Reject of the Race - Austria 2023

[Londoner]

1. Yuki Tsunoda. Clearly enjoyed his 2021 ROTR victory here so he's decided to give us a second edition of it! Penalties galore.

2. Lewis Hamilton. Stop whinging for five seconds ffs.

[Enforcer]

Hamilton: "Waugh!"

Mercedes generally: Destroyed by Ferrari, beaten by a McLaren and an Aston. If both McLarens had been running updates and one of Aston's drivers didn't have broken wrists, they'd have been scraping for 9th & 10th.

[Ciaran]

1. Haas, for finishing last and providing the only retirement.
2. Race control, for taking so long to decide on (virtual) safety cars.

[IceG]

ROTR Driver - Hamilton for an all round poor weekend and for whining

ROTR Team - Haas for 19th and 20th

[FalconCapelli]

Hamilton, Susnoda and Haas are ROTR

[Hermann95]

Tsunoda, Mercedes and Track limits.

[TomPryce]

I will just go with one - Red Bull.

Now, let me say that I do genuinely think Verstappen is a genuinely fantastic driver. But the team he drives for me gives me such "villain" energy from any number of competitive sports movies (Talladega Nights/Dodgeball/ CARS). Verstappen pitting for a point bordered on total arrogance from the perspective of Horner, as what would have happened if either the pit stop had gone wrong or a tyre fell off or something? Stranger things have happened.

Not only that, but stripping the point from Sergio, who ran a fabulous race and needed every scrap of self confidence is just the icing on the cake. Adding to how De Vries was being spoken about in the build up by Helmut the Helmet and it just gives an incredibly sour taste in my mouth.

I really enjoyed Red Bull in the post-Jag days, where it felt they relished in their underdog status. Now I just feel a bit hollow. F1 feels hollow. Nothing feels fun anymore.

And before you say I am a Merc fan or something, I am a staunch Williams lover who is holding on hope to Albon's amazing drives this year and giving me something to cheer. Otherwise, it's just been a bit... soulless.

[Ducktanian]

All the drivers who got track limit penalties - 20 best drivers, yadda yadda yadda.

Mercedes, particularly Hamilton - After the last 2 races, this was a sudden jump back to reality. as noted by others Hamilton was clearly unhappy all race.

Haas - Slide to the back... Slide to the back ... Slide to the Back ... CRISS CROSS.

[James1978]

Hmm - I want to say Hamilton but he did say what everyone was thinking about RB dominance at the start of the weekend, except he enjoyed a similar period himself. And not EVERYONE got track limits penalties but it seems half the field did.

DHM to Max (yes really) - that was putting UNBELIEVABLE pressure on the pit crew all for the sake of 1 point when he's got an absolutely massive lead anyway (well 2 considering Checo is still 2nd in the championship and he previously held FL). Smacks of Ferrari's arrogance there in 2002.

[RAK]

1) Yuki Tsunoda: A very underwhelming drive and poor result, even considering that the AlphaTauris have not been the class of the field.

2) Lewis Hamilton: Incessant whining did not do much to engender him to me this race.

Dishonourable Mention: Verstappen's arrogant fastest lap

[James1978]

I will just go with one - Red Bull.

Now, let me say that I do genuinely think Verstappen is a genuinely fantastic driver. But the team he drives for me gives me such "villain" energy from any number of competitive sports movies (Talladega Nights/Dodgeball/ CARS). Verstappen pitting for a point bordered on total arrogance from the perspective of Horner, as what would have happened if either the pit stop had gone wrong or a tyre fell off or something? Stranger things have happened.

Not only that, but stripping the point from Sergio, who ran a fabulous race and needed every scrap of self confidence is just the icing on the cake. Adding to how De Vries was being spoken about in the build up by Helmut the Helmet and it just gives an incredibly sour taste in my mouth.

I really enjoyed Red Bull in the post-Jag days, where it felt they relished in their underdog status. Now I just feel a bit hollow. F1 feels hollow. Nothing feels fun anymore.

