Originally Posted by
Nitrodaze
So the arguments begin... Whose fault is it you ask? Well, if you can be objective then these are the facts:-
1. Hamilton lost the drag race to the first corner. Rosberg overtakes on the outside which shows how Hamilton has taken care to give Nico tons of space to avoid a collision.
2. They come out of the corner in to the short straight to turn two. Nico moves left to cover that side
3. Nico discovers that he wasd in the wrong engine mode and proceeds to correct it quickly before turn two. At this point, Nico was down on power and Hamilton was clearly much faster as he was bearing down on a slower Nico.
4. From Hamiltons perspective, Nico had the left side covered but had the right side open by more than a cars width. Hamilton, seeing the opportunity on the right, decides to overtake. Meanwhile, Nico was fiddling with knobs on the steering.
5. Nico finished just in time to see Hamilton heading for the open right side then turned sharply to cut him off. But his reaction was abit late. Hamilton had to take to the grass to avoid a collision, lost grip on the grass, spun round and crashed into Nico.
So the questions are as follows:-
Would any other driver in the grid in Hamilton's position seeing the opportunity and the clear open door to Nico's right not attempt to go for the overtake?
Did Nico, knowing he was in the incorrect engine mode, hence would be slower than the cars behind him momentarily take the right action to avoid a collision from the faster cars behind him? Hence was his attempt to defend the open right side of him under his circumstance not dangerous? Both drivers walked away from that one, but it could have also easily been a fatal accident for Hamilton.
This is racing, not an effing procession. I think Nico should have left a car's width as Hamilton left for him at turn one. His late move to defend the open right side as a result of correcting being in the wrong engine mode was reckless and unsportmanlike. It is similar to his move on Ricciado that resulted in him having a puncture to the rear when he had the opportunity to take the lead of the championship going into the mid season break in 2014.
In my opinion, the stewards at the race were crap. We wanted to see a fair fight at the front, what we saw today was very sub-standard defensive drive by Rosberg that cost Mercedes easy 43 points. I was quite surprise to hear Lauda who normally is very objective about his opinions blame Hamilton before the analysis of the accident had taken place. Hamilton was abit naive today to quickly accept fault without first waiting to see all the fact of the accident before putting his hand up to accept the fault.
Should we expect accidents to occur each time Rosberg receives challenge from a charging Hamilton? At this rate, Mercedes may hand the drivers title to Redbull or Ferrari [if they get their act together].
It is not respectable to not accept fault when it is clearly yours. Nico caused what could have been a fatal accident by not leaving a cars width. You may argue that he was in front and had the right to defend. Our conversation would haave been very different if Hamilton got killed due to that accident which was clearly very reckless.