The start of the new season of Formula 1 is turning out to be a difficult one to keep up with. Only one race has been run and the final results have changed at least two times that I am aware of. If you watched the race, you saw Trulli up on the podium with a third place finish. This was changed after a penalty was imposed upon him for passing Lewis Hamilton during a safety car. Hamilton was then awarded the third place finish for McLaren and Trulli was knocked down into twelfth position with a 25 second penalty.
Now for the controversy. Evidently a bit of fibbing took place by the McLaren team as to what actually happened during the safety car. Apparently the McLaren sporting director, Dave Ryan, and Hamilton “deliberately mislead” the stewards by omitting some of the facts. You can read the entire story on the Official F1 site. The result of this inquiry has caused Hamilton to be excluded from the race results in Melbourne and McLaren faces the possibility of a substantial fine. Dave Ryan has been suspended from McLaren and Trulli has been given back his third position win. Lewis Hamilton may very well be a talented driver, but my issue with him is that he isn’t a very sporting driver. And McLaren isn’t a very sporting team. They both want to win podiums regardless of how they get them. Had Hamilton and McLaren simply let the pass by Trulli go and chalked it up to a misunderstanding between drivers (which it most likely was) the result would have been a one point difference between Hamilton and Trulli. In these early days of the season is one point worth all of this controversy?
Unless anything else happens between now and the start of the next race in Malaysia, Vettel will be starting with a 10 grid penalty for his crash with Kubica in Melbourne and Rubens Barrichello a five grid penalty for a gear box change during practice in Malaysia.
The Hamilton fiasco has cost me some points in my Fantasy Formula 1 game. I did have 283 points with a ranking of 1,980 (out of 7,067 teams). Now I have fallen to position 2,058 with 261 points.
So, what’s going to happen in Malaysia? Well, stormy weather has been predicted for race day which should make things very exciting indeed.
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