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George Russell is a bad racing driver.

There, I said it. Second time in a half a year he crashes whilst chasing in the closing laps. He has caused massive accidents in the past while chasing (against Bottas in Imola in 2021 for example).

Being fast is one thing, being able to race is another, and Russell is showing his ineptitude at that.

Ridiculous penalty.

I agree with that. Dirty air or not, there's definitely a different set of skills to driving and racing.

On an unrelated note, I'm kinda scared to listen to the P1 podcast's Aus GP summary. I'm stoked that Sainz and Ferrari had a good result, but I'm not looking forward to Matt's smugness and potential innuendo-laden comments.

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Lurking around since 28/06/2002

So how many of the race results this weekend were not changed by the officials in some way?

Were they wrong to?

Am I accusing them of wrongdoing?

Are we asking rhetorical questions to imply cynicism in this thread? Do we want answer or do we just want to rile up emotions? What are we doing here? Racing or ping-pong?

And the funny thing is the pressure will only get bigger from next year since Hamilton is a team leader by default. We can speculate whom Mercedes chooses but Russell will be expected to be team leader, period. Imagine if some new guy starts beating him as regularly as Hamilton did over the years?

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07.04.1968 - Flower of Scotland when will we see your like again?
01.05.1994 - We'll never forget...

Then Mercedes could descend into the midfield. Russell still needs to prove himself. In this field, they need at least one driver to elevate themselves above the field, like Hamilton did in their peak years, like Verstappen is doing now.

Russell needs to, not just beat Hamilton this year, but also make high-pressure decisive overtakes and race his way to make up positions, not just rely on strategy calls. The irony is that Mercedes seldom lets any of their drives do that, but always want to override their drivers' strategy calls, today included.

What Alonso did was questionable, but it seems to me that Russell just went off on his own and wasn´t ready to anticipate. Yes, Alonso braked earlier, but the gap was still big enough. Russell just was confused and reacted wrong. Stupid to blame it on someone else.

Perhaps he should have anticipated dirtiness from Alonso, but hindsight and all that.

Sauber were fined 5,000 Euro's for the lugnut popping off Bottas' car and rolling into the fastlane.

You had to do it, FIA. You had to do something to throw some shade on a race that had a wonderful story and a great winner.

It's getting ridiculous. I truly think I just don't share the same values of this sport anymore. There have been some evolutions between the 50s and the 2010s, sure. But never as abruptly as in the past 5 to 10 years have there been such a spectacular gap in how racing etiquette (or really, common racing sense) is considered by sporting authorities.

And they kept making it faster and faster because MELBOURNE LAP RECORD.

Alonso used the same tactics to win the 2005 Imola GP, and everyone said it was brilliant. Maybe if Schumacher had made a mistake in that race, they would have blamed Alonso too. But Schumacher was a better driver than Russell is.

The stewards' decision is well-reasoned. Alonso wasn't penalised for causing an accident or for brake testing (the decision itself notes that he barely touched the brakes and not enough to effect any retardation), he was penalised for driving erratically. Which he did.

The corner itself is easily fixable, just put it back to how it used to be. The runoff isn't changing as there is a tree at the point where the barrier bends back towards the track.

Tsunoda did very well as best of the rest. If he can beat Stroll once or twice then RB are looking good for 6th in the WCC.

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

lol @ Leclerc continually saying in the post-race interviews that "1st and 2nd is the best we could've done this weekend"

Uh what? This weekend? Not sure if he's so gutted at being beating by Sainz once again that he's just parroting the standard PR responses

My take on the Alonso penalty is that the FIA are setting a dangerous precedent trying to police how drivers can/should defend. They've let such examples go in the past. They won't be able to now. And I'm not sure if that's something they want...

Had it been a legit brake check that caused Russell to take avoiding action, then I'd fully support a penalty. But they noted themselves that it wasn't a brake check and so there wasn't anything inherently dangerous in the move. Even calling it 'erratic' is bit of a stretch in my opinion. While it was a more exaggerated deceleration than in previous laps, Alonso was perfectly entitled to adjust his entry speed in order to maximize corner exit as he knew he'd be vulnerable to Russell on the straight with DRS. As mentioned by someone above, given Alonso decelerated 100m earlier than usual, that in itself tells you that Russell had more than enough time to react and adjust his entry speed but he probably just got over excited at the opportunity and went in too hot. To now start penalizing drivers for adapting their driving styles just seems like over-policing and penalizing for the heck of it.

Honestly Russell is like Vettel and Leclerc. A good quick driver but with a habit of throwing it off with silly mistakes.

Anyway, great result of Sainz who continues to show that he is by no means the worst of the two Ferrari drivers. A podium in Jeddah would have made him the championship leader by now.

McLaren clearly is the 3rd best team, surely on a perfect day a race win should be possible and deserved, no?

Mercedes are going backwards, but at least they are no Sauber or Alpine, because they seem to be going nowhere.

haha what an old fox Alonso is. Bad drivers punt others by contact, he simply does El Plan and he gets done

I guess in 2005 nobody crashed and now Russell ended up with car tumbled in the middle of the race line, holding damages that could get quite expensive to Mercedes, they're taking that into account now

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Indeed. Should they have penalized Hamilton at Abu Dhabi in 2016 for driving "too slowly" or "erratically", when that was all he could do to win the championship by allowing Vettel and Verstappen close the gap to Nico (as we remember, in the end Vettel finished only +0.404 behind Nico)?

My fear is there will be this one "standardized" way to race and drive around a lap. Almost like an algorithm. And if a driver doesn't follow it, he must have been "erratic". Better just replace human drivers with AI, so if there's a crash (how?), the AI driver can always say: "I was just obeying the algorithm".