Vettel Passing Str Under Yellow Flags

[Jean-Pierre 0]

For what exactly? Being Sebastian Vettel?

I did not know you disliked him so much! I'll admit he is not a likable fellow.

But you are right, no 20 sec penalty because next year all driver will be alowed to pass under yellow, and the authorities decided to apply this new rule early.

[AleHop 0]

Don't they only wave a blue flag at pit exit? I've never heard of a green flag for cars leaving the pit lane. Maybe I'm missing something (as always).

For cars exiting the pits, on that video a group of marshals show a blue flag at the pit exit and show what "seems to be" a green one at the marshals post.

Their argument was that both the green and blur flags only affects the cars exiting the pits and is showed if the track is green beyond the pit-lane finish line where the green panel on the other video was showed.

I don't know if I explained it right in English. It's a bit complex but with all the controversy I got a bit confused too. The thing is that the video isn't from the race so probably the procedure is different during the race.

As for the controversy on Ferrari/Alonso I doubt there would have been any problem if that had happened in Australia.

[Rainmaster 7]

Yeah, I agree. If there was confusion (and there was), there's nothing wrong for Alonso and/or Ferrari to have wanted a response from the FIA about it. No one wants to be screwed out of a championship, and fortunately they weren't, but I think it's completely fair for them to want an explanation amidst all the confusion to make sure that everyone was okay. I'm sure we'd go through the same things if the roles were reversed.

Don't they only wave a blue flag at pit exit? I've never heard of a green flag for cars leaving the pit lane. Maybe I'm missing something (as always).

There was confusion, but it was the fans who were confused, not Ferrari or Alonso. Indeed, many fans were not even confused for that long, as they analysed the video and the rules very quickly. I don't think Ferrari were ever confused as they could quite easily have the same or better information available to them and reach the same conclusion, even more quickly. It took the F1Fanatic site 1 hour at most to resolve the question of whether the pass was legal or not - on just the 5th post after the video was posted (http://www.f1fanatic...m=15#post-80878).

I don't believe an organisation like Ferrari would send a letter to the FIA about an incident on the track, on the whim of hearing about a video on YouTube, without first doing an internal investigation into that incident to see whether there was a case or any uncertainty. In this case, the incident was so simple to reach a conclusion on, you'd have to think they were either incredibly lazy and never even looked into it, or woefully incompetent, to genuinely need clarification. That leaves only a political element to sending such a letter. Their only defence to that is to say "we were aware that some of our fans were confused, so we decided to prompt the FIA for a response to address that". In that case, their response to the FIA's "verdict" (not that the FIA had to do any work at all here) would not be worded so carefully as to never actually mention that the pass was completely legal, thereby allowing the possibility in people like Jean Pierre's minds that actually, the pass was illegal, undermining Red Bull/Vettel.

Sorry, Formula 1 is too technical, political, and Ferrari is too shrewd, to write this off as a mere curiosity on Ferrari's part.

[Rainmaster 7]

I've posted way too much in this thread

But I wonder if the guy who posted that YouTube video knew he would generate so much controversy and discussion. He did do well.

[BradSpeedMan 6]

http://www.planetf1.com/editorial/8295279/Opinion-Losing-It

Take particular interest to the last sentence 2nd paragraph. Heard or read it from A Benson yes...no?

[Rainmaster 7]

It's an opinion, alright.