TBK-Light.com

I believe the lights are operated by the marshals to some degree, but I think a marshal waving a green would be more significant. Could be why we haven't heard about this already though.

Precisely. Any further decisions or obsessing on these "illegal" passes just seem redundant. Let's just move on.

Congrats to Vettel and commiserations to Alonso. Here's appreciating a great year in 2012 and looking forward to 2013.

_________________
BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

This is only going by my experiences at Knockhill and what was explained to me by marshals who were at Silverstone. The lights are operated by Race Control. The marshal in charge at a post will radio race control about an incident such as a crash and they switch the lights on. The marshals at the post will only flag and check to make sure the lights are working at the beginning of the meeting.

Not the first time Vettel behaves stupid and tasteless when we remember his arguement with Jenson Button about spraying champaign in India 2011. Given Vettel's clangers sometimes I wonder why he is perceived as the nice down-to-earth guy by the majority while Alonso is considered the villain and Hamilton the arrogant one. All three give reasons for personal dislike in my view.

To Vettel's defense. He was pulled into the Ayrton Senna topic by the way the interviewer from RTL Germany asked the question. The interviewer referred to Bruno as "The nephew of Ayrton Senna is running into your car".

Tasteless or not, I'd prefer drivers to be able to speak freely at times. Things are too robotic and mediated as it is. Give these drivers a break. I wish people would stop being so hypersensitive about every comment.

Bring back Irvine, JV, Montoya, etc... and freedom of speech. Who cares if they come across as dicks? That's more enjoyable than the "yes", "no", "it's what the team would have wanted me to say" monotone answers we get all the time.

_________________
BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

If they put the question that provokes out a questionable answer, then it's double standards by the interviewer. And is it even a bad thing to say that he's going to pay a respect to visit Senna's grave before leaving Brazil? He probably had that in his mind before the interview anyways, he had just broke Senna's record of being the youngest triple world champion in F1. Maybe it sounded better in his head what he said.

And why Alonso is seen as a bad guy? Well here's few reasons to begin with:
- he's not taking any responsibility when he makes a mistake (incident with Kimi at Suzuka)
- he's always demanded number one status in any given team (didn't get that from McLaren and was occasionally beaten by a rookie)
- everything the team does to help him is good (even breaking Massa's gearbox seal)
- if he loses the race, it was because the car was bad and the team didn't help him
- he's whining to media about everything he thinks is wrong, even lying about it or at least telling his perspective as the full truth (Ferrari wasn't the worst car in Valencia or Hockenheim)
- he's ready to cheat (Singapore 2008, he's the mr.X, 2006 Renault wasn't exactly legal)
- he's betrayed his employer (McLaren in 2007 when he gave out information for Renault)
- he demands things from FIA during the race (Bahrain and Monza this year, Canada in 2006) to gain a track position or to disadvantage another driver
- he's only seeing himself as a perfect driver (he was giving out 120% at India and 150% at Abu Dhabi and was 100% sure to take the title before Indian GP) and he's not afraid to say that to media
- he gave himself a "perfect ten" for this season, saying that he did a perfect job and only lost the title because of Lotus (has Vettel personally ever blamed Magnetti Marelli for ruining his chances to win the title?)

Of course you can argue about most of those points I gave, especially if you are supporting Alonso. These are just the major reasons why there's so much hate around him, I'm not saying they're all true or that black and white at all. Then there's also many other reasons that has nothing to do with his own personality. Like close link to Flavio Briatore, which many people dislike and to Santander for buying Kimi's seat for Alonso (claimingly they paid Räikkönen 30 Million dollars to stay out from F1 for two years, that seems like a bad deal now). Then for some people it's a great fun to joke about his eye browns or that he looks like Borat.

So if you're not a tifosi, spaniard or a diehard fan, you can clearly tell that it's actually quite easy to hate him. He's a fast driver, no doubt about that, but his media image isn't like Vettel's "down to earth nice guy" or Räikkönen's "I do my best, never give up, don't give a sh*t" approach. I think the problem is that Fernando is giving to much fuel to the fire of the haters.

_________________
"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

Pretty much my opinion of Alonso right there.

But I think it's good to have good and bad guys. I appreciate Fernando's speed and talent massively, but it's more interesting when you have somebody to cheer for/against. I can't argue that he drove amazingly for most of the season.

Interviewer digs for a certain type of answer - gets it - is outraged that he got it.

Yeah right. I take it people don't know how journalism works? Do you really think Alonso was walking around the paddock saying "Oh I can afford retirements, I've got a good gap, I'm going to win this title!" No. Of course he wasn't. He answers questions, they use the exact quote and put a load of fluff around it.

And yeah, when Kimi and Webber are Iceman and Grit, it's awesome. When Vettel does it he's an asshole.

Come on guys, you're better than this.

I didn't say that it was my opinion, more like a general opinion of people who hate Alonso.

Your view on yellow press is spot on, that's how they sell their stories - they colour the truth as much as they can.

It's easy for reporter to go to Fernando after a good race and ask: "Fernando, do you think you deserve the title after a race like this?" FA: "well...I think..." and the headlines would be like "Alonso: I DESERVE THE TITLE!" and you would get million clicks for that. Then after a bad race you could ask "Fernando, are you a [adjective] [substantive]?", which he could reply "no." and the headlines would be "Alonso really is a one [adjective] [substantive] ?"

