The way I saw it that truck was guarded properly by the flag stations. No driver should have been surprised to find it on track. As far as the response to the fire goes, it was pretty damned poor. What if Webber had been injured & unable to exit the car on his own. At an SCCA regional you'd see corner workers performing at a higher level. I found this to be an enjoyable race. Sure would have been fun had Lotus let Romain challenge Kimi.
The way I see it, Lotus had the Manufacture's points in hand with 2nd and 3rd not matter who was in each position. Kimi still has a mathematical chance at the Drivers Championship if a meteor takes out Vettel's car. A rich team would probably toss more cash at Grosjean to salve the wound.
I watched Mario Andretti put his own fire out in his Ferrari in the '71 Spanish GP with the corner workers watching him.
It is not uncommon for a driver to grab a fire bottle away from a corner worker & use it themselves. Reason being they know that chemical can damage the car, so the driver only wants it sprayed where needed. That being said where the heck were the marshal's with the fire bottles???
Just to be fair, from my viewing the marshalls were not that far behind Webber getting out of his car. When they showed the thermal image of the fire the extinguishers were already going.
Hulkenberg had a hell of a drive. Some top team needs to adjust the size of their car and get him on board. I loved Hammy's radio transmission. "Anyone have any suggestions"
On the Sky F1 broadcast we heard a team radio message from Lotus telling Grosjean that he was faster than Kimi, and to go ahead and race him. Grosjean protested that with a "no!" Martin Brundle pointed out that it would have helped Lotus if Grosjean had beaten Kimi, since then they could point at him as their number 1 driver for next year and tell their investors "look, we have a driver who can beat Kimi!" So it seams to me that the only person who wouldn't let Grosjean race Kimi was Grosjean.
Possibly Romain realized if he had raced Kimi both may well have DNF'd. Makes me wonder??? That is right up there with Kimi's "Leave me along I know what I'm doing" from last year.
Right after Grosjean's race engineer told him he was faster and to go after Kimi, the team manager came on and said to continue racing just the way they were - IOW - don't take points away from Kimi when he still has a (very small) mathematical chance at winning the championship. However, if Vettel wins it all in Japan, then I'll bet they turn Romain loose.....
Yup. In fact, he also said "I cannot" as in "No, I cannot ..." I couldn't make out the rest, something about downforce, I think. Boullier's transmission may have been meant as an order, sounded that way, but based on Grosjean's words and the frustrated tone in his voice I'd say Boullier's order (?) was probably unnecessary. Call this unlikely if you like, but he may have merely been reacting to Grosjean's tone, trying to keep him from overreaching by following his engineer's order and possibly causing 1 or even 2 Lotus DNFs just 5 laps from the race finish. Seems pretty smart to me.
Interesting, some of the F1 boards said that Grosjean ask the team to tell Kimi to let him by. The response back was to race each other. From the teams perspective I understand not telling Kimi to move over. He still was a shot. On the other hand he is leaving and has seemed to be burning bridges behind him. If I'm the team head after the next race I'm doing everything I can to help Grosjean beat Kimi for just the reason mentioned above.
If I'm the team head I'd wait till Kimi was eliminated mathematically first. There is money in having the Drivers Championship, even if the driver is jumping ship the end of the season.
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Piecing things together, here's the way I understand it. Grosjean decided he was faster but couldn't actually make a pass without risking both himself and Raikkonen. Apparently the team has continuing orders that he's not to risk taking Kimi out. Grosjean says "we have rules not to fight" but I'm sure he knows that rule is applied much more stringently to him than Raikkonen (or perhaps it doesn't apply to Raikkonen at all?). So, he asked them to tell Kimi to let him through, thus avoiding the risk. When the engineer told him they were racing that meant he needed to do whatever he could to get past on his own because Kimi wasn't going to be told to pull up. This is where the "No, I cannot ..." complaint came from, he was stuck between the standing order from the team and his desire to get past so he could continue racing rather than following, and he wanted some help from the team to make it happen. Boullier's order then made the entire exchange moot but there wasn't likely to be a clean pass anyway unless the team decided to give Kimi a different kind of order. So, one order or another order, or Grosjean simultaneously taking a competitive risk and also risking the wrath of both the team and his teammate. I agree with others though that since even Kimi is unlikely to win the driver's championship the team are far more interested in the money they can make from the constructor's championship at this point and really don't care about letting Grosjean prove himself if it risks that huge pot of cash.
I don't know, Kimi sure didn't have any compunctions about barging past RoGro like he was a cone on an autocross course. I'd like to see him go after the Kimster much like Checo was going after Jens in the earlier part of the season. Can you believe how fast this season has gone by? Seems like only a few weeks ago they were in Australia......
Me thinks Grosjean proved himself very well by keeping his head on his shoulders and standing on the podium next to Kimi and Seb. A win was not there to be had, but had he forced the matter with Kimi and something had happened, he had way more to loose. My hats off to Grosjean for keeping his cool, something he needs on his resume.....
Interesting article about Vettle in British GQ Read More - Sebastian Vettel Dominance of F1 Reaction - GQ.COM (UK)