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Old 08-09-2008, 15:21   #94
tcbass
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Re: Formula 1 2008 Season

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And if you do prove it, I want Kimi penalised for doing the the same thing, the only difference was he didnt make a place, he just made up ground.
Not making a place is a crucial difference, and it's the making a place or not loosing a place through cutting a corner that's punished, usually by a drive through penalty. As there wasn't enough laps left of the race for the penalty to be implemented it was given after it's was finished. The alternative once they had decided the guilt (rightly or wrongly) would have been a 10 place grid penalty for the next race, thus not affecting the outcome of this. But for this type of infringement a drive-through is handed out.
Had Kimi not crashed out he might have received the same penalty, who knows, we can only speculate. The thin is you can't give a drive-through penalty to someone that's not in the race any more.

I wouldn't had any arguments had this not been investigated, and left as the exciting racing it was. I agree it's a little harsh and thought it was wrong initially, but looking at it I can see where the stewards are coming from.
Lewis would have been a lot further back had he gotten out of it as soon as he realised the door was shut and made it round the chicane instead of deliberately cutting it, then gently yielding (if he did at all) until he was just about behind Kimi at the next corner.

The stewards did this of their own back, Ferrari did not complain!

The difficulty with this one is that it happened so close to the end that the penalty was handed out post race. If it had happened earlier and drive-through served during the race I don't think it would have been so controversial even if it had the same result in the end.

Mark Blundell on last nights "The ITV Lewis Hamilton Show" went through the slow-mo of the incident and concluded that the penalty was probably justified, because of the advantage gained through cutting the chicane.

On a side note, this sort of deliberate action to gain a advantage, not strictly according to rule or slight bending thereof, which on occasions came back to bite him, is something Michael Schumacher was famous for. He was either hated or loved for this uncompromising, arrogant attitude depending on which side you stood on. Now with Lewis it has seemed to switch sides. How Ironic.
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