F-1, the utter stupidity of Hamilton!

[springrite]

Needing ONE fifth place finish in his last two races to win the title, he was stupid in Shanghai, and even worse in Brazil! Instead of following Alonso (he did NOT need to win or to finish ahead of Alonso, Raikkonen or Massa to win the title), he dueled with Alonso, was over-aggressive early which caused several of his mistakes and the engine (transmission?) trouble which cose him the title. No one to blame but himself. Utter stupidity!

I am glad Raikkonen won. I supported him from the beginning. From two years ago, in fact. A well deserved title, FINALLY!!!

[sidoze]

Better Raikkonen than Alonson I suppose. You're right Paul, it was stupid. I missed it and caught only the last 40 laps, hoping--and initially believing--that Hamilton would make up the distance as he seemed to be cruising past other drivers for a while. Not sure about the 3 stop strategy and the early soft tyres though. At first I thought it might be because of car trouble (or the avoidance of car trouble maybe) but I can't quite work my head around that.

[Lethevich]

The mechanical failure cost him over 30 seconds, and he finished the race under 10 seconds behind where he needed to be, so if it wasn't for his car failing, he would've probably had it covered, even with the strange pit stops (which was also down to the team rather than the driver). Going off the track was a relatively minor thing.

Alonso had no chance due to not pushing, which nobody can accuse Hamilton of doing - he put 100% into qualifying and racing, and racing = racing incidents happen. Becoming complacent risks things going just as wrong... I have no issue with what happened in the Brazilian race - it was the needless retirement in the previous one which screwed things up, and a lot of what went wrong was down to tactical decisions made by the team, plus the car itself screwing up...

[RebLem]

I have no earthly idea what the hell you are talking about. 

When I saw the headline, I thought the thread was going to accuse Alexander Hamilton of having been stupid for his ultimately fatal decision to accept Aaron Burr's challenge to a duel.  But the headline was so passionate, I couldn't figure out how one could get so worked up about it 200+ years after the event.

[not edward]

I was supporting Räikkönen: he's been due a title for a while (after all, he'd probably have beaten Schumacher in '03 but for those first-lap eliminations).

I don't blame Alonso for his strategy: he was best of the rest and his second-race engine clearly wasn't up to duelling with the faster Ferraris and their first-race engines. I think he did all he could do (barring taking out one of the Ferraris with a Schumacher/Senna-esque move). I don't really blame Hamilton either: this is his first year and even the infamously mistake-free Alain Prost made that sort of mistake under pressure early on in his career. He'll still win a bucketload of titles, I'm sure.

[Mark]

This might interest some of you ...

[Keemun]

This might interest some of you ...

Ah, so this thread is about Formula One racing....   (Thanks for the help, Mark.)