa's team - nowhere! Our illustrious race steward must have shed a tear for how awful this team's become.

1. Sebastian Vettel for not getting the most of his car and being fairly anonymous.

2. The crowd for booing

1. Renault - Awful.
2. FIA - Fix the sport Todt. You bathplug' idiot.

1. Renault - For the Palmer pit incident

2. Martin Brundle - Dude whines a lot these days. Bring back di Resta.

1. Radio rules - Between Perez's brake problems last week and Rosberg's gearbox problems today, it's clear these rules need to be abandoned.

2. The idiots who booed Rosberg - As Jim Richards said at Bathurst in 1992, "you're a pack of arseholes". Way to make Britain look even more terrible after these last two weeks.

Honourable mentions to Sebastian Vettel for a dreadful weekend, Williams for being absolutely nowhere, and Renault, who'd have done much better if they had decided not to show up this weekend...

Dishonourable mentions to Michael Fallon MP and John Wittingdale MP, because fack the Tories.

1. Valtteri Bottas: Probably the worst race of his career so far. Constantly spinning, the low point being the spin when he had the chance to overtake Alonso. Williams in general had an awful race, but Bottas deserves this nomination more than the team, as Massa had a far better performance (at least he was solid but unspectacular).
2. Renault pit crew: Who releases a car on three wheels? They do.

Charlie Whiting - For the first six laps
Renault Pit Crew - For obvious reasons.

I'll give my first nod to the Banana Boat Pit Crew. Just LOL. Something that stupid is, to me, an open and shut ROTR.

My second nod goes to the Goits Booing Nico Rosberg at the Podium Ceremony. Immature dipsticks the lot of them.

Turn 1 was a choice for causing Haryanto to go out of the race. I'll give a (probably unwarranted) mention to McLaren-Honda for not finishing in the points. I forgot about Ferrari and Williams also for just sucking today...

Rosberg did indeed get f***ed by the FIA, so my first pick will also go to the FIA/Bullshit Radio Rules.

1. Renault - what a joke they were today
2. FIA - what's the point of the wet tyres, exactly? Why can't we have a wet race for once?

1. Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen - poor pace from both drivers, in a car which should be solidly around 5th and 6th. Both drivers continuously spun and went off the track (and in Raikkonen's case that wasn't just in the race), Vettel's Ferrari had another gearbox penalty and he didn't actually make up any ground during the race, got ANOTHER penalty for shoving Massa off. 12 points while Red Bull gets 27 with 3rd and 4th (pending).
2. Poor sportsmanship birthed by booing and their subsequent provocation by Lewis Hamilton - the booing was unwarranted enough in Austria, but for it to be repeated here is just sad. What are they even booing? Oh yes, Rosberg. Why? Because Rosberg. But what really got to me was Hamilton provoking the crowd on the podium into booing by deliberately stating that it's great the British crowd don't boo people. Webber was trying to be a good guy and tell the crowd to wise up, but Hamilton ignored all possibility of sportsmanship by standing there smugly while it all went on. It's just unpleasant and no-one wants to see it.

Honourable mention to the implementation of a safety car. Removing any possibility of position change off the start by having a rolling start. Very exciting, FIA, very exciting...

1 - The most obvious choice: Charlie Whitting and the entire race control for starting this race behind of safety car during five laps!!! No wonder most of drivers quickly changed to Inters. No wonder there are a lot of hate in the F1 communities after this. This is getting ridiculous!

2 - Williams: Home race, 0 points.

1. Vettel - whilst he was compromised at the start due to his gearbox penalty, he struggled to make any real headway and made quite a few mistakes (he wasn't the only one to make mistakes into Turn 1, but he did seem to make more mistakes than other drivers did).

I do think that the penalty for the incident with Massa was harsh - those sorts of penalties should only really be given for intentionally crowding a driver off the track, whereas Vettel did so only by accident. Furthermore, normally the stewards tend to be slightly more lenient in variable conditions because it is quite a bit harder for drivers to judge the conditions. That said, it did kind of sum up what a scruffy race that Vettel was having.

2. Williams - last year, we were talking about how the team might have squandered a victory. This year, by contrast, they finished the race a lap down and out of the points - both drivers were clearly struggling, with Massa acting as a mobile road block and Bottas spinning a few times.
They've been slipping back for a while now, but they really should have been more competitive at a circuit which should have played to their strengths. At this rate, I would not be surprised if Williams lose 4th in the WCC to Force India by the end of this season - the gap is down to 19 points and the team seem to be hitting a string of decent results recently.