And before you say I am a Merc fan or something, I am a staunch Williams lover who is holding on hope to Albon's amazing drives this year and giving me something to cheer. Otherwise, it's just been a bit... soulless.

I LOVED RB in their early days, particularly when they had Coulthard and Webber - but then along came 2009/10 and it all changed after that. But I am British and we do love an underdog

[rachel1990]

1- Yuki Tsnoda- how many penalties do you actually want in a race- 7 track limit violations!!

2- HRH Lewis Hamilton- From whinging about Red Bull domination (clearly forgetting about 2019 and 2020) to Whinging about Track Limits when he was the first to get a penalty then ran to teacher afterward to tell on others. Toto telling him to Shut up basically and drive the car summed it all up

hm - Haas- Not a good day after so much promise (well from Nico)
HM Red Bull - Okay it worked out in the end but it seemed a bit ridiculous to go after the fastest lap that your teammate had when it could have gone badly wrong- all over 1 point.

[Enforcer]

Ok, have to nominate this:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/fia-u ... /10490773/

[James1978]

Yep I think that's the clincher

[mario]

I will just go with one - Red Bull.

Now, let me say that I do genuinely think Verstappen is a genuinely fantastic driver. But the team he drives for me gives me such "villain" energy from any number of competitive sports movies (Talladega Nights/Dodgeball/ CARS). Verstappen pitting for a point bordered on total arrogance from the perspective of Horner, as what would have happened if either the pit stop had gone wrong or a tyre fell off or something? Stranger things have happened.

Not only that, but stripping the point from Sergio, who ran a fabulous race and needed every scrap of self confidence is just the icing on the cake. Adding to how De Vries was being spoken about in the build up by Helmut the Helmet and it just gives an incredibly sour taste in my mouth.

I really enjoyed Red Bull in the post-Jag days, where it felt they relished in their underdog status. Now I just feel a bit hollow. F1 feels hollow. Nothing feels fun anymore.

And before you say I am a Merc fan or something, I am a staunch Williams lover who is holding on hope to Albon's amazing drives this year and giving me something to cheer. Otherwise, it's just been a bit... soulless.

I LOVED RB in their early days, particularly when they had Coulthard and Webber - but then along came 2009/10 and it all changed after that. But I am British and we do love an underdog

Earlier in the season, Horner did make some comments that seemed to mock the other teams for being so far behind Red Bull - meanwhile, after this race, Max was saying that he "loved all the articles" wondering if the other teams might have managed to catch up a bit to Red Bull, only for Max to comfortably win the race. There does seem to be a perception that Red Bull are going from relishing the underdog status to having a rather smug attitude of superiority over the other teams.

Ok, have to nominate this:

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/fia-u ... /10490773/

It certainly is a messy situation when you have more than 1,200 offences being investigated - added to that, you have the considerable gap between the offence occurring and the notification actually reaching the engineers, and it was getting to the point that nobody seemed to be able to keep on top of things.

I do recall the Radio 5 team remarking that there was even the bizarre situation of seeing notifications for Hulkenberg having breached track limits more than 10 minutes after he'd retired from the race. I know some have been criticising Hamilton for his complaints over the radio, but on the other hand he does kind of have a point when the stewards were handing out warnings for track limits to Hulkenberg when he was sitting in his garage.

[Miguel98]

1. Everyone who was penalized for track limits - Lol.

2. Tsunoda - Solid season thus far but that was terrible. Made his hack of a teammate look less of a hack today while still being a hack. That takes skill.

[Meatwad]

Track limit violations: Rules are rules, but this was ridiculous. Only two drivers had none, and almost half the field got penalized. Made even more ridiculous by the fact that some penalties were not given during the race, the strange decision to reset the penalty count for the drivers with most violations and some infringements may have been missed entirely (though this is only based on claims by other drivers).

[takagi_for_the_win]

I find it quite interesting that Hamilton has got countless shouts for airing his frustrations over the team radio, but not a single shout for Sainz for his pathetic attempts to get a penalty for Perez.

