F1 GP SPA

[xjr14]

....what a great race!...a shame that alonso made the switch to rain tires one lap to late, would have been nice to see him on the podium....

[AndyM]

shame about Raikkonen though, he drove a good race until he binned it.

hats off to Lewis; what a drive in the wet!

and Heidfeld who made up about 7 places on those last laps!

fantastic race

and some of you were saying Formula 1 is boring

[mattym0310]

Really good race towards the end!
Great drive by Lewis at the end, it was brilliant watching him closing the gap to Raikonnen and then his overtaking manouvers. Big shame about Raikonnens crash at the end, he had run such a good race aswell up to that point. Even second would have brought him back into the championship.

[benknight13]

hiya

[Southwell]

F1 is a joke, Hamiltons been penalised so he is now classified as 3rd. From the way i saw if Raikonnen pushed him wide so he had no other choice but to cut the corner.

[AndyM]

well that's insane

[_JP_]

Seems like the FIA have it in for McLaren AGAIN!

was a nail biting last few laps for sure.

Although the McLaren driver appeared to lift off and was repassed by Raikkonen on the exit of the corner, the stewards ruled that he had gained an advantage by short-cutting the circuit.

"The stewards, having received a report from the race director and having met with the drivers and team managers involved, have...determined a breach of the regulations has been committed by the competitor and impose the penalty referred to," said an FIA statement.

Hamilton was deemed to have "cut the chicane and gained an advantage", thereby breaching Article 30.3(a) of the sporting regulations and Appendix L chapter 4 Article 2 (g) of the International Sporting Code.

Did he really have much choice!?

[mattym0310]

Stewards side.
I think what they are getting at is the fact that although Hamilton had no choice as to cutting the corner, as he was coming out of the second part of the chicane onto the straight, hamilton didnt give Raikonnen a clear advantage [the mclaren being behind the ferrari, as it would have done exiting the corner normally] until after they went over the start/finish line where Hamilton had to move anyway to get a clear run at Corner 1.

Hamiltons side of the argument.
He had no choice as to where he went mid corner due to how Raikonnen positioned his car [which he is entitled to do] and so Hamilton cut the corner meaning he cannot take advantage of the cut. When exitting the corner Hamilton only lifted off a slight bit, and so he didn't get an advantage. Following this he was behind Raikonnen before making his move on the next corner.

My opinion.
I think there was no problem in him cutting the corner. But, Although hamilton did give space to make up for the corner cut, I do agree that he could have lifted off a bit more to give Raikonnnen a clearer advantage to avoid an investigation into it because he could have still made the same move on turn 1 if he had given more room to his opposition. I do however disagree with the penalty and think there shouldn't be one because Raikonnen still crashed out and so there would have been no change in order whether Hamilton had left the bigger gap or not.

[Brewer95]

he didnt have any choice on where to go. It was either cut the corner or slam into the side of Kimi!!

The whole thing is a farce as Hamilton did what he was suposed to do and surrendered the posistion back.

Lets just hope that mclaren have enough guts to apeal against the decison.

[Garry Spice]

from what i`m led to believe Ferrari are the only team on the fia board.hmm,im`m sure f1 is rigged in there favour.its not right and they wonder why people dont watch it!!! there are so many decisions that go their way it untrue.should we start an hate the fia/ferrari campaign??