Fuji - 2 stewards penalties I don't understand

[Dave B]

Kimi's mistake was also made in difficult conditions. If I remember rightly the track was damp in parts? Lewis just plain pushed too hard.

Then in that case Kimi was pushing too hard for the conditions at the time.

Lewis made a fundamental error with cold tyres/brakes on a cool track; Kimi made a fundamental error judging the grip in damp conditions. I don't really see the difference, and I don't think either incident should have been penalised.

[Tonieke]

I would say, in Massa's defense, he thought parking in the middle of the corner was more dangerous than trying to get out of the corner. He pulled away ASAP to avoid being hit. Sutil was just unlucky and he had nowhere to go. Surely there were yellow flags waving at corner by the time that Sutil had arrived? If that was the case, it looked like he rather chose to come hurtling into the corner to not lose time and came short.

don't you think it would have been the safest to just wait..From that video Massa clearly could see a car coming...and Sutil clearly saw Massa's car being parked...But by Massa making this unexpected move he clearly confused Sutil..Blocking the path of Sutil....

[gravity]

I agree that Massa should have waited. I'm just arguing from what I see was Massa's POV.

Sutil, as a driver approaching a parked car on the side of the road, he should been going slow enough to avoid the Ferrari if it had moved or not. He should have been prepared to come to a complete stop as he was approaching a blind corner with caution flags waving (I assume?). We are arguing now knowing that there wasn't another car involved but what if the situation was slightly different. ie: another car parked just inside of the curve?

[Bagwan]

I think Massa wanted to get the hell out of the way . I know I would have .

So , whether Felipe saw him coming or not is not really relevent at all .
If Adrian saw Felipe was there , and kept coming at the same pace , it might be assumed that he was trying to take advantage of that fact .

Felipe was not off track , and trying to get out of the way in a tight spot .
Getting past an ailing Jarno put him there .

Racing incident .

[Daniel]

knockie. You're joking right. There is no way Massa could have seen adrian coming. Thanks for posting the evidence to prove yourself wrong.

[pino]

Japanese GP Footage watch it and make up your mind

[Mickey T]

Than maybe he wouldn't drift out of the corner and take th eovertaker with him.

....but that's ok when raikkonen does exactly what you describe to hamilton at spa?

overlap shouldn't matter - you still have to give racing room to the guy on the outside

[Marshall]

Having watched the videos, including the very revealing onboards on F1.com, it looks to me like at turn 1 Lewis didn't kamakaze into Kimi, but merely made a huge mistake and outbraked himself.

The Lewis/Felipe incident I would call as a racing incident - Felipe ran wide but tried to fight back, Lewis left him no room.

Massa/Bourdais, from the side on view it looks like Felipe has overtaken Seb, and he would have turned into the 1st corner having not noticed him. Again probably a racing incident rather than something worthy of a penalty.

[woody2goody]

If Lewis didn't take to the grass/run-off area/whatever it was in Belgium, he would have T-boned Raikkonen and possibly not received any points. It was his good judgment in this situation which ironically ended up getting him penalised. Massa should have cut the corner and scored more than the 2 points he ended up with.

[Marshall]

That's true - Lewis would have had to pit to replace those flat spotted fronts anyway so Felipe would have regained the position eventually anyway.

But such is the benefit of hindsight - in reality it was a pretty poor first lap from both the main championship rivals.