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This is ridiculous, I don't give a flying fuck it's Lewis. Rules are rules. Getting tired of people saying everyone hates Hamilton and want him punished. His team should be punished.

The main thing I've taken from this thread is either the multi quote function is broken or no one knows how to quote

Just because you stuff up and make an error, doesn't absolve you of the fact that you broke the rules.

The key I think there is "significantly different from the temperatures from other cars measured"

Martin Brundell on Sky F1 said he asked Rob Smedly how quickly the tyres cooled off out of the blankets. Smedly told him it would take a couple of minutes to 5 minutes to cool that much.

So Merc took the tyre blankets off 2- 5 minutes before everyone else? or Rob Smedly doesn't know what the hell he is talking about?

My take away from that stewards statement is this. Merc knew that they could argue their way out of running the tyres under pressure because they could prove that they were legit at the time of checking.

Its no coincidence that Rosberg who was stuck down in 5th on the grid had a huge discrepancy in his tyre pressures.

I've seen so many views across internet forums on how and why Mercedes were clearly "cheating" on Sunday, yet few have stopped to consider the wider reaching consequences of what did and didn't happen when the "illegal" readings were taken. Some have pointed out and questioned the flaw in the due process, but reading Will Buxton's blog post I feel he hits the nail firmly on the head - https://willthef1journo.wordpress.com/2 ... from-harm/

So after the tyre failures at Spa, the drivers berated Pirelli to such an extent that the powers that be (ie Bernie Ecclestone) had to take them into a dark room and explain the facts of life.

Basically, he said, "without tyres, you guys are out of a job, so keep it zipped".

Pirelli invested a lot of time and effort to find the reason for the failure Sebastian Vettel suffered at Spa. This is like sifting through the bits and pieces left over from a plane crash, when it can take years to identify the cause of the failure.

But Pirelli had only a few days. All it could do is look at all of the available information at that point in time.

Pirelli's answer was that it suffered more tyre cuts at Spa than normal and that the teams were running outside of the tyre engineers' design brief.

The further you run the tyre, the thinner the tread gets. This increases the likelihood that one of those cuts will go through the tyre, resulting in a deflation. Whether it's a slow deflation or an instant one is out of their hands.

Pre-Monza, Pirelli and the FIA issued a technical directive that the minimum tyre pressures used at Monza were to be 21psi at the front and 19.5psi at the rear, with a maximum tyre temperature of 110C.

To explain a little about tyres, the higher the pressure, the stiffer the tyre. Because of braking and corner entry - which puts a very high load on the front tyres – you normally want the front end to be at reasonably high pressure.

But high pressure means less track-surface compliance, so in effect less grip.

As far as the rear is concerned, you need the tyre to be at a high enough pressure to give stability. But it also needs to be low enough to give as big a tyre-to-ground contact patch as possible – this is vital for traction.

The temperature and the pressure go hand-in-hand, and that is why Pirelli states a maximum of 110C.

Some teams have been heating the tyres higher than this to get better grip when the car leaves the pits.

It's mainly the fronts that this is done to, as it momentarily improves the balance and allows the driver to work the whole car better – especially on a qualifying lap.

With the higher temperature, there will be an increase in tyre pressure, but when the car goes out on the circuit, the tyre temperature will drop and, in turn, the pressure will be too low.

This can overwork the shoulder of the tyre. Basically, this area of the tyre has to flex, but flex it too much or for too long and it will fail.

Heating the tyres to more than 110C is a bit silly anyway. In my experience, anything above 80C compromised the compound grip level.

It might give you a slightly better balance when you leave the pits, but basically it cooked the tyre tread and made it like a harder compound.

In my day we would have started free practice at a track like Monza aiming to run the tyres at a hot pressure of 20psi front and 18psi rear, and then adjusted them around that pressure depending on the car's handling characteristics.

If the turn-in to the corner is too pointy, add half a psi to the front. If traction is poor, increase rear tyre pressure by the same amount.

For a circuit like Hungary, 20psi front and 16psi rear would be a good starting point because of the traction required in the low-speed corners and the fact there are no real high-speed turns.

So, from my point of view, when it was discovered before the race that on the grid both Mercedes were running with lower-than-permitted tyre pressures, it should have been reacted to then.

Everyone in the pitlane will know that when the cars came around onto the grid, those tyre pressures would have been lower again.


Some people have said that Pirelli saw the pressures and were OK with it, but it's not Pirelli's responsibility to make sure its tyres are running at the correct pressures – it is the team's responsibility.



So what should have been done? The fact of the matter is that both cars were running illegally, so a black flag should have been shown and both cars retired immediately.

But – and it's a big but – that's not what we want to see, because we want to see racing. So if I'd had anything to do with it, I would have made the team call both cars into the pits at the end of the first lap to change tyres to those of the same compound complying with the pressure and temperature directive.

I also believe that this is what should have been done Spa, when the Williams team fitted Valtteri Bottas's car with three tyres of one compound and one of the other.

He received a penalty, but was still able to complete the stint with the mismatched set.



So when Toto Wolff says that Mercedes was not doing anything against the spirit of the tyre regulations, I completely agree. But the team was pushing the directive to the limit and missed it by that little bit. If you don't leave a big enough window to comply, you should pay the price.