Extraordinary Europe

Hello everyone. Again, apologies for massively falling behind on these blog posts. I decided to take a break from writing for a little while. Not only have I been really busy with things at home, as well as going to British Grand Prix (more on that in a separate, very long and multimedia-filled post, that I'll link to here <), I haven't really had the feeling to write lately. It's horrible and I know it leaves you all in limbo, but given the choice of waiting until I felt I could write something of some value again, or continuing to write and pumping out any old dross that doesn't read well, I went for the former. After all, these are my thoughts and I want to articulate them properly, so those of you who do read them know what I really think and feel about this crazy sport that we all love. Thankfully, the break has done me the world of good and I'm feeling very energetic about the whole project again now, so normal service should hopefully have been resumed. Thank you very much to all those of you who continue to read this blog by the way, it always surprises me how interested people are in my views. We've got a good little community here at Fan Formula :)

So now, there's going to be about 5 posts in the space of a day or two, in order to catch up on what I've missed. Starting with the first recorded instance of an exciting race at Valencia!

Q1) Fernando Alonso is the first driver of the 2012 season to achieve two wins. Do you think that we will now (9 races in) start to see title challengers emerging from the pack?

A: To be honest, I think we've already seen that happening to some small extent. When you take into account that the drivers we expect to be winning and scoring points, e.g. Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, are still doing just that (apart from Maldonado, maybe...), there's still been some modicum of consistency in that sense. And now that most of the teams/drivers are starting to suss out how the Pirelli tyres work, the title race will definitely become a lot more clearer from now on. I'm still hoping for a Red Bull world championship, of course ;)


Q2 [@squiffany's favourite subject...]) Vergne received a 10-placed grid drop and a fine for his incident with Kovalainen. Kobayashi received a 5-place grid drop after his collision with Massa. But Maldonado only received a post-race 20 second time penalty for his incident with Hamilton. Do you think the penalties are consistent with the results of the incidents, or do you disagree with the stewards' decisions?

A: In one short answer -  no, I don't agree with the stewards' decisions, nor do I think the penalties are consistent with the incidents.

Now for the very long, ranty answer...

Having looked at each of the incidents individually, in my opinion, the stewards were correct in giving penalties to Vergne and Maldonado, but their severity wasn't consistent.

In the Vergne and Kovalainen incident, Vergne obviously wasn't expecting Kovalainen to be that slow when overtaking him, which is a silly mistake to make and one that ultimately cost them both their races. As the resulting accident wasn't intentional, however, a 10 place grid-drop and a €25,000 fine that Vergne had to pay from his own wages seemed harsh, especially when you consider drivers like Maldonado have been given 10-place drops for more serious incidents this season. I think a drive-through penalty with the fine, or a 5-place drop on its own would have been more appropriate.

The penalty Kobayashi received for the incident with Massa I thought, again, was harsh. Going by a replay which has unfortunately been taken off Youtube during this write-up, Massa had two wheels off the track and Kobayashi had the racing line, and therefore had the advantage. Massa should have yielded the place to Kobayashi instead of trying to come back onto the track so soon. But as Massa seems to have gone wide to try and avoid a collision with the Force India, I'd have left this as a racing incident.

However, the penalty Maldonado received for his incident with Hamilton was, I believe, totally wrong. I understand why he was given a time penalty, with it happening in the final few laps of the race, but this has happened before in the past and needs to be dealt with more seriously. I'm not going to get into the debate about whether Maldonado did this deliberately or not; it's been covered extensively on Twitter and the like, and every time it seems to breaks out into a horrible stand-off, where people just shout obscenities and don't respect anyone's opinions - so you can watch the replay for yourself and decide.

In my opinion, Hamilton had the racing line, Maldonado had all four wheels off the track and could have slowed down in order to avoid a collision. He would have had to yield either way, as the only other option apart from slowing down was to cut the corner. It's a real shame that Maldonado's getting this reputation for petulance and 'red mist,' as he's clearly a very quick driver on his day. But he really needs to learn to be more patient, otherwise someone is going to end up getting hurt through his actions, and it seems the only way he's going to learn this is through much more severe penalties. When you compare this incident to the previous two, a 20-second time penalty seems not nearly enough a punishment. And when you consider that he's been found guilty of this sort of thing before, as in Monaco with the incident with Perez, a time penalty almost feels like he's getting away with his actions. Taking all this into account, I would have imposed a 10-place drop for the next race as a minimum.

So to summarise, Tiff is absolutely right to be bringing up the issue of consistency time and time again - because it's clearly not there. I think @domcovkid might be right when he said that it's due to the driver stewards being on a rotation basis, as they're all inevitably going to have different views on the same incident. But then you can't have the same set of stewards for every single race, as then you may get some stewards developing a bias for or against some drivers. I appreciate that the FIA are trying their best to make penalties more consistent, and the new addition of the driver stewards has been partly successful in doing this, but I think something more needs to be done. Otherwise fans are going to grow more disillusioned with the sport.

Caption competition anyone? © The Cahier Archive

Q3 [as suggested by me, yay! Thanks Grace]) Should the European Grand Prix continue, where would you like it to be held and why?

A: It seems a lot of you agreed with me about having the European Grand Prix on a rotation basis! I just think there's too many great tracks in Europe that aren't getting their chance to shine, and having the Grand Prix in a different country each year would bring a bit of variety to each season. Tracks that have hosted in the past, like Imola and Paul Ricard, could get another shot at hosting, and we could always go to tracks we've never been to before, like Portimao. And who knows, if it did happen, maybe it would lead to one of them getting a permanent Grand Prix on the calendar.


BONUS) Who was your driver of the day and why?

A: Could it have been anyone else but Alonso? What he's continuing to do with that Ferrari is brilliant. Even though the car has come on leaps and bounds in the last few races, it still shouldn't be winning them, and this win just showed everyone how talented Alonso really is. You can see how much it meant to him to win this race - it was thoroughly deserved.