This is the reason why Kimi has said many times that he doesn't care what they write or if they give sh*t on him. His first years in F1 were awful in terms of media exposure in Finland at least. I think Webber and Kimi gets away of what they do because they've done it so long that the reporters don't question their media personality that much anymore but takes them as they are and makes the story about that instead, if they care. But as Vettel (german media's #1 scoop), Hamilton (brit media's #1 scoop) and Alonso (hispanic media's #1 scoop) gives just a word that can be turned against them in dozens of articles covering "the episode" you can bet that it will be done, the reporters will take their opportunity to bash them, then waiting them to comment about "the scandal" then waiting for public reaction, then waiting an apology and later on making a retrospective report about the whole "scandalous episode" afterwards.

It works pretty well for drivers who don't want to shake the boat or give a a bad image of themselves. But when a driver (Kimi) really doesn't care or comment it afterwards, it's not worth of trying to build the hype around a so called scoop of the week. Take a Abu Dhabi podium for example. No one gave a shit about Kimi saying shit, because Kimi didn't. But people where "outraged" of what Vettel said. And when Vettel tried to belittle the whole thing it caused another outburst from media and public, even FIA reacted on it and Vettel gave his apology. Then the media speculated that Vettel might loose points because of it. Suddenly everyone forgot that Kimi was on that same podium using foul language. And why is that? Kimi didn't care to comment on the whole episode, unlike what Vettel did.

_________________
"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

What Vettel said word for word was "Senna's grave is here at Morumbi. I think I have to visit it in order to tell him what his nephew did, what was not helping us today"

I very much agree with Kals about appreciating drivers who speak freely. If Vettel would have made any other comment of what a dumb blind idiot Bruno Senna is, I wouldn't give a damn and I wouldn't bother to comment. But the way he chose to say it, appeared just weird and not funny to me. He has to be a pretty damn good friend of the Senna family knowing that they won't misunderstand it, that it won't hurt any feelings. If he is not I would stick to Bruno Senna, the F1 driver, with my comments.

I'm just thinking that this comment is more weird than funny and I'm puzzled that I'm the only one perceiving it this way.

Furthermore Vettel can visit Senna's grave all day long if he wants. I don't have an opinion on that.

It's only a weird comment if you think he said it out of the blue. Similarly, Alonsos comments appear cocky and arrogent if you think he said it without prompt. When you think "Well what was the question?" Then suddenly comments like this start to come up in a different light.

This is how journalism works, especially in motorsport. It's a trend that Autosport started in F1 really, of reporting every tiny bit of news as big as possible and hope something sticks. This is what motorsport reporting is about now. It's the same deal with the supposed illegal overtakes - make a big fuss and if nothing happens then everyone forgets it. But if it does kick off then your able to raise your hand and say "We broke that news!". That is what this reporter was going for on that question, and it's what they were going for with Alonso when they asked him about his title lead. It isn't a story, but they have to make a story. And given we've just had an exciting F1 year, don't be surprised if more of this stuff pops up during the off season as people try to keep the attention on them.

Yep German F1 broadcaster RTL is a parade example for what you are describing, Ellis . But they are not asking Vettel these questions to compromise him but to get a statement, which underlines the image of the funny nice guy. Also the German media is not making a fuzz about it as it was the desired leisure Vettel statement.

The thing is that from a non-german perspective the statement was more weird than funny and it remains more weird than funny in my opinion. I wouldn't blame Bruno Senna if he is slightly pissed about Vettel's statement on a personal level and that shouldn't be.

This version shows the Telemetry & Vettel wasn't using KERS or DRS so it does seem the STR lifted to let him past as there's nothing else that would explain the sudden difference in speed.



Anytime I saw Vettel behind an STR later in the race they jumped straight out the way so wouldn't surprise me if that was what happened.

It was Vernge yeah? funnily enough he did that for Alonso too. Into turn Ferradura, he moved to the right and looked like he was blocking, then braked extremely early and let Alonso around the outside. It's also clutching a little at straws to suggest that that one was under yellow. They'd gone through the accident zone, which was for Maldonados car in turn 3, were most of the distance down the straight, and there was a clear green light in front of them.

Ian posted about how you tend to get away with passing cars which lift to let you passed. Because the other side of the coin is slam on the brakes and have everyone cream into you in a yellow zone.

If these were issues then Ferrari would've been all over them.

He actually did use a tiny bit of KERS before overtaking. I assume DRS was off at that time, because of the rain.

Is the penalty for passing under yellows a drive through? Even if Vettel had been guilty of this, the combination of SC and the Red Bull's pace in the wet means he still would have got back to a championship winning position anyway. So I really don't see the point of this debate.

To end this silly debate how about we look at the position of the cars running directly ahead of the STR (and Vettel) as the enter turn three, then through the back straight and finally into the braking zone.

Unless the STR has a slower top speed than a Trabant, I can only imagine the reason why he lost so much distance to the car ahead (in the middle to the end of the backstraight) is because he lifted... It's strange how Vettel's distance relative to the cars ahead of the STR, roughly stayed constant...

_________________
BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

Yea but if people pay attention to that, how can they rag on Vettel and cling to the thought that he gets his title taken off him?

I saw that interview with Vettel live on RTL, and when he said that I thought, oops he shouldnt have said that. But whatever, I mean that guy just went through so many emotions and finished a nervewrecking race, so I can understand him just saying things straight-out without thinking much about it. And I dont think Kai Ebel (the interviewer) was aiming for such an answer.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/groups/f1/fo ... post-80878

Can we leave it now. Please. For the love of all that is holy.

It. Was. A. Legal. Overtake.

 


If anyone else is having trouble understanding the rules or the meaning of the above sentence, despite me including definitions for all the words included in said sentence, I suggest you follow a sport with less rules. Or grow a braincell.