Anyway, the obvious choice is the 1,200 track limits offences. Passes my personal “would Jenoch have found it funny” test, which is more than enough for me.

[Wallio]

I have not watched the race yet (have it taped) but I feel I must nominate someone from another series:

Noah Gragson - used NASCAR'S first street race ever to get his sponsor great screen time by wrecking not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times.......AT THE SAME CORNER. That is the rejectfulness we used to celebrate on here.

[Batty]

1200 Track Limit Offenses - That's hilarious.

[Forti]

Track limit violations - Clown show of the year right there.
It’s as if the drivers are asking the tarmac runoffs to be replace with race-ending gravel traps.

[James1978]

I find it quite interesting that Hamilton has got countless shouts for airing his frustrations over the team radio, but not a single shout for Sainz for his pathetic attempts to get a penalty for Perez.

It wasn't great but at least Fred didn't have to tell Carlos off like Toto did, PLUS he could say the Mercedes was difficult to drive which caused his violations but Russell in the same car didn't even get a single violation! (Though yeah I admit, he does cop it a lot whereas Sainz is relatively popular so tends to escape)

[James1978]

Oh another nomination (but related) - Hulkenberg triggered one when he pulled off to retire. Hilarious

[Alextrax52]

Track limits: 18 of the so called 20 best drivers in the world couldn’t keep their cars within the white line of the race track. 1200 in total is an astonishing number.

Yuki Tsunoda: Tsunoda for me has been one of the top 5 drivers of the season for outperforming the boat that’s called the AlphaTauri AT04 but this was a pretty poor race from him, hitting an Alpine on lap 1 sent him to the gravel and then he was one of the worst offenders with track limits. Not his day.

HM’s

Hamilton and Mercedes: Hamilton once again going full Randall from Recess crying to the teacher about track limits, this after his comments in the week about how to curb one team dominance when he’s the last person on earth to be suggesting something like that.

As for Mercedes even in their glory years Austria has never really been their favorite playground (Hamilton’s only won twice at the circuit since it came back) but even so it was a dire weekend, trounced by Ferrari, beaten by the newly upgraded McLaren and struggled to match Aston Martin, the fact Russell only went from 11th to 8th on the road says it all

Carlos Sainz’s whining: He was no better than Hamilton. Had a moan about strategy and then cried about Perez intimidating him like seriously?

Haas: A great Sprint result but back to earth on Sunday, one car finished last on the road and the other was the only DNF, this on a track where they finished 6th and 8th last year

[mario]

I find it quite interesting that Hamilton has got countless shouts for airing his frustrations over the team radio, but not a single shout for Sainz for his pathetic attempts to get a penalty for Perez.

It wasn't great but at least Fred didn't have to tell Carlos off like Toto did, PLUS he could say the Mercedes was difficult to drive which caused his violations but Russell in the same car didn't even get a single violation! (Though yeah I admit, he does cop it a lot whereas Sainz is relatively popular so tends to escape)

I do think you have a point that Sainz is being treated more leniently by comparison - furthermore, we know that quite a few of the other drivers also reacted quite poorly to being warned or penalised for track limits during the race, but since those messages weren't broadcast live, nobody really cares about their complaints. I would say that there is probably an element of reporting bias - if you don't hear what the other drivers were saying or being shown what they were doing, then you're not going to complain about it, whereas if you make a fuss about a particular driver, you're going to drive criticism towards that particular driver by virtue of making them the focus of attention.

There is also the contentious issue of what counts as officially cutting the track versus what doesn't count, given that the FIA was only enforcing the rules at certain corners, not to mention that there seems to have been some rather conflicting information being given. Since you mention him, Russell was later found to have exceeded the circuit limits during the race - however, it so happens that most of those times he exceeded the track limits, he did so in corners where they were not officially enforcing track limits (he did actually exceed the track limits in Turns 9 and 10 as well, just not enough times to be awarded an official penalty).

