Cheating Bastards are what makes Formula 1 so fun
Watch this
Sad sad sad. What you saw was Michael Schumacher at Monaco on Saturday, just after setting fastest lap during qualifying. For a while, the official line was, the Ferrari's back end 'slipped out,' forcing Michael on an errant line and having to stop in the middle of the track so as to not hit the barriers. What happened next is somewhat vague, but reportedly his car either stalled, or he chose not to reverse, in order to avoid a collision with following cars taking that blind turn.
Unfortunately, the following cars included the Renault of Fernando Alonso, who was on a lap that probably would have beaten Michael's. But the final session of qualifying was almost over, and when the yellow flags came out due to the track obstruction, neither Alonso nor anyone else could do a better lap.
The Monaco Grand Prix is the oldest track on the schedule. It is basically a street race on medieval European-width roads with the cars that do 800HP, 4G, and 180MPH. Passing is simply impossible for humans. Since the race is basically a fast parade interrupted by pit stop drama, qualifying is where the actual race happens.
Because of how important qualifying results and grid position is, just about nobody believes Schumacher or Ferrari. For a seven-time World Champion to make a mistake like that is suspicious enough. But you can actually see in the video that the engine didn't stall, he shut it off!
Half an hour ago he just got stripped of his pole position, so he starts from last place.
All this makes me quite happy.
For one, Ferrari got penalized. As petty as that sounds, it should be disclaimed by all the times Ferrari have gotten special treatment from the FIA in the past decade. In my view, I associate them with most of the reasons why F1 isnt a more well known, and better sport. That's a different post though.
But I'll admit somewhat contradictory to this, I'm also happy because they did cheat. Not because they got caught, but because they tried to literally cheat their way to victory and lie to the world about it with half a straight face.
I watch F1 almost purely for that aspect, people doing whatever they can to win. Some of the funnier stories on Pulp Racing (see link to right) go on in this vein.
Cheating is part of the F1 heritage, and always makes for the best stories. Mostly they take the form of stories of genius engineers like Colin Chapman (who started Lotus) and Gordon Murray (who designed the McLaren F1 supercar) taking advantage of every loophole they could find in the regulations, and coming up with things like ground effect aerodynamics, turbines that literally suck air from under the chassis for downforce, and double chassis with sprung cockpits (This enabled cars to get literally as close to the ground as possible. The sprung cockpit was so the drivers didn't vibrate their teeth to pieces). And all of this was back in the 70's.
Basically, the craziest shit happens when people cheat. Cheating is fun, to do and to watch. I'm talking about the sort of cheating where nobody gets hurt, except other teams. But they have such absurdly high budgets that it's hard to feel sorry for them. They should have thought of it earlier.
So I say to Ferrari, haha suckers, you're awesome.
Sad sad sad. What you saw was Michael Schumacher at Monaco on Saturday, just after setting fastest lap during qualifying. For a while, the official line was, the Ferrari's back end 'slipped out,' forcing Michael on an errant line and having to stop in the middle of the track so as to not hit the barriers. What happened next is somewhat vague, but reportedly his car either stalled, or he chose not to reverse, in order to avoid a collision with following cars taking that blind turn.
Unfortunately, the following cars included the Renault of Fernando Alonso, who was on a lap that probably would have beaten Michael's. But the final session of qualifying was almost over, and when the yellow flags came out due to the track obstruction, neither Alonso nor anyone else could do a better lap.
The Monaco Grand Prix is the oldest track on the schedule. It is basically a street race on medieval European-width roads with the cars that do 800HP, 4G, and 180MPH. Passing is simply impossible for humans. Since the race is basically a fast parade interrupted by pit stop drama, qualifying is where the actual race happens.
Because of how important qualifying results and grid position is, just about nobody believes Schumacher or Ferrari. For a seven-time World Champion to make a mistake like that is suspicious enough. But you can actually see in the video that the engine didn't stall, he shut it off!
Half an hour ago he just got stripped of his pole position, so he starts from last place.
All this makes me quite happy.
For one, Ferrari got penalized. As petty as that sounds, it should be disclaimed by all the times Ferrari have gotten special treatment from the FIA in the past decade. In my view, I associate them with most of the reasons why F1 isnt a more well known, and better sport. That's a different post though.
But I'll admit somewhat contradictory to this, I'm also happy because they did cheat. Not because they got caught, but because they tried to literally cheat their way to victory and lie to the world about it with half a straight face.
I watch F1 almost purely for that aspect, people doing whatever they can to win. Some of the funnier stories on Pulp Racing (see link to right) go on in this vein.
Cheating is part of the F1 heritage, and always makes for the best stories. Mostly they take the form of stories of genius engineers like Colin Chapman (who started Lotus) and Gordon Murray (who designed the McLaren F1 supercar) taking advantage of every loophole they could find in the regulations, and coming up with things like ground effect aerodynamics, turbines that literally suck air from under the chassis for downforce, and double chassis with sprung cockpits (This enabled cars to get literally as close to the ground as possible. The sprung cockpit was so the drivers didn't vibrate their teeth to pieces). And all of this was back in the 70's.
Basically, the craziest shit happens when people cheat. Cheating is fun, to do and to watch. I'm talking about the sort of cheating where nobody gets hurt, except other teams. But they have such absurdly high budgets that it's hard to feel sorry for them. They should have thought of it earlier.
So I say to Ferrari, haha suckers, you're awesome.
posted by joe at 12:49 AM
1 Comments:
Sweet. Isn't there some part of you that wishes that you were watching pure racing, though, free of incentives to cheating? I do agree that the cheating is indicative of intense competitiveness, though, and that is always compelling.
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