Lots of choices today with alot of teams underperforming.

1. Williams - Actually managed to plummet below the bar set in Austria with no points despite both cars finishing. Force India are now just 19 points behind them.

2. Ferrari - Yet another race where they piss away points. How are they still 2nd in points again?

Mentions

Renault (Especially pit crew) - Who sends a car out with just three wheels on. On top of that a completely hopeless race. I just hope they can turn things around next season.

Haas From their best showing since Bahrain last week to their worst of the season here, battling Saubers and Renaults at the back.

Charlie Whiting Why bother having wet tires if no one ever gets to race in conditions that warrant them. One of the biggest reasons why I dislike 2010s F1.

Vettel Ferrari screwed up the strategy today but an error filled race did not help. Lucky to even get points.

1. Williams: Spent the whole race in Pnowhere. Those guys were fighting for race wins two years ago.
2. The race direction: Starting yet another wet race under safety car was enough to curb off every possible enthusiasm for the day.

HM to Renault, for another unimpressive showing, and to almost all the drivers for constantly spinning on Turn 1.

1- Ferarri- From gearbox changes to Spins to penalties to nowhere near the pace AGAIN I have to give to the prancing horses. Heads will be rolling soon in Italy

2- Williams- Nowhere near the pace again and they shone out like a beacon. No way are they getting third this year.

Honorable mentions- Whoever decided to start the race under the safety car. What is the point of wet tires. For gods sake it was a shower not a Malaysian downpour. Not exactly showing off the drivers abilities to cope with all conditions are they...

Renault- 3 wheels? Seriously?

1st - Ferrari.
Vettel's weekend: Gearbox change + penalty. And then his best chance of retrieving the race was undone with a spin. And to top it off he got a penalty for outbraking himself and running Massa out of road.
Raikkonen's weekend: Who? Where? Tbf to Kimi, 5th was about the limit of the car's performance providing there were two reliable Mercs and two reliable Red Bulls, but that he was totally invisible up until the last few laps tells you a lot about Ferrari this weekend.

2nd - Williams Their entire race consisted of being passed or holding cars up.

Hon mention Renault's pitcrew - Most races will feature at least 40 pitstops, and invariably, all of them manage to release a car with 4 wheels on it.

1. Sebastian Vettel - the penalty was perhaps undeserved, but he just went nowhere the entire race. Not worthy of a quadruple champion.

2. Booing fans - seriously immature.

HMs: Williams, Charlie Whiting et. al., turn 1, Renault's pit crew.

1: The FIA

2. The British Fans

1. Great Britain - what an abysmal few weeks. The booing was the shite icing on the turd cake.

2. Andrea Leadsom - because I just CAN.

1. Safety Car Start - Time and time again they start the race behind the safety car only to bring it in as soon as the track is ready for inters

2. Sebastian Vettel - Terrible race for Vettel was absolutely nowhere

1. Williams - except when Massa put softs on at the end, they were otherwise mobile chicanes the whole time. Force India showed them up for battle of best Mercedes customer team.

2. Ferrari - what a shocker, this is meant to be Mercedes' main challenger.

Many dishonourable mentions too: Turn 1, the safety car start, the over-stringent radio rules and booing fans. Though I just knew Rosberg would cop it from the fans after what happened in Austria.

Safety Car Start -- I guess Charlie Whiting didn't want Hamilton to lose his home race...
Virtual Safety Car -- DItto.

1. Safety car starts - At this rate, Indycars will be doing more wet weather races. This overcaution is annoying the fans, the drivers, and going by Hulks radio with his pit crew, its starting to bug the teams as well. Its robbing a big part of what makes Formula 1 and denying us a great leveller. Stop it FIA

2. Vettel - amateurish performance

I want to give a shout out to a what could of been (not HM) - Lewis Hamilton. Why? If he had hit the safety car, which he almost did, that would have probably been Reject of the Century moment!

1. Sebastian Vettel - Not the Vettel we all know (and some love).
2. Williams - No points, Force India are closing in and they didn't even perform the fastest pitstop.

Dishonourable mentions to Renault, Radio Rules and Idiotic fans that were booing.