It has been pointed out that Russell actually committed a more serious offence during the sprint race - the race director quite explicitly instructed drivers that, if they were entering the pit lane, they had to keep to the right hand side of the track and were not allowed to cut across the white line denoting the entry to the pits; however, Russell quite clearly disobeyed that rule during the sprint race. However, even though it was caught on camera, both the stewards and the other teams, for some reason, decided not to investigate that incident.

It's also notable that some of the teams seem to feel hard done by the stewards for not being told about track limit violations until Aston Martin started protesting the results. In the case of Ocon, whilst he was eventually penalised for 10 track limit violations, the stewards originally told Alpine that he'd only exceeded track limits in Turns 9 and 10 3 times - in fact, his race engineer originally congratulated Ocon for managing track limits so well on his cool down lap to the pits, because they had no idea that they would be given so many penalties after Aston Martin's protest.

That point does rather highlight what was a persistent complaint by the teams during the race weekend, which was poor communications between race control and the teams. At best, notifications of track limit violations were being delivered long after the offence took place - for example, when Albon was given a black and white flag on lap 32 for track limits, the penalty was for offences on laps 19, 20 and 25 - so, in the case of the first violation, it was getting on for 15 minutes before the stewards told Albon about a track limit violation, and it was only when they issued a black and white flag that Albon had any idea that he'd been breaching the track limits. At worst, in the case of Ocon, the stewards didn't tell the teams and gave them the impression that there were no issues with the conduct of the drivers, only to penalise them afterwards.

It raises the question - if drivers were actually being notified at a far earlier stage, would we have seen anything like as many track limit violations? Furthermore, if there were more than 1,200 incidents, does it not then raise the age old question of why only a small subset of those were deemed to be necessary to penalise? Were other drivers really more honest when it came to track limits, or was it simply that they were better at getting away with it by only breaching track limits in the corners the FIA wasn't issuing penalties for?

Track limit violations - Clown show of the year right there.
It’s as if the drivers are asking the tarmac runoffs to be replace with race-ending gravel traps.

Actually, the FIA has been saying for several years that they don't think that having tarmac run off areas for Turns 9 and 10 is the right solution and that they want gravel traps there instead, with their final judgement making a rather pointed comment along the lines of "this wouldn't happen if you'd listened to us and put gravel there".

Right now, the FIA seems to be largely putting the blame for a lack of action onto Red Bull, and implicitly also onto FIM.

The former, as the circuit owners, are being criticised on the grounds that the FIA has been telling them that this has been a problem for several years, but that Red Bull has also not been particularly co-operative when it has come to alternative methods of enforcing track limits (either by putting gravel, which seems to be the FIA's preferred option, or the alternative option of putting monitoring devices into the kerbs, which is an approach that has been used at other circuits).

The latter, meanwhile, is being implicitly blamed due to the fact that the FIA held talks with them back in 2021 about putting gravel traps around Turns 9 and 10, but the FIA seem to be implying that FIM have been postponing any sort of decision on gravel traps since then.

[Wallio]

Having watched the race and had a few days to contemplate I nominate:

The A-1/Red Bull Ring itself - Ignoring all the gravel trap or not nonsense, this track is just not very good for Grand Prix cars. Long straight then a hairpin, long straight then a hairpin, lather, rinse repeat. The "infield" section is completely flat in these cars, and turns 9 and 10 have just been a cluster. And it's all done in just 64 seconds or so. In fact, the only things people ever remember about the track are the 2002 team orders row, and DC punting Mika the year before. That's about it

It didn't have to be this way. When Red Bull first bought the track and planned the comeback, their proposal was a design that blended part of the old Ostereichring with the current snoresville circuit. Instead, we get the exact same track, but with a bull statue. Hooray.

I understand why it's on the calendar, and that it isn't going away anytime soon. But either German track would be a huge improvement. Or try Brno if you want to stay in the same rough geographical region.

[Rob Dylan]

Super happy poll is open for the race. You have 48 hours to get your vote in

[Londoner]

1,000+ reasons to vote for ROTR!