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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash?

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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash? | Top Gear

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Both drivers neglected to point the finger. We let the internet decide instead

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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash?

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Both drivers neglected to point the finger. We let the internet decide instead

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Both drivers neglected to point the finger. We let the internet decide instead

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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash?

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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash?

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Poll: who was to blame for Mercedes’ Spanish GP crash?

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Both drivers neglected to point the finger. We let the internet decide instead

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It’s the one, unbreakable rule of motorsport: don’t crash into your teammate. But that’s exactly what Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg did at Turn 4 on the first lap of the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday, opening the door for teenage sensation Max Verstappen to win the first F1 race of his short career.

While Red Bull will be celebrating Verstappen’s meteoric success, Mercedes will be making moves behind closed doors to ensure that this latest incident doesn’t threaten the harmony within the team.

Their two drivers have collided before: Rosberg punctured Hamilton’s rear tyre at the Belgian GP in 2014, which came after an incident in Monaco where the German’s mistake cost his teammate pole and a likely win on race day.

Three-time champion Hamilton hasn’t always been the victim though. He won an epic duel with Rosberg in the 2014 Bahrain GP, although it later transpired that he used a higher engine mode to keep his rival behind him.

While yesterday’s crash was by far their worst self-inflicted catastrophe, the question of who to blame had a much less clear-cut answer.

After Rosberg had overtaken Hamilton at the start, his car suffered from a loss of power (some 160bhp) due to being in the wrong engine mode. This gave Hamilton much more speed out of the exit of Turn 3, enabling him to dive for the inside line on the entry to Turn 4.

Rosberg though defended the line as aggressively as Hamilton had attacked it, leaving the Briton with nowhere to go but the grass on the edge of the circuit. From that point onwards, Hamilton was helpless to prevent the skid that took them both off into the gravel and out of the race entirely.

“The inside is always what you'd go for; there was a much bigger gap,” said Hamilton after a private debrief with the team. “I had part of my wing and wheel alongside within the white line and then that diminished pretty quickly.

“It wasn't a case of 'the door was closed but I decided to go across the grass'. I saw a gap and went for it and that's what racing drivers do.”

Rosberg meanwhile appeared to be the more aggravated of the two during the post-race interviews, saying: “I saw Lewis closing in, so as soon as I could I closed the door to the inside with a clear strong move to make sure he understands there is not going to be space there and I was very surprised that he went for it anyway.

“That's it. Then we were in the sand trap. In the end, we have to go with what the experts think and the experts have decided it was a racing incident.”

As Rosberg noted, the FIA’s reasoning was unequivocal: “Having heard extensively from both drivers and from the team, the Stewards determined that Car 6 had the right to make the maneuver [sic] that he did and that Car 44’s attempt to overtake was reasonable, and that the convergence of events led neither driver to be wholly or predominantly at fault, and therefore take no further action.”

But do you agree? Even team boss Toto Wolff admitted that everyone in their garage had a different opinion. Let’s settle this once and for all with a highly reliable, definitive internet poll...

[apester:5739ac45eac5f7343b6e3068]

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It’s the one, unbreakable rule of motorsport: don’t crash into your teammate. But that’s exactly what Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg did at Turn 4 on the first lap of the Spanish Grand Prix yesterday, opening the door for teenage sensation Max Verstappen to win the first F1 race of his short career.

While Red Bull will be celebrating Verstappen’s meteoric success, Mercedes will be making moves behind closed doors to ensure that this latest incident doesn’t threaten the harmony within the team.

Their two drivers have collided before: Rosberg punctured Hamilton’s rear tyre at the Belgian GP in 2014, which came after an incident in Monaco where the German’s mistake cost his teammate pole and a likely win on race day.

Three-time champion Hamilton hasn’t always been the victim though. He won an epic duel with Rosberg in the 2014 Bahrain GP, although it later transpired that he used a higher engine mode to keep his rival behind him.

While yesterday’s crash was by far their worst self-inflicted catastrophe, the question of who to blame had a much less clear-cut answer.

After Rosberg had overtaken Hamilton at the start, his car suffered from a loss of power (some 160bhp) due to being in the wrong engine mode. This gave Hamilton much more speed out of the exit of Turn 3, enabling him to dive for the inside line on the entry to Turn 4.

Rosberg though defended the line as aggressively as Hamilton had attacked it, leaving the Briton with nowhere to go but the grass on the edge of the circuit. From that point onwards, Hamilton was helpless to prevent the skid that took them both off into the gravel and out of the race entirely.

“The inside is always what you'd go for; there was a much bigger gap,” said Hamilton after a private debrief with the team. “I had part of my wing and wheel alongside within the white line and then that diminished pretty quickly.

“It wasn't a case of 'the door was closed but I decided to go across the grass'. I saw a gap and went for it and that's what racing drivers do.”

Rosberg meanwhile appeared to be the more aggravated of the two during the post-race interviews, saying: “I saw Lewis closing in, so as soon as I could I closed the door to the inside with a clear strong move to make sure he understands there is not going to be space there and I was very surprised that he went for it anyway.

“That's it. Then we were in the sand trap. In the end, we have to go with what the experts think and the experts have decided it was a racing incident.”

As Rosberg noted, the FIA’s reasoning was unequivocal: “Having heard extensively from both drivers and from the team, the Stewards determined that Car 6 had the right to make the maneuver [sic] that he did and that Car 44’s attempt to overtake was reasonable, and that the convergence of events led neither driver to be wholly or predominantly at fault, and therefore take no further action.”

But do you agree? Even team boss Toto Wolff admitted that everyone in their garage had a different opinion. Let’s settle this once and for all with a highly reliable, definitive internet poll...

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Both drivers neglected to point the finger. We let the internet decide instead